dtangled

I try to read as much as possible – on the subway, before I go to bed, while I’m having dinner – I can usually get through a couple of books a week. My taste is eclectic so I don’t hand out recommendations that readily (hard to believe, I know) but occasionally I will come across something so delicious it would be a shame not to share it.

Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires, her memoirs of her tenure as the restaurant critic at the New York Times is one of those books. Donning disguises was not enough for her to escape detection in New York’s most notable eateries; with the help of an acting coach, makeup artist, wig vendor, Thompson Street second-hand shop, and her own wild imagination she actually transformed herself into different characters, visiting the same restaurants over and over again. Besides mouthwatering descriptions of food that made me hungry lying in bed at 2 AM, the story itself never slows as each metamorphosis reveals a different layer of the author’s psyche. Her original reviews are published at the end of each chapter; even though this book was published in 2006 I discovered a restaurant I can’t wait to try: Kuruma Zushi.

This book is particularly interesting to read in light of the upsetting shuttering of Gourmet magazine, of which Reichl was the editor after the Times, and about which she recently chatted with her old alma mater.