The Salon Interview | Ruth Reichl, page 2

The Salon Interview | Ruth Reichl, page 2

I want to go back to to my first question, about your Le Cirque review. Because I'm wondering whether you think an average person can have a good experience in New York's best restaurants.
One of the wonderful things that's happening in restaurants is that as Americans are developing their own style, we've gotten away from the French model, because people increasingly don't want to put up with that. You're finding women as waitresses in fine restaurants, which you don't find in the French model. In four-star restaurants in New York, the American-owned ones have women on the floor and the French-owned ones don't. And part of that whole new ethic has been this idea of getting away from the snobbery — that everybody deserves to be treated well. I think somebody like Danny Meyer, who runs the Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, and many others knock themselves out to be nice to everyone. For them it's a matter of pride, that everybody will come in and have a good experience.
You've also paid attention, in your reviews, to how women diners are treated in restaurants. Are things getting better?
Well, it's another one of those things that's changing. By its nature, this is a very sexist kind of theater. The sexism of it is very French, I think. I mean, in Italy you've got women chefs. In 1980, I did a big thing about women chefs and how difficult it was for them. I mean, these French guys wouldn't let them in the kitchen; they'd pour water on them; they'd do all these outrageous things. But in Italy there's a real tradition of women cooking and so forth. But again, what happened in France came here and got translated into something even more pretentious.
What about women's experience eating in restaurants?
Well, this is sort of a preamble to that. For years, women wouldn't get prices on menus. And there are still a couple of restaurants where, traditionally, the man gets the menu with prices and the woman doesn't. Although that's changing a little bit now. If you're a woman and you make it clear that you're the host, you'll get the prices and they won't. But generally waiters think women don't tip as well, so they don't want single women in their station. They'd rather have some man who drinks a lot and gets very generous at the end of the evening. They think women aren't going to do that. They also think that women don't know wine. It's just amazing to me how, even now, when I ask for the wine list, it goes to the man. I order the wine, it's shown to the man. My husband always says, "She ordered the wine." He makes the point of saying, "She ordered it, show it to her." But I would say that two-thirds of the time, it just goes to the man.
Women are, I think, partly responsible for all of this, because we let it happen. Very few women let men open doors anymore — that's sort of changed in the last 10 or 15 years. But women still acquiesce to letting the men take control in restaurants. My nephew, who's 30, still orders for his wife. [Mimics a deep voice] "And the lady will have..." [laughs] I say, John, let her order for herself for Christ's sake! There's this vestigial thing. But I see it changing in the next ten years.
One thing that has to happen is that women have to make a conscious effort to be generous in tipping. You know, a lot of it comes down to the bottom line, and many men give the standard 20 percent while women will double the tax. And if you're a waiter and you're making your living on the money, it makes a big difference. I also feel it's sort of a struggle on the part of women to be demanding, not let yourself get trampled. Don't accept the bad table. That's the other thing. Every restaurant has a few bad tables, and they'll try to give it to anybody who'll take it. If you say, "No, I don't want that table," they'll quickly say, "Okay. Here's this other table." But if you sheepishly go and take that bad table every time, it's your problem.
Do you still use a tape recorder to tape your comments about a restaurant?
I don't anymore. When I was in Los Angeles I took a tape recorder and on my way home, in the car, I'd tape everything. When I came to New York I found I couldn't do it in cabs. The cab driver has too much music on, and it's very hard to tape over. I couldn't transcribe it when I got home. So I started going into the restroom in the middle of dinner. And now I don't even do that. The minute I come home I sit down at my computer and I write down everything. It's a discipline.
That's got to be difficult, remembering all those courses.
I go a few times [to each restaurant] to get it right. I'll make notes to myself: Check the vegetables on X, or retaste the sauce. As a point of pride, I don't call restaurants and ask them what was in a certain dish. Most critics don't mind calling up and saying, "Tell me what was in this." But I have this feeling that if I do, they'll say to each other, "Ah, she doesn't know what she's eating."
What do you do when you genuinely can't identify a taste?
I'll order it again. And I'll take someone with me, and we'll discuss what it is. And if I'm not sure, I just won't say. You really don't want to be wrong. You don't have to say, "And this had a sauce with cardamom in it." You can just say, "a red wine sauce."
Have you made mistakes that haunt you?
Well, my biggest was such a silly mistake. It was about three months ago, and it blows me away that I read over this, and three editors read over it. I described vitello tonnato as tuna and veal sauce — and it's veal and tuna sauce. I'm sure I've made a lot of stupid mistakes, but I don't know about them. One of the amazing things about the New York Times is they don't tell you about the phone calls. They really shield you. Anything that comes directly to me I know, but stuff that goes to my editors, they don't come to me and say, "X chef called up and said you're an idiot."
Well, that leads to my next question, which is about the Times' star system. It seems like you came in to this job very determined to change things. Early on, for example, you gave three stars to Honmura An — a Japanese noodle restaurant — something that Bryan Miller, your predecessor, would not have done. And he complained about you in a private letter to the Times that was leaked to the New York Post.
I thought it was interesting that Mimi Sheraton, whom I've never met, jumped in the next day and said, "Wait a minute. Count me out of this. I don't agree with Bryan on this." I think the reason she did that was that he's the one who changed the star system. I mean, Mimi Sheraton would give three stars to little places in Chinatown. If you go back and look at it, my star system is pretty much like hers. Bryan was the one who redefined the star system to mean that only fancy French restaurants could get a lot of stars. But I think we're all pretty much agreed about what a four star restaurant is. None of us have any quarrels with that. I mean, as much as I would like to give four stars to a perfect hot-dog stand, I'm not going to do it. I think everybody knows what a four-star experience is supposed to be. But the two and three stars are different.
The problem with the star system, and it's not a fixable problem, is that essentially it comes from the French model. And when the Guide Michelin goes out and assigns stars to restaurants, they are dealing with restaurants that all follow the same rules — they're all striving for the same kind of decor and the same qualities in the cuisine. But when you try and shoehorn Thai restaurants, Korean restaurants, Japanese restaurants, American restaurants, and French and Italian restaurants into this shorthand system, it's difficult. They all have different conventions. It's very hard to compare a great chef in a Chinese restaurant with a great chef in a French restaurant where they're spending $100,000 a year on flowers. The system in New York comes with problems that are built in, and you just do the best you can.
Why does this issue touch such a chord with the old guard?
I think that when they say they're upset by the star system, what they're really saying is that they're upset by something else. On the face of it, what Bryan said was that by including price, I had ruined the star system. Well, that's not really what he means. Nobody who reviews restaurants doesn't think about price. There's no way you can have the same standards for a restaurant that's charging $125 for dinner as one that's charging $5 for dinner. It's ludicrous. What all of those people who are upset by what I've done to the star system are saying is that I've democratized it — that I care about other things in restaurants.
Someone recently called you the Times' first multicultural food critic.
I'm flattered by that, but I don't think it's true. I think people forget because Bryan was there for such a long time. Ray Sokolov, who did it for a few years, loves all kinds of ethnic foods and knows a lot about them. Mimi Sheraton certainly does — I mean she's doing lectures now on Jewish cooking in New York. Craig Claiborne did, too. I think that Bryan had such a long tenure that everybody just remembers what he was doing for restaurants.
I did feel very strongly about it when I came. I felt like I really had to make a statement that I cared a lot about food other than fancy French food. And I very deliberately chose to do Honmura An, which I do think is great. Even calling it a little noodle place seems disrespectful. It's an extraordinary restaurant with amazingly high standards, and it does something quite perfectly. It just happens to be from another culture. I've always believed that you have to review restaurants on their own pretensions, not yours.
How different is eating in New York, after working in Los Angeles?
When I went to Los Angeles in 1984, it had exploded, and it was wild — it was wonderful. When I left, it was really getting pretty sad. The city was going into recession. Great restaurants were closing, and what you were starting to see was that the passion for food there was fleeting. As soon as people didn't have a lot of money anymore, it was gone. Whereas New York seems to me to be a culture that truly cares about food. And it's very exciting to be in this. It's very different than San Francisco culture, which is probably where my heart is closest, because that's so much about the quality of the products, and integrity, and that's a very different thing. But I've been away from that for a long time.
How far away are most New York restaurants from Alice Waters' Berkeley aesthetic?
Well, there are restaurants here that are very much in that mold, but they really stand out. You walk in and you go, "Oh, a Berkeley restaurant." [laughs] First of all, you don't have the products available here like you do in Berkeley — you just have a different climate. You don't have thousands of people who've gone out to live on the land. I mean, it's really pretty amazing what happened out there. And it's just a much more casual idea of what a restaurant should be, on that coast. Restaurants here are used in different ways than they are in Berkeley or in San Francisco.
Who do you take with you to eat? Professional food people? Friends?
I mostly go with friends. I mean, you're going out for 10-12 meals a week.
That's how often you eat out?
I go out for lunch every day, five days a week. I figure I go out for 10 meals a week. It gets exhausting if you're not going with people with whom you are really comfortable. I get auctioned off for charity — it's hard to say no when they call up and say, "Can we auction off dinner with you?" But it's so wearing to go out with people who want you to be "on," and I increasingly try to go out with family. My husband has very little interest and goes out less and less.
Why is that?
He's not a big eater. He's tired of restaurants. It just doesn't interest him. I really try and go with people who are comfortable — really old friends in New York, family, colleagues from the office. And I don't want to go with people who discuss the food.
You don't?
No.
How interesting. You don't hash over the food while you're sitting there?
I don't want to hear anybody. I'm the one who's being paid. Most people know they're not supposed to tell me what they think. Other people's opinions are not useful, unless I ask. And when I'm asking, it's usually, "Would you pay for it? Where would you rather sit here, in this restaurant?"
Here's a question you must get asked 10 times each week. How do you manage to eat out so often and still be a thin person?
I think I have a very good metabolism. I haven't gained or lost weight for years. I think it's partly that I'm not obsessed with it. I eat what I want. I probably eat a lot more when I'm cooking for myself, because I'm making exactly what I want made to my taste. There's something about when you go out — we were five at dinner last night, so I was tasting 15 dishes — you don't really want more than a bite or two or each of those dishes. It's not like I'm sitting there gobbling up everything on the plate.
So you're not a person who has to leave a clean plate?
No. I mean, if I love the food, I do. But I'm working. If I'm really relaxed and with friends and not working, I clean my plate. But if I'm working, I'm thinking about the food, I'm getting enormous blocks of flavor sensations, and it's not about just, "Oh, have another drink and isn't this delicious."
Speaking of alcohol — how do you moderate your wine intake?
I don't drink in the daytime, ever. It makes me too sleepy. That's one of the things that's changed. I used to be able to go out to lunch and drink wine at lunch. I can't, I just can't. I try not to drink too much at night, but sometimes you're sitting there, and dinner's slow, the meal is slow coming out ... One of the things that's happening more and more in restaurants that's so annoying is they're rushing you through the wine. They just keep pouring and pouring and pouring, hoping to get you to order more wine. You try to cut them off. But if the restaurant's slow, before you know it you've had more than you wanted to drink.
Do you eat junk food? Do you ever say to yourself: Tonight I want a Quarter Pounder and a sack of Ring-Dings?
I'll eat junk food at home sometimes, but I'm not a big junk food eater. I don't like American fast food, and I don't like French fries very much. I have no taste for soda. And I don't have the "Oh, I'm dying for food sort of thing." I might say, "God, I haven't had sushi in a long time." Or, "I really want a bowl of wonton soup."
How about comfort foods?
I'm a bread and butter person. And I really like starch, just a plate of spaghetti. If I'm home alone I might just make myself some spaghetti and put a lot of butter and parmesan cheese on it, or make myself some creamy spinach or eggs.
Do you cook often?
Yeah, I cook a fair amount. Before I go out, I'll often make dinner for my husband. And usually the two nights I don't go out, I'll have people over.
I'd imagine people might be intimidated about having you over for dinner.
Not my good friends. I have friends in New York whom I've known my whole life. And one of the great things about the people I know in New York is that they're mostly non-foodies. They're not particularly impressed with what I do, and they're not at all worried about having me over.
I'm glad you used the term "foodies," because I interviewed Calvin Trillin a few years ago, and he said he was so tired of being around people who talked about food all the time.
Well, I once started an article by saying, "Food is basically a very boring subject." There is nothing worse than being at a table full of people who want to do nothing but talk about their food. I mean, food is interesting for a million reasons, but as a topic of discussion, "This has too much salt" is really boring. I don't want to be with people who are telling me about their great wine experiences. I have a lot of food-involved friends who wouldn't dream of sitting at a table and doing that. When I go out to dinner with Alice Waters, we don't sit there and talk about food. We talk about people and family, and what's going on in the world, politics. I want to eat food. I want to be around good food. I love farmers and cooks, and I love to be around them when they're working. But to just sit down at a table and analyze what's on the table seems to me a terrible perversion of what eating ought to be.
Are there things you actively don't like to eat?
I can't stand honey. That's about the only thing. When I went to interview M.F.K. Fisher in 1975 we became instant friends because somehow, in the first 10 minutes, honey came up. And it turned out that neither of us could bear it. It was like this wonderful bond.
Did you grow up in a food-obsessed family?
No. I'm actually finishing a memoir now, and the first chapter is about how my mother routinely poisoned people [laughs]!
Not deliberately, I hope.
Not deliberately. It's just that she had no sense that food spoiled. So she was constantly serving people rotten food, making them sick. My mother was interested in restaurants for the ambience and what went on in them, but not for the food. And she certainly wouldn't have thought that food was a proper thing to talk about. My mother had this great kind of curiosity. I was brought up in Greenwich Village, and she'd wander around, and if she'd find something she'd never seen before, she'd buy it, bring it home, and we'd figure out what to do with it. Mussels, cactus fruit — she just brought stuff home. But she was a rotten cook.
Even if she was a rotten cook, she must have had dishes that you're nostalgic about now.
No, she really didn't. [laughs] She really was a horrible cook.
How then did you become so interested in food?
I always liked to cook. There are pictures of me at five, standing on a stool, cooking. I think I had a revelation that my mother was basically taste-blind — my father didn't care about food — and that I wasn't. My mother would do things like leave butter in the refrigerator uncovered, and put it on the table — and it's the most disgusting flavor in the world. To me, it was inedible. And at 3, I realized that I couldn't eat it, and I'd say, "This is disgusting." And my mother would taste it and go, "There's nothing wrong with that." So I realized that we weren't the same. And then as time went on and I realized that my mother really didn't understand that food could be dangerous, I became very vigilant. I would throw things out of the refrigerator — and I started cooking, because it would save her. [laughs] And because you could please people. It's the greatest, and the easiest, way to make people happy. And I learned that when I was very young.
You helped run a restaurant while you were in Berkeley. How was that experience?
It was a collective that a whole group of us were involved in. It was what I did for five years. I loved to cook. I just loved it. I loved the hard, physical labor of it. It's very exhausting work, being in a restaurant. If you're really "on." At the end of a shift, after eight hours, I would sometimes not have enough energy to walk home. It's a great feeling — that you've just used everything. And I loved the camaraderie. I also love being around really great chefs because of their kind of generosity. That's what's required to be a really great chef — you really need to feed people. I love that quality, and people who run great restaurants have it.
Is being the Times food critic a job that one can do for a long time?
I don't know. I've been reviewing restaurants for 20 years, and as long as I've been doing it, I've said, "I'll do it for another year, and then that's it." If you had told me 20 years ago that I'd still be doing this, I'd have told you you were insane. But it's a pretty terrific job. It'd be a hard one to give up.