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| Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise | 
 enlarge | Author: Ruth Reichl
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  129 reviews
Sales Rank: 379117
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5092
ASIN: B0013VXVMO
Publication Date: April 7, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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
This delicious new volume of Ruth Reichl's acclaimed memoirs recounts her "adventures in deception," as she goes undercover in the world's finest restaurants. Reichl knows that "to be a good restaurant critic, you have to be anonymous," but when she signs up to be the most important restaurant critic in the country, at The New York Times, her picture is posted in every four-star, low-star, and no-star kitchen in town. Managers offer cash bonuses for advance notice of her visits. They roll out the red carpet whether she likes it or not. What's a critic in search of the truth to do?
Reichl dons a frumpy blond wig and an off-season beige Armani suit. Then on the advice of a friend, an acting coach with a Pygmalion complex, she begins assembling her new character's backstory. She takes to the assignment with astonishing ardor-and thus Molly Hollis, the retired high school teacher from Birmingham, Michigan, nouveau riche from her husband's real estate speculation, is born. And duly ignored, mishandled, and condescended to by the high-power staff at Le Cirque. The result: Reichl's famous double review, first as she ate there as Molly and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, The New York Times food critic.
When restaurateurs learn to watch for Molly, Reichl buys another wig and becomes someone else, and then someone else again, from a chic interior decorator to an eccentric redhead on whom her husband-both disconcertingly and reassuringly-develops a terrible crush. As she puts on her disguises, she finds herself changed not just superficially, but in character. She becomes Molly the schoolmarm, Chloe the seductress, and Brenda the downtown earth mother-and imagine the complexities when she dines out as Miriam, her own mother. As Reichl metes out her critical stars, she gives a remarkable account of how one's outer appearance can influence one's inner character, expectations, and appetites.
Reichl writes, "Every restaurant is a theater...even the modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while." Dancing with the Stars examines character, artifice, and excellence on the sumptuously appointed stages of the restaurant world and offers an unprecedented backstage tour of the theater where Ruth Reichl played the role of a lifetime, as the critic of record at The New York Times.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 124 more reviews...
 Audio CD review: overly dramatic narrative grates on the nerves August 24, 2008
I was very disappointed in this audio CD book. First of all, something about this book seems very self-indulgent. For example, CD1 goes on endlessly about how the author doesn't really want this top job, but of course, she interviews and ends up with it. It seems very disingenous. Second, stories from a job of eating out at mostly very fancy restaurants seems pretty irrelevant in 2008, when most people are struggling to pay their monthly bills and save for retirement. Listening for 20 minutes to someone describe perfect buckwheat noodles is rather tiresome. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the publisher has chosen a reader who is very dramatic and overly inflects each and every voice. She mimics a 4 year old child, a portly Yankee editor, old Jewish men, the author, a haughty, constipated sounding friend (Claudia),Italian waiters, etc. I guess some listeners might enjoy this, but it personally drove me bonkers. A matter of personal preference, I guess. Be careful you can handle this type of a narration before you opt for the audiobook.
Entertaining and delicious August 19, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
This is nonfiction that is fun, entertaining, educational and enlightening. It shows people judging a book by its cover. August 11, 2008
During the 1990s, Ruth Reichel was the restaurant critic for the New York Times. When she began the job, she realized that a majority of the restaurants she would be reviewing knew what she looked like and were on the lookout for her. Therefore, she created a number of disguises for herself using clothing, wigs, and makeup. I highly recommend this book for an enlightening look at how Ruth's costumes changed the way people treated her as well as the effect on Ruth herself.
I found it intriguing how Ruth took on other personalities almost without trying to. When she dressed as her mother she found herself ordering the foods her mother liked, and criticizing and returning foods to the kitchen as her mother would. My favorite character was Brenda. She wore a long and oddly scruffy carrot red wig that made her look rumpled and sleepy as if she had just climbed out of bed. She wore bright colored clothing, large colorful eyeglasses, and lipstick painted on bigger than her own lips. The way people treated her was different and wonderful. They smiled at her and talked to her. They wanted to spend time with her. They wished her well. Ruth states "Brenda was my best self, the person I've always wanted to be. She was generous and funny, optimistic and smart. She was kind. I hoped that finding the Brenda inside me would not always require a wig." See the end of this review for Ruth's comments during an interview about wearing disguises.
I also loved Ruth's artistic and sensual descriptions of food. Personally, I am not into food and I cook as little as possible. So I was surprised that I was entertained with her eating experiences and her knowledge of food. Some examples follow.
P 86 regarding oysters. She said "You can't eat these. They've been out of the water too long. See how dry it is? An oyster should have abundant liquid in the shell. See how dull it is? When an oyster first comes out of the water, it is shiny, luminescent. It looks like this moonstone. But the longer an oyster is out of the water, the duller it becomes. This, as you can see, has no shine at all."
P 60 regarding a japanese noodle restaurant: "It takes a magician to make soba. They are made of buckwheat, which has no gluten. That means that getting them to hold together is an act of will."
More than once during this book I thought about truth being stranger than fiction. For example, Mr. Shapiro purchased a dinner with the author through a charity fundraising auction. He bragged to her that he always insisted on being the last person out of the restaurant. Her dinner with him lasted six hours. He was a jerk in other ways as well. My first reaction was disbelief that someone like him even existed. Another item that surprised me was about a man who would not give any money to his wife but allowed her to purchase as much clothing as she liked. Therefore, she frequently purchased two of each article of clothing and would give the second item to a consignment resale shop.
There is an interview with the author at the end of the audiobook, which does not appear in my paper version of the book. In that interview, the author discusses several topics, one of which follows. I've done some editing for length and clarity.
"When I first started wearing disguises, I thought it was about being anonymous and that it was all about the job, but as time went on I began to see that it's very hard to pretend to be someone and not be that person. People react to what you look like and you yourself begin reacting to how people react to you. I found being in disguise was a way of connecting with myself in a way that I hadn't anticipated. It was also a way of seeing how important (pause). You know, we always say don't judge a book by its cover and it's only the surface, but the truth is that it is more than surface deep. I started thinking how important clothes are and the way that when you're a little girl you make these choices about what you're going to look like and how important it is every time you cut your hair. You're making these decisions and thinking about what it is that people are going to think of you. The surface that we present to the world is very conscious, even when we think its not. We're always thinking about who we are in the world. Our clothing choices and our hair choices and our makeup choices are all saying to the world this is how I want you to see me, and the world really does see you as the way that you present yourself."
Setting: 1990s New York area. Copyright: 2005. Genre: nonfiction, biography, food.
 Fun for Foodies and Everyone Else August 4, 2008
I am not a foodie. However, Reichl's writing is so vivid I found myself thinking about the dishes she describes. Her style is easy to follow without dumbing the language down. The novel is one part funny anecdotes, one part food, and one part introspection. A great read!
If you love restaurants - you'll love this book August 4, 2008
Reichl is one of my favorite authors and I think I've read everyone of her books. Perhaps that is why I especially enjoyed this book. It was so much fun! I feel like I know Ruth from reading all of her auto-biographies. This book definitely gives you a different view of the competitive world of restaurants. I think I've enjoyed fine dining even more since reading her latest book. When's the next book??!
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