Eating Incognito in New York City

I don’t put on wigs when I read a book or review a movie.

But during her tenure as food critic for the New York Times, Ruth Reichl did everything she could to keep waiters and maître d’s from recognizing her and spoiling the integrity of the meal. After all, what kind of food critic would allow her judgment to be swayed by special treatment?

At the top of her bag of tricks was a bevy of invented personas—complete with wigs, elaborate costumes, and distinct personalities—that she would assume to (hopefully) ensure anonymity.

Occasionally, she lost herself in these personalities, even once going on a dinner date as a voluptuous blonde (“Chloe”), then telling her husband about it afterwards over a dish of homemade spaghetti carbonara.

Explorations of these personas fill up much of Reichl’s memoirs, “Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise,” making them more like a literary pupu platter than a gourmet multi-course meal.

Her talents as a journalist don’t translate smoothly to the demands of extended narrative form, but she’s still quite entertaining.

Since Reichl spent the better part of six years writing hundreds of reviews of eclectic restaurants, I suppose she can’t be faulted for her fragmented style. Thankfully, she uses enough flowery language to keep the reader savoring her literary fare.

But by the end, she left me hungering for more introspection, something she briefly attempts in the last few chapters. Like extra attention from a waiter at a mediocre restaurant, it is too little, too late.

The irony of criticizing a book for its journalistic style in a newspaper column does not escape me. I only wish Reichl had studied how other journalists have successfully made the leap from 500 words to 50,000. Frank Rich (“Ghost Light”) and Thomas L. Friedman (“From Beirut to Jerusalem”), who are current columnists for the Times, immediately come to mind.

So is there a real reason to shell out $12 for this book?

Totally! “Garlic and Sapphires” is perfect mindless summer reading.

What Harvard student wants to probe the methods of introspection in a novel about eating? Reichl writes about food with practiced precision, identifying unique flavors with an effective economy well-studied among journalists.

At the SoHo soba house Honmura An, raw shrimp “melted beneath the teeth with the lush generosity of milk chocolate.” She describes eating Sayori, an extremely rare sashimi, at Kurumazushi: “It was smooth and slick against my tongue, with a clear, transparent flavor and the taut crispness of a tart green apple.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t all soba and sushi during Reichl’s tenure at The Times.

Reichl is known for stirring controversy by giving small, nontraditional establishments the same attention as NYC big names. The two aforementioned Japanese holes-in-the-wall—which are still in business—received three stars (astronomical praise from The Times).

Yet Reichl shies away from delving into the controversy she created, offering only a fleeting glimpse into the hidden internal politics of The Times. Considering the glut of memoirs in today’s books market, further disclosure of her experiences could have made “Garlic and Sapphires” a more unique effort.

She also might have reprinted more of her delightful reviews that surface about once a chapter. Unlike her musings on the theater of eating in disguise, they add critical depth to her otherwise perfunctory examination of a foodie’s experiential lifestyle.

In the end, Reichl’s memoirs are hole-in-wall fiction—the grungiest places can also be the tastiest.

—Reviewer Kyle L.K. McAuley can be reached at kmcauley@fas.harvard.edu.