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Reichl writes, "Every restaurant is a theater...even the modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while."
Penguin
April 2005
352 pages
ISBN: 1594200319
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
This delicious new volume of Ruth Reichl's acclaimed
memoirs recounts her "adventures in deception," as she goes
undercover in the world's finest restaurants. Reichl knows
that "to be a good restaurant critic, you have to be
anonymous," but when she signs up to be the most important
restaurant critic in the country, at The New York Times,
her picture is posted in every four-star, low-star, and no-
star kitchen in town. Managers offer cash bonuses for
advance notice of her visits. They roll out the red carpet
whether she likes it or not. What's a critic in search of
the truth to do? Reichl dons a frumpy blond wig and an off-season beige
Armani suit. Then on the advice of a friend, an acting
coach with a Pygmalion complex, she begins assembling her
new character's backstory. She takes to the assignment with
astonishing ardor-and thus Molly Hollis, the retired high
school teacher from Birmingham, Michigan, nouveau riche
from her husband's real estate speculation, is born. And
duly ignored, mishandled, and condescended to by the high-
power staff at Le Cirque. The result: Reichl's famous
double review, first as she ate there as Molly and then as
she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth,
The New York Times food critic. When restaurateurs learn to watch for Molly, Reichl buys
another wig and becomes someone else, and then someone else
again, from a chic interior decorator to an eccentric
redhead on whom her husband-both disconcertingly and
reassuringly-develops a terrible crush. As she puts on her
disguises, she finds herself changed not just
superficially, but in character. She becomes Molly the
schoolmarm, Chloe the seductress, and Brenda the downtown
earth mother-and imagine the complexities when she dines
out as Miriam, her own mother. As Reichl metes out her
critical stars, she gives a remarkable account of how one's
outer appearance can influence one's inner character,
expectations, and appetites. Reichl writes, "Every restaurant is a theater...even the
modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone
else, at least for a little while." Dancing with the Stars
examines character, artifice, and excellence on the
sumptuously appointed stages of the restaurant world and
offers an unprecedented backstage tour of the theater where
Ruth Reichl played the role of a lifetime, as the critic of
record at The New York Times.
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