Author Guide · Food Memoir
Books Written by
Ruth Reichl’s mother once served a party so much spoiled food that dozens of guests fell ill; her daughter called her the “Queen of Mold” and became a food writer. Reichl cooked at a worker-owned restaurant in Berkeley in the 1970s, reviewed restaurants for the Los Angeles Times from 1984 and for The New York Times from 1993, often in disguise, and edited Gourmet from 1999 until Condé Nast closed it in 2009. She has won six James Beard Awards. Her books tell that life in order, one stage at a time, with recipes between the chapters. This guide covers her 8 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 1998–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Ruth Reichl has written five memoirs, two novels and a memoir-cookbook. The best known are Tender at the Bone (1998), Comfort Me with Apples (2001), Garlic and Sapphires (2005) and Save Me the Plums (2019); her latest is The Paris Novel (2024). Start with Tender at the Bone, the first memoir, which the later ones follow on from.
Where to Start with Ruth Reichl
If you want her defining book
→ Tender at the Bone (1998) — childhood, her mother and the first memoir in the sequence.
If you want restaurant criticism from the inside
→ Garlic and Sapphires (2005) — her years as New York Times critic, in disguise.
If you want the magazine world
→ Save Me the Plums (2019) — ten years running Gourmet.
If you want fiction
→ The Paris Novel (2024) — a novel about eating and cooking in Paris.
8 Ruth Reichl Books, in Order
Tender at the Bone
Her first memoir runs from a Greenwich Village childhood with a mother, Miriam, whose untreated bipolar disorder and careless cooking once made dozens of party guests ill, through boarding school in Montreal, the University of Michigan and a commune in Berkeley. It ends in 1977, when she is offered her first job as a restaurant critic. Recipes sit between the chapters.
Comfort Me with Apples
The sequel follows her rise to restaurant critic at the Los Angeles Times and stops before her move to New York in 1993. It covers the end of her twelve-year marriage to the sculptor Douglas Hollis, an affair with the food writer Colman Andrews, her marriage to the television producer Michael Singer and an adoption that fell through.
Garlic and Sapphires
Her years as restaurant critic of The New York Times (1993–1999), when she ate out in wigs and costumes so that restaurants would not recognise her. As “Molly Hollis”, a frumpy blonde, she ate at Le Cirque as an unknown; returning as herself, she was pampered, and her review set the two meals side by side. The audiobook won a 2006 Audie Award, and Fox 2000 announced a film of the book.
Not Becoming My Mother
A short book built from the letters and diary fragments of her mother, Miriam (1908–1991), who wanted to be a doctor like her own father and was discouraged by her parents. Reichl rereads the “Queen of Mold” of Tender at the Bone as a frustrated, self-aware woman who steered her daughter away from the same life. The 2010 paperback was retitled For You, Mom. Finally.
Delicious!
Her first novel. Billie Breslin, 21, leaves California for a job at a New York food magazine that soon folds. Working part-time in an Italian cheese shop, she finds wartime letters from Lulu, a girl in Ohio, to the cookbook writer James Beard, asking for recipes that work with rationing. Reichl began writing fiction after Gourmet closed.
My Kitchen Year
Part cookbook, part diary of the year after Condé Nast shut Gourmet in the autumn of 2009. The recipes run through the seasons, from a spicy tofu dish and a grilled cheese sandwich to a rhubarb sundae in spring, cooked for herself, her family and friends as she works out what to do next.
Save Me the Plums
The fourth memoir in the sequence covers her decade as editor-in-chief of Gourmet (1999–2009) inside Condé Nast, owned by Si Newhouse: the expense accounts and the parties, the decision to run David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster”, the months after 11 September 2001, and the magazine’s abrupt closure.
The Paris Novel
After her narcissistic mother dies in 1983, Stella St. Vincent, a lonely young woman, is left a note that says “Go to Paris”. There she discovers a gift for eating and cooking, hunts for a forgotten nineteenth-century woman painter and looks for her father. The novel grew out of a chapter in one of her memoirs about trying on a little black dress in Paris.
In What Order to Read Ruth Reichl
The memoirs are one continuous life told in sequence: Tender at the Bone (childhood to 1977), Comfort Me with Apples (Los Angeles), Garlic and Sapphires (The New York Times) and Save Me the Plums (Gourmet). Read them in that order and people reappear, including her mother, her husbands and her son.
Not Becoming My Mother reads best after Tender at the Bone, because it revisits the same mother with new evidence. My Kitchen Year picks up where Save Me the Plums ends. The two novels stand apart and can be read at any point.
A reading path
1. Tender at the Bone (1998)
2. Comfort Me with Apples (2001)
3. Garlic and Sapphires (2005)
4. Save Me the Plums (2019)
5. The Paris Novel (2024)
Everything Else Ruth Reichl Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Cookbooks and anthologies
4
4 books · 1972–2009
- 1972Mmmmm: A Feastiaryher first book, a cookbook
- 2004The Gourmet Cookbookmore than 1,000 recipes, as editor
- 2006History in a Glasssixty years of wine writing from Gourmet, as editor
- 2009Gourmet Todaymore than 1,000 new recipes, as editor
The years · 1948–2024
Quick facts about Ruth Reichl
- Known for
- Ruth Reichl is known for memoirs about food and her own life, and for reviewing restaurants for The New York Times in disguise before editing Gourmet for ten years.
- 1948
- Born in New York City
- 1984
- Restaurant critic, Los Angeles Times
- 2009
- Gourmet closes
- 2024
- James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award
- Born
- 16 January 1948, New York City; her father was a German-Jewish refugee
- Education
- University of Michigan: BA (1968), MA in art history (1970)
- Restaurant
- Chef and co-owner of the Swallow, Berkeley, until 1977
- Critic
- Los Angeles Times, 1984–1993; The New York Times, 1993–1999
- Editor
- Editor-in-chief of Gourmet, 1999–2009
- Honours
- Six James Beard Awards; James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award (2024)
- Film
- Producer of the documentary Food and Country (Sundance, 2023)
The red mark is 1998: Tender at the Bone, the first of her memoirs.
How Ruth Reichl Writes: A Life Told Through Meals
Reichl builds each memoir out of meals. A chapter is usually a scene at a table — a soufflé in Montreal, a dinner at Le Cirque — and many end with the recipe for what was eaten. In Tender at the Bone she says she learned early that food could be a way of making sense of the world, and the books apply that to her own family.
She writes as a reporter would about herself, with names, dates and places, and she does not leave out what flatters her less: the affair in Comfort Me with Apples, the costumes and small deceptions of Garlic and Sapphires. Her reviews from the Times are reprinted inside Garlic and Sapphires, so the reader sees both the meal and what she made of it in print.
Later books revisit earlier material with new evidence. Not Becoming My Mother uses Miriam Reichl’s letters to correct the comic portrait in the first memoir, and The Paris Novel grew from a single memoir chapter. Since 2021 she has also written a Substack newsletter, La Briffe, about food and cooking.
Watch
Ruth Reichl on her lifelong passion for food
Walter Isaacson talks with Reichl for PBS’s Amanpour and Company in May 2019 about her memoir Save Me the Plums, her years at Gourmet and her lifelong passion for food.
Frequently asked questions about Ruth Reichl’s books
How many books has Ruth Reichl written?
Eight books of her own since 1998: five memoirs, two novels and the memoir-cookbook My Kitchen Year, all listed on this page. She also published a cookbook, Mmmmm: A Feastiary, in 1972 and edited several Gourmet cookbooks and anthologies.
What are Ruth Reichl’s books in order?
Tender at the Bone (1998), Comfort Me with Apples (2001), Garlic and Sapphires (2005), Not Becoming My Mother (2009), Delicious! (2014), My Kitchen Year (2015), Save Me the Plums (2019) and The Paris Novel (2024).
Where should I start with Ruth Reichl?
Tender at the Bone (1998), her first memoir, about growing up with her mother and learning to cook. The other memoirs follow on from it.
What is Ruth Reichl’s most famous book?
Tender at the Bone is her best-known memoir; Garlic and Sapphires (2005), about reviewing for The New York Times in disguise, is the other book most readers know her for.
In what order should I read Ruth Reichl’s memoirs?
Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, then Save Me the Plums. Not Becoming My Mother fits after the first, and My Kitchen Year after the last.
Why did Ruth Reichl wear disguises?
As restaurant critic of The New York Times from 1993 to 1999 she wanted to be treated like an ordinary diner. Garlic and Sapphires describes the wigs and characters, including “Molly Hollis”, who ate at Le Cirque unrecognised before Reichl returned as herself and was pampered.
Has Garlic and Sapphires been made into a film?
Fox 2000 announced a film of it, with Reichl as executive producer, but no film has been released. She did produce the documentary Food and Country (2023), about farmers and independent restaurants during the pandemic, directed by Laura Gabbert.
What happened to Gourmet magazine?
Condé Nast closed it in the autumn of 2009, after Reichl had edited it for ten years. She tells the story in Save Me the Plums (2019) and the year that followed in My Kitchen Year (2015).
Is Ruth Reichl still alive?
Yes. She was born in New York City in 1948 and lives in upstate New York. Her husband, the television producer Michael Singer, died in May 2026.
What awards has Ruth Reichl won?
Six James Beard Awards, including for restaurant criticism in 1996 and 1998, and the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024.
Footnotes
- Ruth Reichl — Wikipedia
- Garlic and Sapphires — Penguin Random House
- Ruth Reichl dishes up her mother’s secret desires — NPR, 2009
- Ruth Reichl: a delicious debut into fiction — Publishers Weekly, 2014
- Save Me the Plums is a tantalizing insider memoir — Christian Science Monitor, 2019
- The Paris Novel — Kirkus Reviews, 2024
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were.”
— Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone (1998)
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