Comfort Me with Apples

Starred review from April 1, 2001
In this follow-up to the excellent memoir Tender at the Bone, Reichl (editor-in-chief at Gourmet) displays a sure hand, an open heart and a highly developed palate. As one might expect of a celebrated food writer, Reichl maps her past with delicacies: her introduction to a Dacquoise by a lover on a trip to Paris; the Dry-Fried Shrimp she learned to make on a trip to China, every moment of which was shared with her adventurous father, ill back home, in letters; the Apricot Pie she made for her first husband as their bittersweet marriage slowly crumbled; the Big Chocolate Cake she made for the man who would become her second, on his birthday. Recipes are included, but the text is far from fluffy food writing. Never shying from difficult subjects, Reichl grapples masterfully with the difficulty of ending her first marriage to a man she still loved, but from whom she had grown distant. Perhaps the most beautifully written passages here are those describing Reichl and her second husband's adoption and then loss of a baby whose biological mother handed over her daughter, then recanted before the adoption was final. This is no rueful read, however. Reichl is funny when describing how the members of her Berkeley commune reacted to the news that she was going to become a restaurant reviewer ("You're going to spend your life telling spoiled, rich people where to eat too much obscene food?"), and funnier still when pointing out the pompousness of fellow food insiders. Like a good meal, this has a bit of everything, and all its parts work together to satisfy. (on sale Apr. 10) Forecast: Even more appetizing than Tender at the Bone, this volume is bound to visit bestseller lists.

December 20, 2000
How chef Reichl became a food writer and, eventually, the editor-in-chief of Gourmet.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2001
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)