Delightful read! It’s obvious she loves writing almost as much as she loves food. We went, hand in hand, with her on her adventure and loved every minute of it. ( )

Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl, makes you stop and wonder if the "best" restaurants truly have earned their titles by treating all of their customers as four stars restaurant should, or whether, instead, the four star treatment is reserved for "special" patrons. A delight to read and including the recipes will be entertaining to try in my own kitchen. ( )

This book is a witty, funny and informative romp behind the scenes at the NY Times - well sort of. The author is a former food critic at the NY Times and the books starts off with her journey to NYC to search for an apartment and the eye-opening conversation she has with a seat mate. She quickly realizes that being the food critic at the NY Times may be more complicated and fraught with drama than she realized.

In order to ensure she is able to provide unbiased reviews of restaurants, Reichl creates false personas that allow her to eat at some of NY finest establishments undetected; without the cachet of the NY Times behind her. The result is eye-opening and shows that in some NYC restaurants at the time, who were are directly impacted your dining experience.

I was rooting for her when she gave negative reviews to such 4 star establishments as Le Cirque because of their less than stellar service and I was thrilled when she included such below the radar establishments at Korean restaurants in Little Korea. As one fan wrote, Reichl was a reviewer for the rest of us. She pulled back the curtain and revealed the elitism and favoritism at some of NY's "finest" restaurants. I've known for years that Tavern on the Green's food is just not worth the price. It was nice to have the confirmed by Reichl's experience.

We follow Reichl through her various personas laughing and cringing at some of them. She also shares some of the behind the scenes challenges that arose such as the rivalry and enmity of her predecessor and his fans and the illness of a co-worker.

What I found helpful too was that how you are treated was often directly impacted by how you acted. If you walked in expecting and demanding great treatment, you got it. If you walked in timidly as though you didn't belong, that is often how the staff treated you. This book is a short, quick read but I enjoyed it and found myself wanting to read more of Reichl's works. ( )

I couldn't put this down once I picked it up. It gave me a whole new appreciation of food and a new way of approaching food and restaurants critically. I'm not a foodie, more of an amateur but this book made fine dining and not so fine dining experiences so real that I could really imagine the taste of things. Now I want to go back and finish Tender to the Bone which I started a long time ago and never finished. ( )

extremely entertaining and surprisingly moving in places.