Ruth Reichl

This is a common perception that I found when I lived in the US - that for Chinese food to be authentic - it had to be somehow down market. I can list off a number of beautiful Chinese restaurants in the Vancouver area were service, decor, and the food is of the highest order. The difference is that there is a high concentration of reasonably monied Asians living here. Sometimes though - a Chinese restaurant will underestimate the western palate and steer people away from what they feel may be 'challenging' dishes. And especially at some very high end authentic places - language becomes a real barrier. Ms. Reichl - how do you think the cultural divide can be bridged? ← I think that the first step in bridging this divide is for Americans to understand how little we know about this huge subject. Chinese food is the most diverse, and I think most sophisticated, food on the planet, and most of us have very little experience with it. The truth is that few Americans have a taste for - or an appreciation of - the high end of the cuisine. CAntonese cuisine has a lot to do with texture - shark's fin, fish maw, bird's nest - which is not something most Americans like very much. Sichuan food is about the nuances of flavor, not just heat, but about the kind of contrast in ma-la. You go north and you hit the wheat part of the country, and then there's the whole Chinese-Muslim cuisine. Before we can begin to appreciate any of this, we have to learn about it. And we've got a long way to go. But as more and more of us do go to the kinds of very high-end Chinese places you find where there is a wealthy expatriate community - Silicon Valley in this country, Vancouver in Canada - that will change. But I expect that fact that fewer and fewer trained Chinese chefs have any desire to leave Asia won't help things. We're mostly going to have to go there to experience the greatness of the cuisine. I don't think this will happen any time soon. On the other hand, there's a rumor that Alan Yau might open a Hakkasan in New York, and if he does, and if it's succeeds, that would be a great leap forward for this city. We don't have anything of that quality here.

Words: Food, in my world, is NEVER divine. Nor is it sinful. I dislike yummy. I loathe eatery. Actually, I'll ask Larry (our managing editor); he keeps a list of words that drive me crazy. ← Oh yes... please ask your managing editor if you've got a chance (and if he's got a chance!). I'd love to see your list. Thanks again. ← A couple more - more on the way (Larry's at the gym at the moment). I don't like it when food is called "fare." I don't like things that are "atop" or "amidst" in relation to food. Believe me, there are plenty more.... ← Larry just handed me the list. So here are a few more: addictive - it's a silly way to say something's good to perfection crispy (things are crisp, not crispy) meltingly (why is meat ALWAYS meltingly tender?) veggies (so disrespectful to growing things) yesteryear (like fingernails on chalk to me) toothsome (ditto) sumptuous when referring to meals vibrant (in connection with food) served up (served is fine all by itself) tend to be (I prefer "are often") procuring - such a needlessly pretentious verb

I was really happy when Rebecca put that cover up. That's one of my favorite restaurants; my idea of pure heaven is to go to Pearl and have a bucket of steamers, a salad, a lobster (boiled not broiled), and then one of those amazing sundaes.

AT some point, I assume, we'll have a really high-quality Chinese restaurant. I could see someone doing something fabulous with Indian food as well. And wouldn't a really impressive MIddle Eastern restaurant add something wonderful to our food scene?

I'd pretty much agree with you. Not sure whether Barcelona will stay up there, at least 10 years from now. And I expect that Rio will get stronger. And maybe Mexico City. And possibly Tel Aviv or Beirut, depending on the political situation there. And you've left out Tokyo, which is (and probably will continue to be) one of the great food places of the world Ditto Hong Kong and Taipei.

Frankly, we don't. I think if you start trying to second guess your audience, you're doomed. WE're a diverse group too, we edit very much as a group, and we simply try to put out the best, most interesting magazine we can. We're passionate about the subject, and we figure if we please ourselves, we'll please our audience. (And believe me, we have long and passionate fights about the content of the magazine.)

Ruth: I remember reading a story by you years ago in the Times on Chinese haute cuisine. Considering that Michelin Guide didn’t give any star to the Chinese restaurant in the city and there is only a handful of one star Chinese restaurant in France, what do you think will take for Chinese food to be taken seriously? French/Michlin bias aside, what is it that prevent people from wanting that high-end dining experience that the Chinese cuisine, I think, is capable of providing. Thanks William ← This is a subject I could go on forever about: Basically, Americans are racist about Chinese food. We just don't think it should be as expensive as western food. When my friend Bruce Cost had a great Chinese restaurant in SF, one of the reviews actually said, "What makes him think we should pay as much for Chinese as French food?" And he was buying from the same purveyors as Chez Panisse. But this will change, and I suspect very soon. As the Chinese become increasingly dominant in the world - which they are, and will be - our attitude about their cuisine will change. Today the great Chinese chefs all stay in Asia, where they're paid better and get respect. Why should they come here? But as we go there, and taste their food, we'll start to give it hte respect it deserves. Another thing, of course, is that the esthetics of Chinese restaurants are completely different than those of Western places. And we'll have to get used to that. The most expensive restaurant I've ever been to was in Hong Kong - and it was bright, loud, cold, no romance at all. But the food!! By the way, did you read the piece we ran last August about the chefs from Cheng Du and their attitudes about food in America? It was fascinating. They were utterly contemptuous of our best efforts. A mirror image of our own prejudices.

The cupcake thing really floored me. I still don't get it. Don't even get why that cover was "soemthing a little different for Gourmet." How? I just thought Gina's idea was great - bake a cake for the grown ups and decorate it with cupcakes for the kids. It was so pretty, it just made a great cover. But I LOVED that it got that strong a reaction. And yes, I'd definitely do it again. (And unlike some of the covers that I've known were a stretch, that one sold very well.) As for the previous post - about the content of the magazine - travel, products, hotel recommendations - those have always been part of hte DNA of the magazine. We're not doing anything different there than the magazine has always done. Maybe a little less, actually, because things, as such,, don't interest me all that much. But the readers have always wanted to know where to buy things, where to stay when they travel, etc. Incidentally, we don't do product placement. Ever. Much to some of our advertisers' chagrin. But we do try to use new plates, glasses and so forth in our pictures. What makes this difficult is that usually we shoot a year ahead. AS for bringing back The Last Touch - I'm thrilled that people care so much. I feel that this magazine belongs not to me, but to its readers, who feel a really visceral connection to it. And when they make it clear that they really want something, we'd be crazy not to give it to them.

Yes, my mother cooked the greatest corn I've ever eaten. We had a house in Connecticut, and she had a farmer she got corn from. She'd call him, tell him to go pick, and put a pot of water on to boil. She liked little white ears - at a time when NOBODY wanted them - so the farmer was thrilled to give her the stuff nobody else wanted. She'd come home from Renzulli's, we'd shuck really fast, and then she'd cook the corn for about a minute. Sweet butter, a little salt - nothing's ever tasted better. She also cooked great lobsters. Got them from some guy down at the shore. She could shop: She just didn't believe (really) that anything went bad, anything needed to cook for more than about 10 minutes, or that any combinations wouldn't work.

meat: Florence. And Lobel's when I'm willing to take out a mortgage for my meat. Cheese: Murray's. Bread: Sullivan Street Produce: Union Square Smoked salmon and caviar: Russ and Daughters. But, realistically, I live on the upper west side, so most of the time I shop at Fairway, Citarella and Zabar's, because they're close to home.

WE all need an editor. And believe me, we edit Tony. As I'm sure he would tell you.

Words: Food, in my world, is NEVER divine. Nor is it sinful. I dislike yummy. I loathe eatery. Actually, I'll ask Larry (our managing editor); he keeps a list of words that drive me crazy. ← Oh yes... please ask your managing editor if you've got a chance (and if he's got a chance!). I'd love to see your list. Thanks again. ← A couple more - more on the way (Larry's at the gym at the moment). I don't like it when food is called "fare." I don't like things that are "atop" or "amidst" in relation to food. Believe me, there are plenty more....

WE've got 8 test kitchens, but none of them has professional equipment; they're all basic home kitchens, with GE stoves, regular blenders, mixers, etc. Visitors are always surprised by this. We buy our food at regular markets. When I got to Gourmet and went around and asked editors what their wish lists were Zanne said, without hesitation, "I wish we could cross-test all the recipes." "Done!" I said naively, not understanding that I was adding a person to the staff, and a major expense. But it's been worth it. We hired a passionate cook, a non-professional, and he takes the finished recipes and does one last run-through. If there's a problem, he finds it. The other change I've made is to hire cooks of differing ethnicities as vacancies opened up. So that everyone wasn't French or American trained.

No, I'm not saying that as a reviewer I'd say "Just feed me." As a reviewer you have an obligation to taste your way through the menu, and retaste again, so most of the time you don't have the luxury of eatin what you want to eat. What I'm saying is that, as a civilian, I consider it a great treat to just put myself in the chef's hands. After years of poring over menus, I love the laziness of trust. But I want to make a different point: People don't go out to restaurants to feel that they've been invited out. They go to be in a restaurant, to feel as if they have no obligations, to be able to behave in ways they wouldn't if they were with friends. So while you (who I assume is a chef), may want to think of paying customers as guests, many of them would prefer to keep the transaction more distant.

Sounds right to me - sounds like something I would have said - but I don't remember saying it. There may be something in the intro to Tender at the Bone. Just looked. It is the intro; here's the quote: "Everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual. " The part I like best is a couple of sentences later. "I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story."

120 seats, from the reports I've seen. That's at the high end, but probably not far off the number of seats at Daniel. Edit: According to the website at danielnyc.com, the main dining room there seats 140. My guess is that's tops among the current four-star restaurants in New York. Some people think that Daniel failed to get the third Michelin star because it's built for volume. ← By the way, last night at the Kitchen Sisters book party I heard that Dal Posto may not open until January. Just a rumor, but from a good source.... As for Daniel and the Michelin stars, my guess is that they just didn't feel good about giving so many stars to French restaurants and they figured that Daniel couldn't be hurt by the omission. Nobody's not going to go there because of that. But it's really incomprehensible that they could have failed to recognize a restaurant which, by their standards, certainly deserves the top rating.

There's a simple reason why Americans haven't discovered Algerian food: Tourism. Most of us discover cuisines by traveling. And most Americans haven't been to Algeria. (I'll admit that the last time I was there was in 1968, which was a very strange time to be visiting.) Most of us fell in love with Moroccan food (at least those of us who weren't seduced by Paula Wolfert's book) because we went there and discovered the food for ourselves. Tunisia is now becoming a big tourist destination, and I'll bet briks will start showing up on menus any day now. If you want people in North America to learn to appreciate the food of Algeria, organize culinary tours.

Okay Vinfidel, you raise an interesting question here. Which is this: Does a city need to have great ethnic food to be a great food city? What thrills me about the new Montreal is the emphasis, for the first time, on creating a great local cuisine. A pride in products. Support for farmers. An attempt to do what you can do as well as it can be done. The thing about ethnic food is that I don't think you can have great ethnic restaurants without a knowledgeable population to support them. Which is why Los Angeles is so exciting for lovers of ethnic foods. There are whole sections of the city where no English is spoken, and where you find the most amazing Salvadoran, Korean, Oaxacan, Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese, etc. food. It's made for people who know the cuisine, demand that it be good and won't frequent places that tone it down or dilute it for an American population. The same is definitely not true here in New York, and while I think this is a great food city, we don't have great representations of most of the cuisines you mention. Great Thai? Nothing to touch LA. Great Chinese? Ditto. Great Korean? There are more good Korean places on one block of LA's Koreatown than in all 5 boroughs of this city. Great Cambodian? No way. Great Mexican? I know ten taco stands in LA I'd rather eat in than anyplace here (although that situation is changing with the influx of Mexicans into NY). There is certainly no great barbecue in NY City, nothing to touch the Lulling Market in Texas or Philip's in LA or Big Ed in.... I could go on and on. But the point is, I think this is a great restaurant town because of what's here, not because of what isn't. And I'd say the same about your town.

To Sandy Smith - I suspect one reason that the Inky stopped the market basket survey is that the supermarkets are basically in crisis due to Wallmart and Costco taking such a huge share of the market. The business is totally different today than it was 10 years ago, with Wallmart growing on one end, Whole Foods (and local chains like Wegmans) growing on the other. The "regular" supermarkets in the middle are getting squeezed out. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to run a market survey when you know that Wallmart is going to be cheaper than everyone else. If you haven't seen it, we ran a piece on the effect of Wallmart in the June issue of Gourmet. I suspect that over the next few years the way we all buy our food will change completely. To Vinfidel: I've spoken to the main food person for your French paper, and she was very very impressive. Smart, knowledgable and passionate about the subject. You might want to take a look at what the French papers are doing in Montreal. (If you don't speak French, you'll be the first Montrealer I've met lately who doesn't! I'm completely blown away by the new bilingualism of your city. When I was going to school there in the sixties it was completely different.)

You were certainly not alone; that was a love or hate thing. More hate, I suspect. I knew we were taking a chance there, but I thought it would be fun. I was getting so tired of hearing about the chef as rock star thing, that I thought we'd make our own comment on it. And then I met Matthew Rolston at a friend's wedding in LA, and I asked if he'd ever consider shooting for us, and he turned out to be a Gourmet fan, and it seemed like serendipity. Maybe it was a mistake - it certainly was not a newsstand success - but one of the things I love about my job is that I have the leeway to make mistakes. I'd much rather take chances and not have them all work out than just continue to do the same, safe things. The thing is, we all had a great time doing that cover: The chefs, the staff, the art people, and it gave the magazine a kind of energy. Cover aside, I think that issue is one of the ones I'm most proud of. I'd do it again in a second.

You're right, the design changes have been enormous. When I got here there was a 2 person art department, no photo editor and almost all of the photographs were taken by our own photographer, Romulo Yanes, here in our studio. Now we have 9 people in the art department and while Romulo still takes a lot of the pictures, we do most of our big entertaining shoots on location, using a wide variety of photographers. But the magazine's changed a couple of times, even since I've been here. At first I brought in the wonderful Diana LaGuardia, who gave the magazine one look. She pioneered the look of Gourmet EveryDay, a technique that allowed the recipes to be printed right on the picture of the dish. (We were stunned to see Every Day Food when it first came out, which was a replica of that look.) When Diana left, Richard Ferretti came and basically redesigned Gourmet. I've loved what both of them has done. The other big change is that, from the moment I got here, we began using the front and back of teh book very differently than the well. The well is now much more visual, belonging mostly to photographs. The front of the book is very type-driven. And I initiated Kitchen Notebook in the back of the book, to give the kitchen a voice. After all, with 8 test kitchens and 11 food editors, you want to feel their presence. There's a lot of carping on EGullet about the look of Gourmet, but I think if we were still putting out the old Gourmet there would be even more. It would look incredibly old fashioned.

Okay, writers. I hate writing that is pretty for its own sake, writers who write to hear their own words. And like all editors, I HATE writers who miss their deadlines (or never turn in their work at all). Words: Food, in my world, is NEVER divine. Nor is it sinful. I dislike yummy. I loathe eatery. Actually, I'll ask Larry (our managing editor); he keeps a list of words that drive me crazy.

This book was very much a group process. It began with Zanne, Kempy and me spending time every day with Diane Abrams, the Gourmet book editor, trying to figure out which recipes to use. Then they went down to the kitchens to be tested. Every recipe was tested here at Gourmet, by our own cooks. (They were paid to do this, it was not part of their job.) We tested probably twice as many recipes as we ended up using, because we only wanted the best in the book. We gathered to taste daily at 9:30 and at 12:30, and we were brutal. (The tasters were me, Zanne, Kempy, Diane, Doc Willoughby and all of the cooks.) WE kept refining and refining, trying to make each recipe as good as it could be. Many were done 8 or 9 times. Rux Martin, our editor at Houghton Mifflin also weighed in. There were recipes she wanted, others she didn't. Some she wanted changed or refined. I wrote all the chapter openings. Jane Daniels Lear wrote most of the recipe heads and the sidebars; she has a particular talent for that, and she researched them obsessively. I think they're great, and the ones I wrote myself are not as good. (Those she didn't write either Doc or I did.) Kempy and Zanne then went through all of them and made notes, so they were edited at least 3 times. AS for the index - we had an indexer do it, and if we'd had space it would have been even more thorough than it is, but frankly, we couldn't imagine the book weighing another ounce!

Imaginary reviews? Not me. I'm really thrilled just to go out and eat and enjoy the experience. I'm not really a natural critic - I like food too much for that, enjoy the theater of dining and tend to pretty much take things as they come. It was always an act of will to stop myself from just getting into the meal, sitting back and having a good time. Some people spend their lives rating things, trying to decide if this is the third best or fourth best version of whatever is before them. I don't do that without effort, so now I am completely happy to just go out with my friends and have dinner.

That was great! Count me among the insane. Thanks, and thanks Lesley for posting the question. ← Thank you so much for all of this insight. I think you can safely assume that your audience is riveted, hanging onto your every word and only too eager to suck you dry. I’d be interested to know what qualitites you look for in a food writer, beyond the obvious deep knowledge of the subject and the ability to write. And do you have any pet peeves? ← I'd certainly settle for knowledge and good writing, but a sense of humor always helps. So many of us are so drearily earnest, it can take all the fun out of the subject. As for pet peeves, I've got hundreds of them. Which field, in particular, were you looking for? Writers, foods, words....