Book Review: "Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir" by Ruth Reichl
“Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir” by Ruth Reichl
Publisher Synopsis: When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?
This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.
Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be.
Rating (out of 5): 4.5
Review: I should start off by saying that I am not, at first glance, the target audience for this book. I’ve never read an issue of Gourmet in my life, it’s an understatement to say I’m not an avid cook, and, most embarrassingly, I had never even heard of Ruth Reichl prior to reading it. But, before you write off this review as totally useless, let me say—I truly enjoyed this book. Just because I don’t like to cook doesn’t mean I don’t like to read about food! (See: Anthony Bourdain’s three memoirs I devoured.) (Pun intended.) Plus, as a former journalism student, I always appreciate a behind-the-scenes look at a magazine.
It’s 1998 in New York City, and Ruth Reichl is the restaurant critic for The New York Times. I haven’t read any of Reichl’s other memoirs (yet), but she does an excellent job setting the stage, how she got to The Times and why food has always been so important to her. Suddenly, Conde Nast recruits her to be the editor-in-chief of Gourmet, and she’s thrown into a shiny new, unfamiliar world.
As someone who was single-handedly trying to keep Conde Nast afloat recently (I subscribe to Allure, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker online, and, formerly, Glamour [RIP]), I adored this look at the last golden age of magazine publishing. The private cars! The food styling budget! The wardrobe budget! I didn’t move to New York until 2010, when the recession had already hit publishing hard, and I wish I had had the opportunity to experience magazine publishing pre-Great Recession.
Anyway, it’s no spoiler to say that Reichl transformed the magazine. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be steadily Googling throughout your reading of the book, wanting to see for yourself the iconic covers and features that her team shot.
The Venn diagram overlap of people who I’d recommend this book to: foodies, journalism junkies and/or magazine enthusiasts, New Yorkers, wannabe-New Yorkers. It’s a quick, fun, delectable read.
Trigger Warnings: 9/11
TL;DR: A lovely, well-written food memoir set in the exciting late ‘90s-early ‘00s Conde Nast heyday. Reichl’s writing is so engaging, you’ll breeze through this and wish Gourmet was still around, if only for her editorial prowess.
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