Tender at the bone Growing up at the table

Review by Choice Review

In a note, Reichl, The New York Times restaurant critic, says that it was a family tradition to tell a good story even if the facts needed adjusting. She admits to adjusting some facts, and she does tell a good story. Her book is a collection of vignettes that all involve food as well as her experiences. They vary from protecting guests from her mother's cooking, learning how to cook, enjoying others' food, to her own varied cooking experiences. The episodes together are glimpses of her life that include living in New York City, Ann Arbor, and Berkeley, and travels in Europe. The narrative ends at the time that she became a restaurant critic. Reichl is obviously interested in both people and food, and she has combined those interests into an entertaining book about some of the experiences that have shaped her life. Some of the recipes offered vary from the standard for deviled eggs to the unusual "corned beef ham." For anyone who enjoys a good story. General readers. N. Duran; Illinois State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

New York Times restaurant critic Reichl understands the importance and significance of storytelling. Her memoir covers her early life, combining dozens of anecdotes with an occasional recipe. Reichl's storytelling mastery makes characters stand out vividly. Most memorable is her affectionate, exasperated portrait of her mother. Afflicted with manic depression, her mother prepared huge, elaborate dinners with aging foods from questionable sources, and her guests and family suffered from more than one bout of acute food poisoning. Reichl and her brother became masters of the art of pushing food about a plate in order to appear to be eating without actually ingesting anything. This talent no doubt proved useful in Reichl's later career. Reichl attended the University of Michigan, and her introduction to restaurants started in Ann Arbor with a stint of waitressing. The unpretentiousness of Reichl's prose has marked her Times success and makes her memoir equally satisfying. --Mark Knoblauch

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Reichl discovered early on that since she wasn't "pretty or funny or sexy," she could attract friends with food instead. But that initiative isn't likely to secure her an audience for her chaotic, self-satisfied memoirs, although her restaurant reviews in the New York Times are popular. Reichl's knack for describing food gives one a new appreciation for the pleasures of the table, as when she writes here: "There were eggplants the color of amethysts and plates of sliced salami and bresaola that looked like stacks of rose petals left to dry." But when she is recalling her life, she seems unable to judge what's interesting. Raised in Manhattan and Connecticut by a docile father who was a book designer and a mother who suffered from manic depression, Reichl enjoyed such middle-class perks as a Christmas in Paris when she was 13 and high school in Canada to learn French. But her mother was a blight, whom Reichl disdains to the discomfort of the reader who wonders if she exaggerates. The author studied at the University of Michigan, earned a graduate degree in art history, married a sculptor named Doug, lived in a loft in Manhattan's Bowery and then with friends bought a 17-room "cottage" in Berkeley, Calif., which turned into a commune so self-consciously offbeat that their Thanksgiving feast one year was prepared from throwaways found in a supermarket dumpster. Seasoning her memoir with recipes, Reichl takes us only through the 1970s, which seems like an arbitrary cutoff, and one hopes the years that followed were more engaging than the era recreated here. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

From the New York Times food critic: growing up in love with food. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

YA-This gastronomic delight is best taken slowly so that readers can savor each word. Motivated by fear of her mother's bizarre cooking escapades ("She liked to brag about `Everything Stew,' a dish invented while she was concocting a casserole out of a two-week-old turkey carcass"), Reichl learned to cook early and her entertaining descriptions of kitchen disasters are sure to cause howls of laughter time and again. There were also some requisite difficulties, too, and readers will wince while reading of the author's weight battles and self-image problems while growing up; her college roommate's estrangement; and her mother's mental imbalances. Every job she took, from social work to commune cook, gave her one more piece of experience that eventually led to her current career, that of restaurant reviewer and writer extraordinaire. As an added bonus, this thoroughly enjoyable memoir also includes a handful of recipes that will make readers' mouths water.-Susan R. Farber, Ardsley Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The restaurant critic of the New York Times whips up a savory memoir of her apprentice years. Growing up in New York City and Connecticut during the 1950s, Reichl learned early ""that food could be dangerous."" Her manic-depressive mother favored weird mƿlanges crafted from culinary bargains of dubious freshness; throwing an engagement party for Reichl's half-brother, Mom served spoiled leftovers from Horn and Hardart that sent 26 people to the hospital. Reichl enjoyed safer food elsewhere: at her Aunt Birdie's, the apple dumplings of an African-American cook; at the home of a wealthy classmate from her Montreal boarding school, classic French cuisine. The descriptions of each sublime taste are mouthwateringly precise, and the recipes scattered throughout nicely reflect the author's personal odyssey. After a disorderly adolescence, she attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The education of her taste buds continued during trips to North Africa and Europe, a waitressing stint at a doomed French restaurant in Michigan, and impoverished early married life on New York's Lower East Side. In Berkeley, Calif., she worked at a collectively owned restaurant whose entire staff cooked, cleaned, and served such vintage '70s dishes as quiche and Indonesian fishball soup. Reichl describes these experiences with infectious humor, then achieves a deeper level of emotion and maturity when her story reaches the year 1977. That summer, she returned to New York and for the first time successfully rescued one of her mother's manic party efforts. In the fall, she became restaurant critic for a San Francisco magazine and found the voices of various people who had taught her about food echoing in her ears as she discovered the work her editor told her ""you were born to do."" The book closes with a moving scene in which Reichl eats a sumptuous lunch with two women as forceful and resilient as she has finally become. A perfectly balanced stew of memories: not too sweet, not too tart. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Most mornings I got out of bed and went to the refrigerator to see how my mother was feeling. You could tell instantly just by opening the door. One day in 1960 I found a whole suckling pig staring at me. I jumped back and slammed the door, hard. Then I opened it again. I'd never seen a whole animal in our refrigerator before; even the chickens came in parts. He was surrounded by tiny crab apples (" lady apples " my mother corrected me later), and a whole wreath of weird vegetables. This was not a bad sign: the more odd and interesting things there were in the refrigerator, the happier my mother was likely to be. Still, I was puzzled; the refrigerator in our small kitchen had been almost empty when I went to bed. "Where did you get all this stuff?" I asked. "The stores aren't open yet." "Oh," said Mom blithely, patting at her crisp gray hair, "I woke up early and decided to go for a walk. You'd be surprised at what goes on in Manhattan at four A.M. I've been down to the Fulton Fish Market. And I found the most interesting produce store on Bleecker Street." "It was open?" I asked. "Well," she admitted, "not really." She walked across the worn linoleum and set a basket of bread on the Formica table. "But I saw someone moving around so I knocked. I've been trying to get ideas for the party." "Party?" I asked warily. "What party?" "Your brother has decided to get married," she said casually, as if I should have somehow intuited this in my sleep. "And of course we're going to have a party to celebrate the engagement and meet Shelly's family!" My brother, I knew, would not welcome this news. He was thirteen years older than I and considered it a minor miracle to have reached the age of twenty-five. "I don't know how I survived her cooking," he said as he was telling me about the years when he and Mom were living alone, after she had divorced his father and was waiting to meet mine. "She's a menace to society." Bob went to live with his father in Pittsburgh right after I was born, but he always came home for holidays. When he was there he always helped me protect the guests, using tact to keep them from eating the more dangerous items. I took a more direct approach. "Don't eat that," I ordered my best friend Jeanie as her spoon dipped into one of Mom's more creative lunch dishes. My mother believed in celebrating every holiday: in honor of St. Patrick she was serving bananas with green sour cream. "I don't mind the color," said Jeanie, a trusting soul whose own mother wouldn't dream of offering you an all-orange Halloween extravaganza complete with milk dyed the color of orange juice. Ida served the sort of perfect lunches that I longed for: neat squares of cream cheese and jelly on white bread, bologna sandwiches, Chef Boyardee straight from the can. "It's not just food coloring," I said. "The sour cream was green to begin with; the carton's been in the refrigerator for months." Jeanie quickly put her spoon down and when Mom went into the other room to answer the phone we ducked into the bathroom and flushed our lunches down the toilet. "That was great, Mim," said Jeanie when Mom returned. "May we be excused?" is all I said. I wanted to get away from the table before anything else appeared. "Don't you want dessert?" Mom asked. "Sure," said Jeanie. "No!" I said. But Mom had already gone to get the cookies. She returned with some strange black lumps on a plate. Jeanie looked at them dubiously, then politely picked one up. "Oh, go ahead, eat it," I said, reaching for one myself. "They're just Girl Scout mint cookies. She left them on the radiator so Excerpted from Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table by Ruth Reichl All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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