Ruth Reichl Quotes

Dear Mr. Beard,On the radio last spring, President Roosevelt said that each and every one of us here on the home front has a battle to fight; We must keep our spirits up. I am doing my best, but in my...

I know you're a chocolate lover. I can always tell. I'm about to temper the chocolate. I have my own method; want to watch?Could I? Inside my head, a little voice was reminding me that I had to get ba...

About Author

Ruth Reichl ( RY-shəl; born 1948) is an American chef, food writer and editor. In addition to two decades as a food critic, mainly spent at the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, Reichl has also written cookbooks, memoirs and a novel, and has been co-producer of PBS's Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, culinary editor for the Modern Library, host of PBS's Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth, and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine. She has won six James Beard Foundation Awards.
Reichl's memoirs are Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (1998), Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Not Becoming My Mother, and Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir (2019). In 2009, she published Gourmet Today, a 1,008 page cookbook containing over 1,000 recipes. She published her first novel, Delicious! in 2014, and, in 2015, published My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, a memoir of recipes prepared in the year following the shuttering of Gourmet.

She designed the cakes and I worked out the recipes. The first year we each created a signature cake. Genie's was called the Goddess: really tall, all white on the outside, wrapped in mountains of coc...

He showed me how each wheel was stamped with the month and year, and then he cracked the first one open to reveal its pale cream-colored interior. He chipped off a hefty shard and handed it to me. I t...

The meal began with pickled squid, oyster shooters, marinated anchovies, and scungilli salad. Then Rosalie set an enormous bowl of pasta con le vongole in front of Sal, who ladled it out, talking the...

Hermione was back, holding out a gossamer dress of rainbow chiffon so airy I thought of fireflies on a moonlight night.

Writing about food is my default.

I wish you could have seen the kitchen when I was done: It looked like a hurricane had blown right in the door! But I cleaned it all up, and when Mother came home the whole house smelled warm and spic...

I've named my cookies Snowballs, but not because that's what they look like. It's the way they make you feel. You know how it is when a snowball is flying toward you on an icy-cold night? The stars ar...

Every restaurant is a theater, and the truly great ones allow us to indulge in the fantasy that we are rich and powerful. When restaurants hold up their end of the bargain, they give us the illusion o...

My idea of good living is not about eating high on the hog. Rather, to me, good living means understanding how food connects us to the earth.

My idea of management is that what your job is as the boss is to find really good people and empower them and leave them alone.

I'm not a big turkey fan, but my husband loves it. Thanksgiving is his favorite meal.

My yogurt was nestled into a bag, waiting to turn into aushak, and all around us were sausages and pastry, lollipops and spices, chicken and cheese. Any world that contained all this, I thought survey...

Tommy and I put on a radio play to entertain everyone while they unpacked their cookies. It was about a girl who saves up money for a prom dress, but at the last minute she says, It's only clothes, an...

If we make it national policy that we will support small farmers the way we support agribusiness, we'll suddenly see it change in terms of the cost of organic food.

You'll find that historical research is extremely soothing. When you spend all day among old papers, the people come alive for you, and you begin to see the present through different eyes. You'll see....

It takes a great deal of strength to be an optimist.

Anyone who thinks they're too grown up or too sophisticated to eat caramel corn, is not invited to my house for dinner

Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.