Meet the divine
RUTH REICHL
as she discusses
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir
Tuesday, April 23, 8pm
Books & Books, Coral Gables
Raise your hand if you remember Gourmet magazine. Most of us grew up reading it and mourned the day it closed. Yet, when Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?
In her new memoir, Save Me the Plums (Random House, $27), the trailblazing food writer and beloved restaurant critic chronicles her groundbreaking tenure as editor in chief of Gourmet. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.