Favorite Review to Write

[Megan Blocker]

First, let me say how thrilled we all are to have you with us this week! I have been a huge fan of yours ever since first reading Tender at the Bone, and I am very excited about this spotlight conversation!

Along lines similar to Vinfidel's question, I'd like to ask this one: Over the course of your whole career, what has been your favorite restaurant review to write, and why?

Was it reviewing a restaurant you particularly loved, or one you particularly reviled? Maybe the opportunity to introduce people to a new cuisine? Or perhaps the character you had assumed for the job?

[Ruth Reichl]

First, let me say how thrilled we all are to have you with us this week!  I have been a huge fan of yours ever since first reading Tender at the Bone, and I am very excited about this spotlight conversation!

Along lines similar to Vinfidel's question, I'd like to ask this one: Over the course of your whole career, what has been your favorite restaurant review to write, and why?

Was it reviewing a restaurant you particularly loved, or one you particularly reviled?  Maybe the opportunity to introduce people to a new cuisine?  Or perhaps the character you had assumed for the job?

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Actually, it wasn't any of those. It was my second review, when I was still at New West, about a restaurant called Robert in San Francisco. All of my friends and I went off to a thrift store to buy clothes good enough for the restaurant, and we trooped in, thrilled to be in a great place. And my friends, all trying to be helpful, were so critical that I had this moment when I saw us all as a gang, sent by a rival restaurateur, trying to find fault with the restaurant. The whole review just came to me, like that, and I flew home and wrote it like a film noir script. I called it "Cops and Roberts" and wrote the whole piece in dialogue. I don't know where I found the courage to turn it in, but it just felt right to me.

It was one of those moments, as a writer, when you know that you've hit on something good. The review was not like anything that anyone had written before, and I felt elated about it. All the information about the restaurant was there, but it was in a new form. In that moment I knew that I was going to be writing restaurant reviews for quite a while.

I had the same feeling about the first sushi piece I wrote in the NY Times. It's always a struggle trying to write a piece that gives a lot of information without being preachy. And I was so happy when I figured out how to tell readers about the entire experience in a way that was conversational and made a good story. I've loved sushi since the first moment I tasted it, and I really wanted to convey the pleasure of the experience. And after years of struggling with that, I finally figured out how to do it.