Ruth Reichl Books In Order

Tender At the Bone

For better or worse, almost all of us grow up at the table. It is in this setting that Ruth Reichl’s brilliantly written memoir takes its form. For, at a very early age, Reichl discovered that ‘food could be a way of making sense of the world…
if you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were.’

Tender At the Bone is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by unforgettable people, the love of tales well told, and a passion for food. In other words, the stuff of the best literature. The journey begins with Reichl’s mother, the notorious food-poisoner known for-evermore as the Queen of Mold, and moves on to the fabled Mrs. Peavey, onetime Baltimore socialite millionaress, who, for a brief but poignant moment, was retained as the Reichls’ maid. Then we are introduced to Monsieur du Croix, the gourmand, who so understood and yet was awed by this prodigious child at his dinner table that when he introduced Ruth to the souffle, he could only exclaim, ‘What a pleasure to watch a child eat her first souffle!’ Then, fast-forward to the politically correct table set in Berkeley in the 1970s, and the food revolution that Ruth watched and participated in as organic became the norm. But this sampling doesn’t do this character-rich book justice. After all, this is just a taste.

Tender At the Bone is a remembrance of Ruth Reichl’s childhood into young adulthood, redolent with the atmosphere, good humor, and angst of a sensualist coming-of-age.

Comfort Me with Apples

In this delightful sequel to her bestseller ‘Tender at the Bone’, the beloved food writer Ruth Reichl returns with more tales full of love, life, humour and marvellous meals. Ruth Reichl’s pursuit of good food and good company leads her to New York and China, France and Los Angeles. She cooks and dines with world famous chefs and the three star aristocracy of French cuisine, and her accounts of these meetings range from the madcap to the sublime. Reichl lovingly recreates all her marvellous meals in such succulent detail that readers will yearn from truffles in Provence and shrimp in Beijing. Throughout it all, Reichl is unafraid, even eager, to poke holes in the pretensions of food critics, making each and every course a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike. She shares some of her first recipes so readers can make the Dry Fried Shrimp she first tasted in China, or the Dacquoise served at the end of a magical visit to a Paris bistro. Reichl also shares the intimacies of her personal life in a style so honest and warm that readers will feel they are enjoying a cosy dining table conversation with a friend. In ‘Comfort Me with Apples‘, Reichl again demonstrates her inimitable ability to combine food writing, humour and memoir into an art form.

Remembrance of Things Paris

A glorious, edible tour of Paris through six decades of writing from Gourmet magazine, edited and introduced by Ruth Reichl

For sixty years the best food writers have been sending dispatches from Paris to Gourmet. Collected here for the first time, their essays create a unique and timeless portrait of the world capital of love and food. When the book begins, just after the war, we are in a hungry city whose chefs struggle to find the eggs and cream they need to re create the cuisine from before the German occupation. We watch as Paris comes alive again with zinc topped tables crowded with people drinking caf au lait and reveling in crisp baguettes, and the triumphant rebirth of three star cuisine. In time, nouvelle cuisine is born and sweeps through a newly chic and modern city. It is all here: the old time bourgeois dinners, the tastemakers of the fashion world, the hero chefs, and, of course, Paris in all its snobbery and refinement, its inimitable pursuit of the art of fine living. Beautifully written, these dispatches from the past are intimate and immediate, allowing us to watch the month by month changes in the world’s most wonderful city. Remembrance of Things Paris is a book for anyone who wants to return to a Paris where a buttery madeleine is waiting around every corner.

Contributors include Louis Diat, Naomi Barry, Joseph Wechsberg, Judith and Evan Jones, Don Dresden, Lillian Langseth Christensen, Diane Johnson, Michael Lewis, and Jonathan Gold.

Garlic and Sapphires

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.

Not Becoming My Mother

Bestselling author Ruth Reichl examines her mother’s life, giving voice to the universal unarticulated truth that we are grateful not to be our mothers

In Not Becoming My Mother, bestselling author Ruth Reichl embarks on a clear eyed, openhearted investigation of her mother’s life, piecing together the journey of a woman she comes to realize she never really knew. Looking to her mother’s letters and diaries, Reichl confronts the painful transition her mother made from a hopeful young woman to an increasingly unhappy older one and realizes the tremendous sacrifices she made to make sure her daughter’s life would not be as disappointing as her own.

Growing up in Cleveland, Miriam Brudno dreamed of becoming a doctor, like her father. But when she announced this, her parents said, ‘You’re no beauty, and it’s too bad you’re such an intellectual. But if you become a doctor, no man will ever marry you.’ Instead, at twenty, Miriam opened a bookstore, a profession everyone agreed was suitably ladylike. She corresponded with authors all over the world, including philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, political figures such as Max Eastman, and novelists such as Christopher Marlowe. It was the happiest time of her life.

Nearly thirty when she finally married, she fulfilled expectations, settled down, left her bookstore behind, and started a family. But conformity came at a tremendous cost. With labor saving devices to aid in household chores, there was simply not enough to do to fill the days. Miriam and most of her friends were smart, educated women who were often bored, miserable, and silently rebellious.

On what would have been Miriam’s one hundredth birthday Reichl opens up her mother’s diaries for the first time and encounters a whole new woman. This is a person she had never known. In this intimate study Reichl comes to understand the lessons of rebellion, independence, and self acceptance that her mother though unable to guide herself succeeded in teaching her daughter.

Gourmet Today

In no other period of our country’s history has the food scene changed so rapidly. Exciting new ingredients are available everywhere, expanding our culinary horizons. Even casual meals have globe trotting flavors. We want memorable dishes, and we want them to be healthy for our families and our planet. And with our busy schedules, we want them on the table faster than ever.
A new culinary world calls for a new cookbook. Gourmet Today responds to our changing foodscape with more vegetarian recipes, more recipes for popular dishes from every corner of the world, more recipes for stunning meals ready in 30 minutes or less, more simple ways to prepare all the vegetables in the farmers market, advice on choosing sustainable fish, chicken, and beef, tips on throwing an easy cocktail party, more recipes for flavorful techniques like grilling, and more recipes for the new ingredients flooding our market.
Each of the over 1,000 recipes was selected by editor in chief Ruth Reichl, a best selling author in her own right, who wrote the introductions to each chapter. Every recipe has been tested and cross tested in the Gourmet test kitchen so every cook, whether a first timer or a veteran, gets impeccable results.
With menus for holidays and other seasonal occasions, an authoritative glossary of ingredients plus mail order sources, and hundreds of sidebars on ingredients and handy techniques from the test kitchen, Gourmet Today is the indispensable book for today s cook.

For You Mom, Finally

Bestselling author Ruth Reichl examines her mother’s life and gives voice to the unarticulated truths of a generation of exceptional women A former New York Times restaurant critic, editor in chief of Gourmet, and the author of three bestselling memoirs, Ruth Reichl is a beloved cultural figure in the food world and beyond. For You, Mom. Finally. is her openhearted investigation of the life of a woman she realizes she never really knew her mother. Through letters and diaries and a new afterword relating the wisdom she’s gained after sharing her story Reichl confronts the transition her mother made from a hopeful young woman to an increasingly unhappy older one and recognizes the huge sacrifices made to ensure that her daughter’s life would not be as disappointing as her own.