Tender at the Bone, this volume is bound to visit bestseller lists. Like a good meal, this has a bit of everything, and all its parts work together to satisfy.

Reichl is funny when describing how the members of her Berkeley commune reacted to the news that she was going to become a restaurant reviewer ('You're going to spend your life telling spoiled, rich people where to eat too much obscene food?'), and funnier still when pointing out the pompousness of fellow food insiders. Comfort Me With Apples EXCERPT Comfort Me With Apples More Adventures at the Table By RUTH REICHL Random House Read the Review THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE The primary requisite for writing. Perhaps the most beautifully written passages here are those describing Reichl and her second husband's adoption and then loss of a baby whose biological mother handed over her daughter, then recanted before the adoption was final. Never shying from difficult subjects, Reichl grapples masterfully with the difficulty of ending her first marriage to a man she still loved, but from whom she had grown distant. Recipes are included, but the text is far from fluffy food writing. As one might expect of a celebrated food writer, Reichl maps her past with delicacies: her introduction to a Dacquoise by a lover on a trip to Paris the Dry-Fried Shrimp she learned to make on a trip to China, every moment of which was shared with her adventurous father, ill back home, in letters the Apricot Pie she made for her first husband as their bittersweet marriage slowly crumbled the Big Chocolate Cake she made for the man who would become her second, on his birthday. Comfort Me with Apples picks up Reichls story in 1978, when she puts down her chefs toque and embarks on a career as a restaurant critic. In this follow-up to the excellent memoir Tender at the Bone, Reichl (editor-in-chief at Gourmet) displays a sure hand, an open heart and a highly developed palate.

Comfort me with apples by ruth reichl