Garlic and Sapphires

I use to think being a food critic was the best job in the world.  You get to eat at many different food establishments including ones you would never go to unless you were a) writing about them and b) not paying for the meal. But there is a downside to this as well. 

Food has never been my friend.  I have always had a love hate relationship with it.  Love because some foods just taste so good and hate because all those calories  seem to go and stay directly on every part of my body. So a job of being around food was a little scary to me.

Reading Ruth Reichl's book has opened my eyes to what it really means to be a food critic.  She writes about her time as the New York Times food critic.  In New York as in many other big cities what a food critic says is extremely important.  In fact it can make or break an establishment.  One of the challenges Ruth faced was anonymity . If the restaurant knows who you are the service and food is quite different than if you were say for example, me. It was interesting reading about her efforts to disguise herself especially when she spoke about transforming into her mother.  It made her look at her a little differently although the reader gets a hint that the relationship was a bit rocky.

I am sure all of you have walked into a restaurant and felt like you were being treated differently than other people.  One incident that stays firmly planted in my mind was when I was in high school.  My friends and I had taken the train into the city to wonder around. After hanging out for the day we decided to eat an early dinner before catching the train home .  My parents had taken me to this restaurant, Le Rivage when we were seeing a Broadway show and I had thought the food was good and for a French restaurant reasonable,  so we went there.  For reasons we could not immediately understand they were not happy to see us.  As they handed us a menu the waitress reminded us that there was an expected gratuity at the end of the meal to be added on to the tab.  This really pissed us off and we should have left right there but we decided to stay.  I can say this, the food and service was very different than it had been with my parents.  Had I been a food critic this would have been reflected in my write up of the restaurant.

Reichl has an amazing way of describing her experiences and she also includes her reviews.  Her writing is humorous making the book fun to read.  She also includes recipes including one for New York style cheese cake. Because of this, I have added this to my foodie quest series.

If you haven't read it already definitely put it on your list.