Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl
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- ISBN 10 0143036610
- ISBN 13 9780143036616
- Linked ISBNs
- 9781594200311 Hardcover (United States) 4/5/2005
- 9781741156065 eBook (Australia) 12/1/2005
- 9781741146448 Paperback (Australia) 5/1/2005
- 9780099489979 Paperback (United Kingdom) 3/1/2007
- 9781101163344 eBook (United States) 3/28/2006
- Published Mar 27 2006
- Format Paperback
- Language English
- Countries United States
- Publisher Penguin
Publishers Text
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.
Other cookbooks by this author
- The Best American Food Writing 2018
- Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
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- Comfort Me with Apples: Love, Adventure and a Passion for Cooking
- Comfort Me with Apples: Love, Adventure and a Passion for Cooking
- Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
- Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
- Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
- Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
- Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures At The Table
- Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table
- Comfort Me With Apples: Love, Adventure and a Passion for Cooking
- Comfort Me with Apples and Tender at the Bone: Two Culinary Treasures
- Comfort Me with Apples and Tender at the Bone: Two Culinary Treasures
- Delicious!: A Novel
- Delicious!: A Novel
- Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing From Gourmet
- Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing From Gourmet
- For You Mom, Finally
- Garlic & Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Restaurant Critic in Disguise
- Garlic and Sapphires: The secret life of a food critic
- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
- The Gourmet Cookbook: More Than 1000 Recipes
- The Gourmet Cookbook: More Than 1000 Recipes
- The Gourmet Cookbook With DVD: More Than 1000 Recipes
- Gourmet Today: More than 1,000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen
- Gourmet Today: More Than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen
- History in a Glass: Sixty Years of Wine Writing from Gourmet
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- Mmmmmmm: a feastiary
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- My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life
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- Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way
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