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2024-05-15 5:35 pm

Garlic and sapphires: The secret life of a critic in disguise

by Ruth Reichl

Paperback, 2006

Call number

641.5092

Tags

nonfiction, food, memoir, tpb

Genres

Biography & Memoir

General Nonfiction

Publication

New York : Penguin Books, 2006, c2005.

Pages

333

Description

Biography & Autobiography. Cooking & Food. Essays. Nonfiction. HTML:GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a frumpy blond with manicured nails and an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque. The result: her famous double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, New York Times food critic. What is even more remarkable about Reichl's spy games is that as she takes on these various disguises, she finds herself changed not just superficially, but in character as well. She gives a remarkable account of how one's outer appearance can very much influence one's inner character, expectations, and appetites. As she writes, "Every restaurant is a theater . . . even the modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while." GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is a reflection on personal identity and role playing in the decadent, epicurean theaters of the restaurant world.… (more)

Awards

Audie Award (Finalist — Biography/Memoir — 2006)

100 Must-Read Memoirs by Bookriot

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2005

Physical description

333 p.; 8.7 inches

ISBN

0143036610 / 9780143036616

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of food life by Barbara Kingsolver

User reviews

LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce

Ruth Reichl will do damage to your diet and/or your pocket book. She makes me want to put on a long blond wig and eat at expensive French restaurants or spend hundreds of dollars for sushi. She makes me want to cook every recipe in her book. She makes me realize that even if I save up enough money

to go to the best restaurants I likely will not get either the best service or the best food that restaurant critics have lead me to believe I will. She makes meek little me realize that I might have to be forceful to get what should be offered a diner who has clout. She makes me want to eat rich food and seek out little unknown restaurants. She makes me want to find a way to celebrate life as she does (and get paid for it in the process.) She makes me hungry.

LibraryThing member SqueakyChu

Ruth Reichl, in this book as food critic for The New York Times, takes her readers along on her job assignments. To keep people from recognizing her, she changes appearance with the use of make-up, various wigs, and clothing to match each new persona. Oddly enough, she also takes on a new

personality with every costume change.

Throughout the book, Reichl visits various restaurants and has vastly different experiences in each. After telling about them in excruciating detail, she adds a matching review for each restaurant. Not all of them were good.

I found this book pleasurable reading for a while. Toward the end, however, I was becoming tired of Reichl’s whirlwind restaurant experiences. I most likely felt this way because some of the restaurants that she visited were ones at which I could neither afford to dine nor would I want to. I don’t count duck web, foie gras, steamed skate, fried quail eggs, or squid ink among those foods I’d be eager to try. I’m more of a Deborah Madison-type foodie. Nevertheless, I found this book to be a fun and light read, and, for the most part, an enjoyable experience.

I must say that the best part of this book by far was the New York Cheesecake recipe on page 20. The author uses recipes in her book instead of pictures. I’m grateful for that as I made two of Reichl’s cheesecakes (both of which were entirely eaten) before I even finished reading the book.

LibraryThing member spoko

Another food book. I was actually reading this and MFK Fisher's The Gastronomical Me together, for an online reading group. Turned out to be a very nice combination.

Ruth Reichl was the restaurant critic at the New York Times for quite a while (I'm sure the book says how long, but I can't remember

and I'm too lazy to look), and this book tells the story of that time. I was surprised by how much I liked the book. At one or another point, in fact, I thought about stopping reading it, but I'm glad I never did. Some of the problems I was having, which I thought was just me, she actually took on directly in the book (and in her NYT column, apparently). Namely, is it a good thing to be spending all that time writing about meals most people could never afford to have? Just about the time that question was really starting to bother me, she addressed the fact that it also bothered her. From that point on, especially, I liked the book.

There's a lot going on in this memoir, psychologically, which made it an interesting read far beyond the food-talk. If you're interested in food, restaurants, journalism, theatre (yes, theatre), or memoirs, I would recommend the book. If you're interested in more than one of those things, I'd recommend it all the more strongly. If you're not particularly interested in any of them, you still might like it. It is a well written, well filled-out book.

LibraryThing member gwendolyndawson

I loved this engaging memoir by the New York Times food critic. I particularly enjoy Reichl's egalitarian view of fine dining (everyone should have the same great experience, famous or not). As a lover of good food and fine dining, I found this to be a very entertaining read.

LibraryThing member manadabomb

I actually forget where I heard about this book, but any book about food usually ranks high on my list. The subtitle of this book is "The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise" and that's exactly what it is.

Reichl was the New York Times restaurant critic for 6 years and she went through various

incarnations of herself to get in and out of restaurants without being noticed. Notice I said incarnations of herself vs disguises. As you read how Reichl (with help from her friends) puts together the disguises, she really embodies each person and finds that each person is really a part of her (some are kind of mean though).

As much as I love reading about food, I love eating it. My health problems cause me to have to avoid a lot of foods that sound wonderful so I live vicariously through food books. Reichl is a great writer with the ability to bring you right down at the table with her. It helps she includes several of her favorite recipes as well.

Better than reading about food is cooking it. Thanks to my dad, I can cook and bake pretty well and spend a lot of time in my kitchen. With the thoughts of the food from Garlic and Sapphires, I'm adjourning to the kitchen to come up with another great meal.

LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50

I put away my decorator bookmark for my reading of Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichi. Instead I used blank recipe cards to mark my way through this delightful memoir of the author’s time as the food critic for the New York Times. Not only does this woman have a marvellous sense of taste, she

can write. Her descriptions of some of her lavish meals had my mouth watering. Her ability to separate and identify the subtle flavors of each dish was amazing.

She was the New York Times food critic during the early nineties, and she made a conscious choice to widen the horizons of food culture to include ethnic restaurants. She also didn’t hesitate to poke a pin into the hot air of many of the so-called top restaurants of the day, calling them out for their snobbish manners and for resting on their past reputations.

One of the most important parts of being a restaurant critic is the art of being anonymous. The designing and creating of her many disguises was both fascinating and humorous. For each new disguise, she created a personality and back story, to the delight of her family and dining companions.

I highly recommend Garlic and Sapphires for any “foodie“, or anyone who is in the market for a light read about an interesting subject. Oh by the way, the blank recipe cards didn’t stay that way. The author sprinkled some marvellous recipes throughout the pages of the book and I acquired quite a collection!

LibraryThing member jbdavis

I tried Reichl's first two memoirs attracted by the food writing connection but, let's face it, I just don't like the grittiness that comes with some memoirs and Reichl's were of that sort to me. This book, however, is nothing like that as Reichl is telling about her struggles to stay "under cover"

as when it is announced she will be the next NY Times food critic her photo is plastered all over restaurant kitchens throughout the city. She also tells about her struggles to change the sorts of restaurants that the Times covers, including a hilarious recounting of her interview where she tried her hardest to be so outrageous that they wouldn't offer her the job. This book is a great read for anyone interested in food writing ... or any writing.

LibraryThing member bakersfieldbarbara

A fun book to read; I couldn't put it down. Not only are there some good recipes in the book, the life of a food critic is discussed, and how they eat without being known. It shows how absurd some of the restuarants can be and how devious they are in the foods they serve. Adventures in deception is

a perfect description of the critic and the foods.

LibraryThing member aubreyrose

Garlic and Sapphires is a memoir about Ruth Reichl's time as a food critic at the New York Times. The book gives a fascinating look into the New York Food scene. Reich's descriptions of food are always fantastic, you can practically see and taste the food through the pages. The book was funny and

personal, chronicling the multiple disguises Reichl used to visit restaurants incognito and the way her job affects her family life.

LibraryThing member Katie_H

This book was given to me by a friend, and it remained in my 'To Read' stack before I finally picked it up. I really enjoy memoirs, and this fascinating insight into the life of well-known food critic did not disappoint. I'm a lover of fine dining and unique restaurants, and her writing really made

the food leap off the page (or maybe it's just that I'm pregnant and ALL food sounds good??). Even sashimi and foie gras, two dishes that I don't particularly enjoy, sounded fantastic! Her quest to remain anonymous in NYC's many restaurants was extremely interesting, not only in her process to create disguises, but how these characters affected her personality and changed the way she was regarded. Reichl also included personal recipes, a nice addition, in every chapter, and there are a couple that I just might try. Garlic and Sapphires is a fun journey that I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys food writing or memoirs in general.

LibraryThing member MrsLee

A memoir of Reichl's days as a restaurant critic with the New York Times. This is more than just a fantasy of fine food and dining, although it is that, it is a book of self discovery. As Reichl adopts various persona and dresses up in disguises to avoid being known at the restaurants she wants to

review, she discovers aspects of her character which she hadn't explored before. She describes this with humor and self-depreciation. I never thought about the process of writing up a critique of a restaurant. You would think it would be a dream job, but I can see how eating out so many times would begin to wear on a person. Especially if they had a family. As the author dressed up as older women, redheads, blondes, mousy women, she discovered that each persona was treated differently. An eye-opener to the ways wait-staff view their customers.

If you love food, and reading about food, this is a terrific book for you. Reichl knows how to describe food so that you can smell, feel, taste and see it. There are a few recipes included, but they are not by any means the focus of the book.

LibraryThing member AzureMountain

Enjoyed the writing and the book very much. Don't think I could pull off many of th ereceipes, but that is okay. Makes me interested in what other people I could become....if I wanted to.

LibraryThing member alanna1122

I enjoyed this book. She does a wonderful job of describing the different meals she ate and restuarants she visited. My only complaint is that she has a really large ego that poked through more than once during the novel and interrupted the flow of the story for me... otherwise a very fun - fluffy-

fast read.

LibraryThing member Niecierpek

Part three of Reichl's memoir –this one about the time when she worked as a restaurant critic for The New York Times.
I found this part the weakest of the trilogy. Apart from restaurant reviews and descriptions of numerous disguises, it offered little else. It may be because the people Reichl

writes about are all still around, all still in the newspaper, magazine business, all difficult to write about when one is an editor-in-chief of one them. Maybe she should have waited a few more years before writing about this part of her life.
In addition, there was one thing that bothered me- she ate much too much fois gras. Not so long ago, I learned how the geese are fattened, and every time she ate it in the book, I remembered it. I find it impossible that she didn't know.

LibraryThing member wyvernfriend

An interesting look into the life of a food critic during the 1990's. When she finds out that people have her picture up and lavish her with extras in order to get a better review she puts on disguises and finds out more about herself than she finds completely comfortable as she does so. Littered

with recipies and some of the reviews it's an interesting look into a high life.

To be honest I'm not in the same league as the author when it comes to food but I do know what I like and I have to agree with her that service can sometimes make the difference.

LibraryThing member karieh

Who wouldn't LOVE to eat LOTS of meals for free? Especially at many of New York's most fabulous restaurants? After a while - the author, that's who. There are so many things to like in this book - her description of the food (it's almost like eating it!), her journey in and out of aspects of her

personality as she disguises herself, and the very interesting affects her new, wonderful job has on her relationships. I enjoyed reading it - but can't give it a full 5 stars...I think her disillusionment with the critic biz flows through and towards the end - her writing seems a tad too bitter.

LibraryThing member bobbieharv

Not as good as her previous two books - writing was a little too put-on at times. A bit like a charicature of herself. And all the disguises were boring.

LibraryThing member faganjc

This was just okay for me. It just wasn't as interesting as I had thought. My curiousity about being a food critic was sated about a quarter of the way throught the book -- then it was just more of the same. I can see others liking it much better.

LibraryThing member shihtzu

If you eat in restaurants, I think you'll find this book entertaining. The author tells of her years as food critic for the New York Times and her efforts to hide her identity as she visits some of the city's most famous restaurants. With the help of friends and associates, she creates a variety of

disguises, and assumes a particular identity with each one, in order to find out how some of these restaurants treat ordinary customers. It's incredible how badly she is treated in some of Manhattan's most well-known and priciest restaurants when she shows up in some of her disguises.

LibraryThing member drsyko

Ruth Reichl has a way with words when it comes to describing food. Practially the whole time I was reading this book I was hungry. And a bit jealous. I love to eat and what a wonderful life it must be to eat for a living at the finest restaurants. Anyway, this is an interesting book both about the

food and about the life of a critic. Ms. Reichl writes well and keeps the pace up. She's a good story teller and she has some funny and sad stories to tell. What I found especially interesting and sad is the stories she tells about the Window on the World restaurant at the World Trade Center. It was sort of eerie to read a story about an ordinary evening there, knowing that in a few years after the time she is writing about the towers would fall and people would die at that restaurant.
What I particularly admired about this book is that Ms. Reichl does not try to make herself look like a saint. She shows multiple sides of her personality and seems to easily tell stories about herself that are not particularly flattering to her. She seems quite human in this book and that adds an extra layer of appeal to this book, and I might add the same is true of her other two books. If you enjoy food and wonder what it might be like to eat at all the best places as a an actual job, you'll enjoy this book. I myself had to go have Chinese food when I finished this book. And I found myself really trying to experience the food the way Ms. Reichl writes about experiencing food. It was a wonderful experience.

LibraryThing member LisaLynne

This is another one of those books I read on a flight between Cleveland and Minneapolis, where I frequently travel on business. Since the first scene takes place on an airplane, it seemed appropriate. I am a huge fan of gourmet cooking and fine dining and I love reading about restaurants - even the

places I will never be able to afford even if I could get a reservation. Her stories about the restaurants were terrific. She has not only a gourmet palate and an understanding of what makes a restaurants truly "four star", but she has a more common appreciation of what makes for a great restaurant experience. It's not just fancy ingredients and cutting edge techniques, it's being able to put something flavorful on the plate in an atmosphere that encourages people to enjoy their food. I'm definitely going to be looking for more of her books.

LibraryThing member heidialice

Reichl writes about her experiences in her six years as the New York Times food critic. She writes about both the meals she eats and the disguises she wears (and the characters she becomes) to pass as anonymous in the competitive New York food world. Most chapters include the original article

written for the Times.

Though her descriptions of the food are mouth-watering, the best parts are the most personal. There is real depth in her analysis of the food scene, her job, and her experiences as different characters, as well as her relationships with family and friends. Although she runs in high-class circles, she never becomes shallow or snobby. Parts of this book are hilarious, and it's all fascinating. While I was grateful for the inclusion of the reviews published in the Times, I was slightly impatient with the amount of repetition between the reviews themselves and the stories she tells about them. This is my first book of hers, but I will definitely seek out more.

LibraryThing member lharsma

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl is a memoir of her days reviewing restaurants for the New York Times. On her first flight to New York she discovers that all the restaurants have descriptions of her and are waiting for her to show up, so she decides to

get creative and disguise herself. The book is pretty much what you'd expect from that description- stories of the disguises, the personalities of each, the experiences of each and how it changed her reviews. She goes to a lot of restaurants I'll never go to, eats a LOT of food I'll NEVER eat, and remembers it all in very fine detail.

I don't know if it's the food itself that enthralled me, because honestly I have no desire to eat most of it, but I really really enjoyed this book. The different reactions she got from the same restaurants when she went as her characters vs. herself was amazing. The special treatment money could buy was eye opening. There are recipes spread throughout the book. I did not read them all (so not gonna cook mussels in the middle of South Dakota!) but some of them looked quite tasty. I don't know if this will make my top five for the year, but it was surprisingly good and I'd recommend it to anyone who loves to eat.

LibraryThing member phyllis2779

I couldn't put this down once I picked it up. It gave me a whole new appreciation of food and a new way of approaching food and restaurants critically. I'm not a foodie, more of an amateur but this book made fine dining and not so fine dining experiences so real that I could really imagine the

taste of things. Now I want to go back and finish Tender to the Bone which I started a long time ago and never finished.

LibraryThing member Brianna_H

I found Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by former New York Times Restaurant Critic, Ruth Reichel as enjoyable as a warm plate of risotto paired with a glass of red wine.

In Garlic and Sapphires, Reichel recounts the six years she spent contriving clever disguises to

hide her identity as she galavanted around New York City’s restaurants and bistros writing reviews for the Times. Reichel’s memoir focuses on three aspects of her life at that time: her personal life as a wife and mother, her restaurant patronizing as a critic, and her life as an employee of the venerable and mighty New York Times. Reichel’s descriptions of her son are touching and heartwarming, her recounting of the extremes she went to in order to create and truly become her aliases are entertaining and amusing, and her telling of the behind-the-scenes goings-on at the Times are fascinating and fulfill the gossipy voyeur in all of us.

Reichel is a talented writer and her truly joyous love of food, cooking, and eating are evident on each page of the book. The book is peppered with Ruth’s favorite recipes and this adds a certain feel-good warmth to the tome.

My only criticism of the book is that I had to be willing to suspend my good reason in order to believe that Ruth truly became the characters she created to the extent she described. According to Ruth, she was so immersed in these characters that she found herself unable to use her own judgment and mannerisms while inhabiting that character’s persona. For example, is she was dressed as “Miriam” she was brash and rude and “Ruth” had no control over the rude things that came out of “Miriam’s” mouth. This was slightly hard to believe – but maybe I just don’t have the same amount of acting chops!

The title Garlic and Sapphires is only briefly alluded to and comes from a poem written by T.S. Eliot.

Overall, Garlic and Sapphires is a delicious romp of a memoir that I truly relished devouring – excuse the puns!

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