WWRRD?
I’ve tried to write about food before, in what I thought was a ‘food-critic-y’ kind of way. But I always got too bogged down in what I thought I should be saying instead of writing what I actually thought - a fatal flaw, at least for me. When I was writing my last post and struggling to describe two amazing meals, I asked myself: WWRRD? AKA, What Would Ruth Reichl Do?
I first met Ruth when I read Garlic and Sapphires. I can’t remember now how I found the book; someone must have recommended it to me, because I got it from the library rather than buying it. Once I got into the book, I couldn’t stop reading. The way I still describe it to friends looking for recommendations is that Garlic and Sapphires is like reading fiction - and the best part is that it isn’t. Ruth Reichl has just been hired by the New York Times as their food critic, and she has brought her husband and son to New York with her from California. When she goes out to dinner, she dresses in disguises with the help of a friend, so as not to be spotted by the staff at restaurants who are awaiting her judgment. She becomes each character, even naming them, and seems to enjoy it immensely - as do her friends. She writes about these upscale places, but she also writes about eating sushi (significantly less popular in New York in the 90s) and a restaurant making its own soba noodles. She writes about her meals in a way that made you wish you were there. It is vivid and bright, and she always sets the scene. It’s never just about the food.
After I read Garlic and Sapphires, I looked for her other books, mostly more memoirs. I have a few at home now, from used bookstores and sales. I got the others from the library and devoured them. Though perhaps not as magical as Garlic and Sapphires, her writing always gets me with the genuine, clear quality and the colorful descriptions of the food and people in her life. I usually prefer memoirs where the writer isn’t always the easiest to root for; to me, that indicates an honesty that’s hard to come by. It’s not easy to write truthfully about one’s own flaws, to not make yourself the heroine of your own story. Though Ruth Reichl’s memoirs don’t fall into this category, I still enjoyed them immensely. She writes almost as a spectator, or a narrator, sometimes; like she is on the outside watching herself with her family and friends. She shares her memories fondly, and you feel cozy and warm while reading them.
Ruth Reichl started a newsletter in December (as newsletters appear to be the new blogs) and wrote to us once a day, EVERY DAY, for the whole month. Each day featured an old article, an old menu, and a product recommendation. I wanted to buy nearly everything she recommended. The articles and menus were a little hard to read sometimes, as they were scanned copies of her own archives (this made me wonder if her house is simply packed to the brim with old articles and menus she squirreled away over the years). But the content was fascinating. It was sometimes strange and sometimes wonderful to read her articles from the 70s and 80s; the prices seemed insanely low for fancy food (inflation!), there were still words and terms used to describe food that certainly wouldn’t be PC today, and almost everyone seemed to be white. And yet, I still found myself wishing I was there after reading her experiences. My favorites were the articles where she took a more personal angle. She shared one article in which she brought three menus to her father, a typographer, who was in assisted living at the time. She told him about her meals as he ate own lackluster dinner and imagined her dinners instead, and he guessed at the style and decor of the place from the font and style of each menu. It was an article hiding inside a story, and I was enthralled. In others, she talks about the chefs and restaurants like she is a part of the family - and perhaps she is, as it seems she always had the inside scoop by letting everyone forget she was, at the end of the day, a journalist.
So, WWRRD? She would write about what she felt and saw and tasted, everyone else be damned. It doesn’t matter what they think, only what she does - that’s how she gets the flavor of sincerity in her writing. And at the same time, even if she doesn’t like the food she’s writing about, she doesn’t seem to want to make anyone feel bad, either. Perhaps those qualities are what distinguish her from other critics in my mind. Some reviews (and reviewers) over the last ten years seem more intent on criticism than critique. I think of all the recent reviews of Eleven Madison Park as they’ve made a shift to vegan food. Alicia Kennedy wrote a newsletter about this very topic. Why isn’t vegan food also judged as food? Why is it held to a different standard (often a lesser standard) than other food? Ruth Reichl’s reviews always judge a place and its food on its own merits, or so it seemed to me. The only comparisons to be drawn were within a cuisine, rather than other restaurants or chefs. Critics don’t generally write this way anymore, and I think it’s a lost art. Food is subjective, and either you like it or you don’t. Isn’t that the only question we should be answering for a reader?
