Eating out should be a joyous experience, in theory. However, the question alone of what to eat or which appetite to satisfy—the sweet or the tangy—can be daunting, even agonizing. Then of course there is the decision of where to eat: someplace fancy or someplace ordinary? Recommendations, especially those coming from someone as highly regarded as the newly hand-picked food critic for The New York Times, can take the pressure off. But it can also carry a lot of weight in the eyes of those willing to spend money at the most premier establishments in a tough city like New York. Such is the lot that Ruth Reichl has taken on in Garlic and Sapphires, and she does so with gusto and charm.
Being a notorious food critic in a city that thrives off of Page Six headliners presents challenges, and the means to combat them are paramount. In a series of humorous, light-hearted, and often times sad vignettes, Ruth Reichl recounts stories of how she disguised herself as six women while she ate in and reviewed New York City restaurants that would otherwise be sure to recognize her. In Sapphires, however, Reichl makes no attempt to placate any particular party: her employer the Times, the chefs at the restaurants she reviews, or the millions of New Yorkers whose mouths she presumably looks out for. Instead, over the course of six years Reichl unintentionally performs a social study on the varying degree of attention and respect one receives at well-regarded eating establishments based solely on one’s appearance.
In “Betty”, Reichl adapts the persona of a meek, almost invisible senior woman who she followed from the train one afternoon. The service Reichl receives as Betty while attending the Tavern on the Green is almost as deplorable as the meal itself. In fact, it is simply because she’s old and timid. In more humorous reflections, Reichl disguises herself as a stunning red head who “dumbs down” her knowledge of food by feigning ignorance during a meal with a man who has tentacles for hands and is as equally clueless and garrulous as he is wealthy.
Despite flowing in and out of characters and alter egos, Reichl's book delights as she stimulates the appetite with her luscious descriptions of everything from prosciutto to shrimp to cheese to duck, and the precise temperate at which each should be served. Readers join Reichl at the table while she digs into euphoric experiences with fresh eel, roasted lamb, rolled pasta or soup consommé. In some cases you can even imagine Reichl closing her eyes, tipping her right pinky in the air while holding a spoon, and raising her foot in glee over a robust meal. But even good meals come to an end.
For a short while, Sapphires rides on the strange irony of Reichl blithely reviewing food that she so clearly grew up being stimulated by. She doesn’t seem bothered by criticism from her editors or from angry letters and phone calls from the public calling for her resignation after slamming some the most preeminent restaurants in the city. But the reality for a critic is that critiquing can become stale and cumbersome, if you let it. At some point, even the critic needs to be reinvigorated again. Through exploring the restaurants of New York’s culinary landscape via her own alter-personas (and taking a food tour of NYC with another food critic colleague), Reichl comes to rediscover why she fell in love with food in the first place.
Sapphires is not solely about going along on the epicurean journeys of a renowned food critic for the New York Times. It reads like a personal journal you might expect a chef or a cook or even an everyday foodie to carry. It’s filled with personal recipes, newspaper-like-clippings of several Times restaurant reviews Reichl has written over the years, stories of secret food discoveries, as well as Reichl’s family and friends. The stories are also about the glory days of the economic boom during of the 1990s that the country was sailing on, and the restaurants that tried to board, and the few that fell off the proverbial economic gangplank. Reichl’s tender retrospective on the mom and pop cooks, bread makers, fish vendors, and candy sellers who were a disappearing breed in the changing culinary landscape of New York City become—excuse the pun—the bread and butter of Garlic and Sapphires. In “Missionary for the Delicious”, Reichl blows a long kiss to bread kneaders in Queens, candy makers in Brooklyn who, in vain, toil away at making candy by hand, and to the best little-known shop in Brooklyn that sells yogurt perfect enough for making Afghan dumplings. It’s one of the books more crowning achievements, and is a testament that true satisfaction in eating belongs to those with an appetite for it.
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