Ruth Reichl on Writing You Can Taste (and it’s our 400th episode!)

It’s our 400th episode and we’re celebrating with celebrated food critic and author Ruth Reichl! Ruth wrote her first food memoir before food memoir was a thing, and she takes us back there to when bookstores didn’t know what to do with her work. Ruth is a pioneer of the food movement in America, and is known for her mission to demystify the world of fine cuisine. This is a generous interview, full of history and story—as well as some encouraging tips about the art of sensory writing. For Ruth, it’s all about creativity.Ruth Reichl wrote her first cookbook in 1972. She spent the seventies as restaurant critic for New West Magazine and the eighties as restaurant critic and food editor of the Los Angeles Times. From 1993 to 1999 she was the restaurant critic for The New York Times before moving to Gourmet Magazine as Editor in Chief. A defining voice in American food writing and journalism over the past several decades, she’s written five memoirs, two novels and two cookbooks, edited a dozen books and hosted two television series. Her movie Food and Country is available on streaming and she produces a weekly newsletter, La Briffe, on Substack. The recipient of 7 James Beard Awards, including Lifetime Achievement, she is currently working on a sequel to The Paris Novel.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.