Famed food critic dishes the dirt in saucy new book
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I did not ask Ruth Reichl to send me her old disguises, which famously include a multitude of wigs and an undergarment that made the former New York Times restaurant critic appear obviously pregnant. I didn't ask her to divulge trade secrets, nor did I beg Gourmet magazine's new editor-in-chief to send me on an all-expense-paid eating tour of Spain and Italy.
I didn't even ask - though I wanted to - how she manages to stay slim after 25 years spent dining for dollars.
Reichl, the controversial critic who made chefs quake in their clogs, turned the New York restaurant world on its head with a three-star rating for a noodle shop and told the unmitigated truth about Le Cirque, is a busy woman on a fast-paced book tour. Last week, as she sped from an interview at KQED in San Francisco to speak at a luncheon, I posed, via cell phone, the question I'd really been dying to ask: "Did Colman Andrews know you were going to dish the dirt about your affair?"
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Andrews is co-founder and editor of Saveur - chief among Gourmet's many rival publications. And yes, he did know his old flame planned to divulge the particulars of their lusty liaison, setting the tell-all tone of a book that follows her rise to prominence as the L.A. Times restaurant critic.
"I asked him if he wanted me to change his name," said Reichl, who left L.A. to take the New York Times job in 1993 and still considers Andrews a good friend. "But he told me to go ahead and use it."
What sells better than food or sex? Food and sex. Which is why "Comfort Me With Apples" (Random House, $24.95) - peppered with entertaining tales of California's chef-celebs and spiced with passages straight out of a Fabio-cover-worthy bodice-ripper - is certain to be another bestseller.
Written on the heels of her childhood memoir, "Tender at the Bone," the second installment of Reichl's life story tells the tale of a brown-rice-eating Berkeley hippie turned foie-gras-fancying critic of note. It also explores the emotions of a woman whose longing for a child results in the end of one marriage, the beginning of another and a heartbreaking adoption gone awry.
A happy ending is foreshadowed in the dedication: "This one's for Nick" - the son who arrived just in time to make the author's rich life that much richer - but the book stops short of Reichl's move to The New York Times. We'll have to wait a long while for that sequel, she said. Gourmet is keeping her much too busy.
Reichl laughed - loudly - when I told her my reaction to her relationship with Andrews. It was the same one she got from many of her friends. "They called and said, 'You did what? With Colman?'"
The affair took place during the denouement of her 12-year marriage to sculptor Douglas Hollis, creator of the Sound Garden in Seattle's Magnuson Park. "I have a hard time with the Sound Garden," Reichl reveals, though she has fond memories of early days spent locally at the Pilchuck School, when Hollis was building housing there and she was the cook. While "Tender at the Bone" described a childhood with a manic-depressive mother - the "Queen of Mold" who was "taste-blind and unafraid of rot," "Comfort Me With Apples" explicitly reveals, among other saucy subjects, an early sexual encounter with her second husband, Michael Singer - later dubbed the "Reluctant Gourmet."
For those who might wonder whether such blatant honesty is really the best policy, Reichl said, "Either you tell the whole truth, or you don't have a real book. There's no point in being a writer if you're not going to cut your veins open and let them bleed. As a person, you don't want to do it, but as a writer, you know you have to."
"Tender at the Bone" sold a couple-hundred-thousand copies, said Reichl, inspiring mostly rave reviews. "Comfort Me With Apples" is presently in the midst of critical assessment. What's it like to have the tables turned?
"So far, the reviews have been breathtaking; they've been stunning," she said. "I was unprepared for the way this book touched people. When I read the (recent) review in The New York Times, I almost started crying. The guy said I'd been his imaginary friend. Me! His imaginary friend!"
Anonymity is no longer a reality for Reichl, whose book tour has resulted in a media frenzy, complete with televised interviews, photo shoots and much nationwide exposure.
"I still sort of think I'm invisible, and I like being invisible," she said, though she may soon have to unearth the infamous wigs and faux tummy to maintain what little invisibility remains as her celebrity star continues to rise. "I get on the subway at night after work, it's 7 p.m., my hair's a mess, I've got an armful of stuff and I'm crushed together with everyone else," she said. "That's when someone will look at me and say, 'You're Ruth Reichl!' - and I want to sink into the ground!"
Nancy Leson can be reached at 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com.