Ruth Reichl ungarnished

I've been waiting years for Ruth Reichl's latest memoir. You, fortunately, don't have to wait that long. "Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise" (Penguin Press, $24.95) makes its bookstore debut tomorrow.

Like most Reichl fans, I've already devoured "Tender at the Bone," the hilarious tale of her New York childhood and subsequent years at the table. I've read its follow-up, "Comfort Me with Apples," where she morphs from brown-rice-eating Berkeley hippie to foie-gras-fancying Los Angeles Times restaurant critic. But those were merely an appetizer and intermezzo compared with her latest effort — the meaty chronicle of a six-year tenure as the New York Times restaurant critic.

As America's most widely read arbiter of dining out, Reichl was alternately embraced and excoriated for her willingness to award three stars to a Japanese noodle joint while literarily slapping restaurant royalty upside their haute heads. Her reviews read like dishy stories told to a friend, by a friend. And when she gave up her post in 1999 to kick up some dust as the new editor of Gourmet magazine, many saw her departure as a grievous loss.

Count me among them, and know that in the time it took to read "Garlic and Sapphires" I had my "old friend" Ruth back again. With my coveted advance copy in hand, I stayed up till the wee hours, greedily reading the back stories that went along with some of Reichl's most controversial reviews — reprinted for posterity. And I shook my head in disbelief over her descriptions of ornate disguises acquired in an attempt to guard her anonymity: sexy blond wigs and second-hand schmattes among them.

I howled over Reichl's frank appraisals of conniving colleagues, detestable dining companions and the harridan-as-hostess who got her comeuppance in a classic Reichl review. That dining-room dominatrix would read it and weep in a scathing appraisal of the least romantic "romantic" restaurant in New York, and eventually become the prototype for Emily Stone — one of Reichl's many eerily convincing character disguises.

Emily would join a lengthy cast of characters including Brenda (an outgoing redhead and everybody's friend), Betty Jones (an homage to frumpy old ladies everywhere) and Miriam (Reichl's reincarnation of her late mother, who was fond of making scenes regardless of the venue). Each gets her own chapter in the book, which is sprinkled with the author's favorite recipes: her subtle answer to the oft-posed question, "Do restaurant critics cook?"

Reichl acknowledges that while writing this memoir she's taken certain liberties. She occasionally changed names and distinguishing characteristics to avoid causing undue embarrassment and combined events that took place over a space of time into a single afternoon or evening. Though she took notes on every morsel eaten on the company expense account, she admits to relying on memory for events and conversations that took place too long ago to be recounted without error and, I suspect, without embellishment.

In the name of great storytelling, please forgive her. While some of those stories may seem preposterous, take it from this restaurant critic: I've been there, they've done that.

In the chapter "The King of Spain," Reichl takes us behind the scenes of one of her earliest and most notorious reviews: Le Cirque. It's a two-part tale of two restaurants: one where as a "nobody" you're given the worst table and served an array of unseasonably brown food, and when recognized as Ruth Reichl, you're greeted by owner Sirio Maccioni, told "The King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but your table is ready," and treated to course after course of culinary luxuries.

This being low-key Seattle, I've never been given precedence over the King of Spain (though he did eat in town last November), but I have dined at Le Cirque and saw, first-hand, Maccioni doing the equivalent of his King-of-Spain routine.

Years ago, as editor of the Seattle Zagat restaurant survey, I was in Manhattan to meet my editor and publisher. Ten minutes before our scheduled meeting, Tim Zagat called to ask if I cared to lunch at Le Cirque. (Duh.) I watched, in awe, as one of his underlings phoned the restaurant and secured a last-minute reservation.

A swift taxi ride later, this little nobody was met at the door by Maccioni and led center-stage to the best table in a very full house. Had I not been accompanied by the mighty (and decidedly schlumpy) Tim Zagat and his managing editor (who was wearing — I kid you not — the ugliest pair of snow-proof boots imaginable), I'm certain the meal that followed wouldn't have been as stupendous.

And there are so many other ways in which I can relate to Reichl's reminiscences. I'm right there when she describes waking in the early hours before a negative review runs, sitting straight up in bed, heart racing as she worries "Sea bass? Did I say it was sea bass?" I've asked myself the same question she considers in "Why I Disapprove of What I Do" — an angel/devil treatise contending that, in a world where people everywhere go hungry, "It's indecent to glamorize a $100 meal. Or is it?" And I, too, know full well the look on a young child's face when his mom has to go out to dinner — yet again — without him.

In "Garlic and Sapphires," Reichl will take you armchair traveling through the eyes of a restaurant critic. Reading her delightful degustation of four-star meals and no-star miseries, you'll find that her enthusiasm for the "best job in the world" does eventually wane. Faced with food fatigue and family issues, the Times' corporate culture and the loss of a beloved colleague, Reichl finds herself at odds.

Then along comes her chance to throw away her wigs and take on a whole new persona: Ruth Reichl, ungarnished. Passionate, opinionated and ambitious, she's given the opportunity to use her polished palate at Gourmet. There, as head of one of the nation's leading food glossies, she'll explore her love for food, proselytizing rather than criticizing. Can't wait to read her memoirist's take on that.

Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or taste@seattletimes.com