Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0143036610
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Average Customer Review: (From 120 total reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com:
Fans of Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples know that Ruth Reichl is a wonderful memoirist–a funny, poignant, and candid storyteller whose books contain a happy mix of memories, recipes, and personal revelations.

Amazon.com Interview
We chewed the fat with Ruth. Read our interview.

What they might not fully appreciate is that Reichl is an absolute marvel when it comes to writing about food–she can describe a dish in such satisfying detail that it becomes unnecessary for readers to eat. In her third memoir, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Reichl focuses on her life as a food critic, dishing up a feast of fabulous meals enjoyed during her tenure at The New York Times. As a critic, Reichl was determined to review the “true” nature of each restaurant she visited, so she often dined incognito–each chapter of her book highlights a new disguise, a different restaurant (including the original reviews from the Times), and a fresh culinary adventure. Garlic and Sapphires is another delicious and delightful book, sure to satisfy Reichl’s foodie fans and leave admirerers looking forward to her next book, hopefully about her life with Gourmet. –Daphne Durham

More from Ruth Reichl


Tender at the Bone
Comfort Me with Apples
The Gourmet Cookbook

Remembrance of Things Paris
Endless Feasts
Gourmet magazine


Amazon.com’s The Significant Seven
Ruth Reichl answers the seven questions we ask every author.


Q: What book has had the most significant impact on your life?
A: Kate Simon’s New York Places and Pleasures. I read it as a little girl and then went out and wandered the city. She was a wonderful writer, and she taught me not only to see New York in a whole new way, but to look, and taste, beneath the surface.

Q: You are stranded on a desert island with only one book, one CD, and one DVD–what are they?
A: Ulysses by James Joyce. What better place to finally get through it?

Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert. If you’re going to listen to one piece over and over, this is one that doesn’t get tiresome.

How to Build a Boat in Five Easy Steps. Since I’m going to be watching one movie over and over, it might as well be useful.

Q: What is the worst lie you’ve ever told?
A: I’m such a good liar, I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.
A: I can write pretty much anywhere. But I prefer small, cozy spaces, with a good view over a lake or a forest, and room for the cats to curl up.

Q: If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?
A: “She’ll be right back.”

Q: Who is the one person living or dead that you would like to have dinner with?
A: Elizabeth I. She fascinates me. She had a great mind, enormous appetites–and she was a survivor. The most interesting woman of an interesting time, and I have a million questions I’d like to ask her.

Q: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
A: You mean after creating world peace? This is a hard one. But I’ve always wanted to be able to fly.

Product Description:
Ruth Reichl, world-renowned food critic and editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, knows a thing or two about food. She also knows that as the most important food critic in the country, you need to be anonymous when reviewing some of the most high-profile establishments in the biggest restaurant town in the world?a charge she took very seriously, taking on the guise of a series of eccentric personalities. In Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl reveals the comic absurdity, artifice, and excellence to be found in the sumptuously appointed stages of the epicurean world and gives us?along with some of her favorite recipes and reviews?her remarkable reflections on how one?s outer appearance can influence one?s inner character, expectations, and appetites, not to mention the quality of service one receives.

?This wonderful book is funny?at times laugh-out-loud funny?and smart and wise.? ?The Washington Post
?Reichl is so gifted . . . the reader remains hungry for more.? ?USA Today
?Expansive and funny.? ?Entertainment Weekly

Customer Reviews

Delicious! by Smita Rao
Reichl is a witty, smart writer who certainly knows her way around food. She has this uncanny ability to make food and the ritual of eating accessible to her reader, no matter how removed the reader may be from the actual setting. I recoiled in horror thinking about shrimp writhing as they died in the ‘Dancing Shrimp’ centerpiece in a chinese banquet, but nevertheless enjoyed reading her account of the events that unfolded on the evening in question.

The characters that she works with are as colorful as the make-believe characters she invents, ostensibly to avoid being recognized as the restaurant critic of the New York Times. As she dons her various disguises, she adopts a whole new personality. The premise that adopting a new personality influences the experience of eating is as entertaining as it is revelatory. All in all, a refreshing, well-written book.

Reichl does it again by Cris South
I love this woman. She writes books that are full of information and fun. Always a good foodie read. I just wish she would write faster!

Narcissism on a plate by Merry Widow
The subject hooked me in immediately - a famous NY food critic working in disguise, so as to experience the same treatment restaurants give to lesser mortals. Her reviews of these places gave well-deserved rebukes, and reading her newspaper pieces shows why she’s a respected critic. Her palate is obviously exquisitely sensitive, and her knowledge of the business must be tremendous.

But it’s only in the short format of a review that I can read her writing with any enjoyment. In a book, all her defects of style become very tedious (despite her acknowledgments citing all the help she’s had from top-flight editors!). She writes in a breathless, overblown manner, with no sense of narrative proportion. She introduces new characters in lavish paragraphs of purple prose, and then they vanish entirely from the book. Incidents of no importance are written up in minute detail, and parts that would have been worth developing are skipped over.

Her descriptions of people (including her own disguises) call on every cliche in the romantic novel genre, and her dialogue plods along clumsily, stating the obvious at every turn. After a chapter or two I had to suspend the willing belief one normally brings to an autobiography - really, are we to believe that her late mother’s friend nearly fainted on seeing her put on her mother’s dress, because the resemblance was so utterly convincing? Or that her own husband failed to recognise her as soon as she put on a wig and some stage make-up? Reichl tells us firmly and at length that it happened, and since her writing is otherwise completely without irony, I gather she intends us to take it as fact.

Overall, I finished the book wishing I’d followed my impulse and dumped it after the first chapter. I kept waiting for it to turn into the promised hilarious and charming piece, but I waited in vain. I was left with the impression of a woman self-absorbed, arrogant and shallow, who notices little and cares less about other people except as they massage her ego or give her fuel for showing her contempt. There is no attempt at developing a theme or plot, and no insight into her own or anyone else’s character. If extravagant, adjective-riddled descriptions of food appeal to you, there’s plenty of that - but even then, my vicarious enjoyment of the meals was spoilt by the feeling that she’s only saying this to impress us all with what an infallible and sensitive judge she is. Yes, Ruth, I guess you are. That’s why they employed you. But a little more humility and humour would make for a better book.

Delicious by Mary Francoise

Reichl is brutally honest about herself, which makes for moving stories. At one point she dresses up as her crazy mother and enjoys the freedom of being an obnoxious old lady. I read this last book in the series first and it prompted me to order and happily read all the others.

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