Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
Ruth Reichl, 2005
Ruth Reichl writes about her years as a restaurant critic for the New York Times, including her move from Los Angeles to New York and her attempts to disguise herself in order to fool the restaurants. Book also includes a few of her published reviews as well as some recipes.
I'm probably not the target audience for this book - I am not a good cook and I don't go out to fancy restaurants (I would if I could, sure, but I can't really afford them). I think this book is written more for the type of person who loves food and loves cooking. The kind of person who can take a bite of food at a restaurant and know if the cook spiced the dish with cumin or cardamom. (I have no idea what cardamom tastes like.) I can follow a recipe and I enjoy eating good food, but I am not a "foodie" in any sense of the word. I think that kind of person would get more out of this book than I did.
That being said, I am a memoir person - I like reading about other people's lives, especially people who are very different from me. The reason I enjoyed Reichl's book was because it was as much about pretending to be someone else as it was about food. I liked hearing the stories about her disguising herself in order to fool the restaurants and what her experiences as these new people were. She's also a pretty good storyteller, so even though nothing super-exciting happens, it's never really boring. I also like the concept of including recipes throughout the book. It didn't work tremendously well in the audiobook version, for obvious reasons, but some of the recipes did sound very delicious, and some of them even seemed manageable for my meager kitchen skills. A pretty decent read overall, and I would probably pick up one of Reichl's other books in the future.
I'm probably not the target audience for this book - I am not a good cook and I don't go out to fancy restaurants (I would if I could, sure, but I can't really afford them). I think this book is written more for the type of person who loves food and loves cooking. The kind of person who can take a bite of food at a restaurant and know if the cook spiced the dish with cumin or cardamom. (I have no idea what cardamom tastes like.) I can follow a recipe and I enjoy eating good food, but I am not a "foodie" in any sense of the word. I think that kind of person would get more out of this book than I did.
That being said, I am a memoir person - I like reading about other people's lives, especially people who are very different from me. The reason I enjoyed Reichl's book was because it was as much about pretending to be someone else as it was about food. I liked hearing the stories about her disguising herself in order to fool the restaurants and what her experiences as these new people were. She's also a pretty good storyteller, so even though nothing super-exciting happens, it's never really boring. I also like the concept of including recipes throughout the book. It didn't work tremendously well in the audiobook version, for obvious reasons, but some of the recipes did sound very delicious, and some of them even seemed manageable for my meager kitchen skills. A pretty decent read overall, and I would probably pick up one of Reichl's other books in the future.
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