In Berkeley, Calif., she worked at a collectively owned restaurant whose entire staff cooked, cleaned, and served such vintage '70s dishes as quiche and Indonesian fishball soup. The education of her taste buds continued during trips to North Africa and Europe, a waitressing stint at a doomed French restaurant in Michigan, and impoverished early married life on New York's Lower East Side. After a disorderly adolescence, she attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The descriptions of each sublime taste are mouthwateringly precise, and the recipes scattered throughout nicely reflect the author's personal odyssey. Reichl enjoyed safer food elsewhere: at her Aunt Birdie's, the apple dumplings of an African-American cook at the home of a wealthy classmate from her Montreal boarding school, classic French cuisine. Growing up in New York City and Connecticut during the 1950s, Reichl learned early ``that food could be dangerous.'' Her manic-depressive mother favored weird mlanges crafted from culinary bargains of dubious freshness throwing an engagement party for Reichl's half-brother, Mom served spoiled leftovers from Horn and Hardart that sent 26 people to the hospital. The restaurant critic of the New York Times whips up a savory memoir of her apprentice years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |