From Library Journal
Comfort Me with Apples, the delightful follow-up to Reichl's first memoir, Tender at the Bone, explores the author's lifelong relationship with food. This passionate, humorous, intelligent listening experience details her affairs and the breakup of her first marriage, which while tender and enduring was more of a friendship. Unable to leave her husband, Doug, she embarked on a relationship with journalist Michael Singer, who became her second mate. Reichl chronicles her apprenticeship as a food critic, including her travels to France, China, and Thailand. Eventually, she graduated to a prestigious job with the Los Angeles Times, with writing that's funny, poignant, honest, and frank. Narrated by Lorelei King, this is highly recommended for all public libraries and culinary collections. Carol Stern, Glen Cove Lib., NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
In this second installment of her memoirs, the editor of Gourmet retraces her route from married life on a commune in late-seventies Berkeley to her first job as a food critic, dining at expensive restaurants in Los Angeles with her glamorous editor (a distance of more than mere miles). She also battles her famously loopy mother; loses her father; struggles to adopt one child, and gives birth to another. Along the way, she discovers dacquoise, balsamic vinegar, Alice Waters, goat cheese, and Wolfgang Puck. Reichl writes with gusto, and her story has all the ingredients of a modern fairy tale: hard work, weird food, and endless curiosity.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
The second volume of noted gourmet Reichl's memoirs finds her as an aspiring novelist who, to make ends meet, has just accepted a position as restaurant critic for a California magazine. Married to a successful artist and living in a Berkeley commune, Reichl embarks on her new career under the tutelage of food writer Colman Andrews, who whisks her off to Paris and schools her in arts both gustatory and amatory. Although the affair ends when Andrews marries another woman, Reichl profited from her lover's broad knowledge and his insider's view of the food world. Soon she is caught up in the emergence of California cuisine and joins that influential circle that encompasses Alice Waters, Jonathan Waxman, and Wolfgang Puck. Eventually offered the restaurant critic's seat at the Los Angeles Times, Reichl moves to Southern California and into a new marriage. Lest one believe that the restaurant critic's job offers no serious challenges, Reichl recounts an early incident in which her lack of journalistic expertise jeopardized her new position and nearly cost her her job. Determined to start a family, she consults fertility specialists and eventually decides on adoption. Her tragic tale, touchingly rendered, about her struggle to adopt a daughter ends with Reichl and her extraordinarily supportive husband bitterly disappointed; however, they are soon full of new hope when she discovers that she's pregnant. Those who reveled in Reichl's portrait of her mother in Tender at the Bone (1998) will find even more delightful characters in this new volume. Recipes scattered throughout the text mark off periods in the author's growth. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Reichl writes with gusto, and her story has all the ingredients of a modern fairy tale: hard work, weird food, and endless curiosity.”
—The New Yorker
“So many memoirs annoy by telling either too much or too little. This one tells just enough....The book reads not like life described but like life lived and then shaped....Each story affirms [Reichl’s] desire to get beyond the surface, even as she celebrates its unlikely depths.”
—The New York Times
“Magnificent, riotous...[Comfort Me with Apples] is an extended, lilting song about lovesickness and the restorative succor of good food....Two courses of Reichl’s literary cooking will leave still-ravenous readers hoping for a third serving soon. [Rating:] A.”
—Entertainment Weekly
From the Inside Flap
In this delightful sequel to her bestseller Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl returns with more tales of love, life, and marvelous meals. Comfort Me with Apples picks up Reichl's story in 1978, when she puts down her chef's toque and embarks on a career as a restaurant critic. Her pursuit of good food and good company leads her to New York and China, France and Los Angeles, and her stories of cooking and dining with world-famous chefs range from the madcap to the sublime. Throughout it all, Reichl makes each and every course a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike. She shares some of her favorite recipes, while also sharing the intimacies of her personal life in a style so honest and warm that readers will feel they are enjoying a conversation over a meal with a friend.
From the Back Cover
“Reichl writes with gusto, and her story has all the ingredients of a modern fairy tale: hard work, weird food, and endless curiosity.”
—The New Yorker
“So many memoirs annoy by telling either too much or too little. This one tells just enough....The book reads not like life described but like life lived and then shaped....Each story affirms [Reichl’s] desire to get beyond the surface, even as she celebrates its unlikely depths.”
—The New York Times
“Magnificent, riotous, erotic...[Comfort Me with Apples] is an extended, lilting song about lovesickness and the restorative succor of good food....Two courses of Reichl’s literary cooking will leave still-ravenous readers hoping for a third serving soon. [Rating:] A.”
—Entertainment Weekly
About the Author
Ruth Reichl is the editor in chief of Gourmet and the author of the bestselling Tender at the Bone, a James Beard Award finalist. She has been the restaurant critic at The New York Times and the food editor and restaurant critic as the Los Angeles Times. Reichl lives in New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE
The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.
— A.J. Liebling
Easy for him to say: He was independently wealthy. Personally, I found the primary requisite for writing about food to be a credit card.
And that was a problem. I pictured myself sweeping into fabulous restaurants to dine upon caviar and champagne. Maître d’s would cower before the great Restaurant Critic. Chefs would stand behind the kitchen door, trembling. “What is she saying?” they would whisper to my waiter. “Does she like it?” I would not betray, by word or gesture, my opinion of the meal. And when it was all over, I would throw down my card and cry “Charge it please!,” then gather my retinue and float regally out the door.
Unfortunately, the first time I tried this I hit a few snags.
In 1978, San Francisco’s fanciest French restaurant belonged to a chef who had cooked for the Kennedys. The valet stared at my beat-up Volvo and shook his head. He could not, he insisted, accept a car that used a screwdriver in place of a key. The maître d’hôtel was equally overjoyed by my arrival; he looked me up and down, took in my thrift-store clothing, and led me straight to the worst table, the one that shook each time a waiter came out the kitchen door. The sommelier appeared worried when I ordered the ’61 Lascombes. He had, he was sorry to inform me, sold the last bottle. He was certain that a nice little Beaujolais would make me very happy. And when the captain announced that the special of the evening was freshly made terrine de foie gras, he pointedly told me the price.
The biggest humiliation, however, was yet to come. “Your credit card, madam,” said the maître d’hôtel frostily, “has been rejected.” He stood over me looking more smug than sorrowful; clearly he had been expecting this all along.
“It couldn’t be!” I insisted. “I just got it yesterday.”
“It says, madam,” the maître d’hôtel went on, “that you are over your limit.” He leaned down and hissed menacingly. “Do you know what your limit is?”
Unfortunately, I did. After years of righteous poverty I was prepared to sacrifice my principles and leap back into middle-class life. The middle class, however, had its doubts about me. Although I was now a bona fide restaurant critic, the banks were not impressed. Where, they wanted to know, were my debts? How had I managed to live thirty years without owing anything to anyone? Were there no college loans, no car payments, no mortgages, no revolving lines of credit? How could I possibly be trusted with a credit card?
In desperation I had put on my very best dress and arranged for an appointment with the bank manager. After making me wait a suitable length of time, he graciously permitted me to show him the masthead of New West magazine. I was hoping that my association with New York magazine’s West Coast sibling would impress this man, that he would recognize it as Northern California’s most important regional publication. But the manager merely looked bored. As he unhurriedly put on his half-glasses, I wished that I had tamed my hair out of its usual wildness. I patted, vainly, at it and tried pulling the most excitable curls behind my ears. They popped willfully forward. He snorted.
He scanned the list of contributing editors. He noted my name. He grunted. “Meaningless,” he said at last. “What we are looking for is something to show that you will pay your bills. Can you show me a pay stub?”
“I’m freelance,” I stammered. “I don’t get a paycheck. They pay me by the article.”
He drew visibly back from me. He looked sorrowful. “Unreliable,” he sighed at last, staring at my ringless fingers. “It says here,” he said, peering skeptically at the papers in his hand, “that you are married? To a Mr. Douglas Hollis?” The tone of his voice implied that he wondered what someone who looked like me might be doing with someone who sounded like that.
“Yes,” I replied. “I am.”
“And what does Mr. Hollis do for a living?” he inquired. “His income does not seem to be represented here.” I considered giving him my feminist line, but one look at his sour face decided me against it.
“He’s an artist,” I said. “He does site sculpture. He actually hasn’t had much income in the past couple of years, but that’s about to change—”
“I understand,” he said firmly, and made a mark on the paper. Despite his name, Mr. Hollis was clearly no more trustworthy than myself.
After months of pleading, the bank was finally persuaded to part with a Visa card. If I proved conscientious and faithful in my payments, the manager suggested, I might, in due time, be permitted a bit more credit. We would have to see. In the meantime, he was prepared to go out on a $250 limb.
It was not enough. I was not surprised. I had known from the start that this job would be trouble. I had been writing short magazine articles for a couple of years, but nobody I knew took them seriously. They were considered, like my restaurant job, just a sideline to support my real work as a novelist. Fixing the money part turned out to be easy; I wrote the fancy French restaurant a check and asked my editor for an advance. The rest would be more complicated.
On the day I became a restaurant critic, my primary emotion was fear. As I drove home from the magazine, I practiced breaking the news to the people I loved best. I found the prospect so terrifying that I forgot to be frightened of the bridge and I reached the far side of the Bay before realizing that I had crossed the entire span without my usual panic. I turned off the freeway, and as my ancient car bumped through the Berkeley flatlands, past the small old cottages with their softly fading paint, I tried to find the perfect way to put it.
“I’ve just gotten the best job in the world!” As I heard myself say the words, I knew they wouldn’t do. They would be fine in San Francisco or New York, but this was the People’s Republic of Berkeley. This was the heart of the counterculture. Every single person I knew was going to disapprove.
I walked into the hallway of the peeling Victorian house I shared with my husband and five other people and waited for their reactions.
Nick, our household patriarch, was sitting in the shabby, crowded living room. He stroked the bushy beard that gave him the air of a prophet and said, “Let me get this straight.” He plunked himself into one of the tattered armchairs we had found at the flea market and began pushing the stuffing back into the arm. “You’re going to spend your life telling spoiled, rich people where to eat too much obscene food?”
“Something like that,” I murmured, too embarrassed to defend myself.
He shook his head in disappointment. A devotee of millet and Dr. Bronner’s balanced mineral bouillon, Nick had done his Berkeley best to turn our household into a model of politically correct consumption. We had, at various times, been ovolactovegetarians and vegans, and we were, at all times, vigilant about the excesses of agribusiness. For a long while we grew our own food, and we even, for a short while, depended upon dumpsters for our raw ingredients. Nick had valiantly tried to overlook my forays into the world of fancy food, but this was going too far. For the first time in the many years I had known him, he became speechless.
Jules, the most sympathetic member of our household, tried to be optimistic. He poured himself a glass of wine from the gallon jug on the table and said, “Free meals!” He turned to Nick and said, “Think how our food bills will go down.”
Nick shook his head. “Not mine,” he said. “You couldn’t pay me to set foot in one of those decadent, bourgeois institutions. Have you told Doug?”
“Not yet,” I admitted, going out to the garage, where my husband was working on the band saw. He had sawdust in his straight brown hair, and he smiled when he saw me, as if just the sight of me had improved his day. He turned off the saw, leaned against it, shook a Camel out of the pack that was always in his shirt pocket and lit it.
“The magazine’s asked me to be their restaurant critic,” I blurted out.
“Of course they have,” he said, putting his arms around me. Doug was my biggest fan and greatest supporter. I buried my head in his faded blue work shirt and inhaled his scent, a mixture of clean laundry, cut wood, and tobacco. “Why wouldn’t they? You’re a great cook and a great writer. But you don’t have to say yes.”
I stood back so I could see him. He has one of those hand- some, all-American faces that get better as they age, and in our ten years together his cheeks had slimmed down, become angular. His youthful rosiness had disappeared, leaving him looking chiseled, intelligent, and kind. Now he said earnestly, “Why don’t you stop working? I’m making enough money now. You could quit the restaurant, give up magazine work, and stay home and write.”
“That would be great,” I hedged. “But you don’t understand. I really want to do this.”
“Why?” he asked. “You’re wasting your talent.”
“I don’t have to do it forever,” I replied. “But I think it will be good experience.”
“You’ll be stuck here!” he said with such vehemence that I understood there was something more on his mind. “Look, I’m getting commissions all over the country, and I...
Ruth Reichl's first memoir, Tender at the Bone, about her education and adventures as a food critic, charmed a wide audience. Here she continues in the same vein, filling in details of her journey from a Berkeley commune of the early '70s through love affairs, memorable meals, extended travels, characters of the international food world, and cooks and restaurants that changed the way Americans think about food. Reichl shapes a narrative as well as she cooks. (Some recipes are included.) Lorelei King has an amazingly beautiful voice, but a nonstandard way with certain vowel sounds; hearing food pronounced "fewd" several thousand times will be a distraction for some. B.G. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
