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Confessions of a Dumpster Diver: Ruth Reichl on NY1

Posted by Adam Kuban, May 5, 2008 at 9:15 PM

I just watched Bud Mishkin's One on 1 interview with Ruth Reichl on NY1. Some highlights:

Reichl once engaged in Dumpster diving; it was in Berkeley in the '70s, so cut her some slack. "It wasn't about money but about supermarkets and waste," she said. "We go into this Dumpster, and you know the first thing I find is this whole carton—this whole flat of eggs, two and a half dozen eggs. And there are two broken eggs in there, and the rest of them are perfectly fine, and they've pitched the whole thing."

The interview touches on her tenure as the New York Times restaurant critic, from 1993 to 1999: "I found out much later that they had gotten all this mail from people going 'There's a loose cannon running around Times Square writing about little noodle places.'"

Reichl, of course, was (in)famous for opening up the reviews in the New York Times to little "ethnic" and off-the-beaten-path eateries (many of which still charmingly display those outdated reviews in their windows).

Of course, you can't mention Reichl's stint at the New York Times without talking about the wacky disguises she employed to try to fool restaurateurs, many of which are detailed in her memoir Garlic and Sapphires. And while that book sadly lacked photos of the disguises, the interview on NY1 shows Reichl dressed as her mother and then a photo of her mother. The resemblance really is uncanny, putting to rest my belief that Reichl was merely exaggerating a bit for the book's sake.

Going back to her days in a group house in Berkeley, she references her transition from a hippie lifestyle there to restaurant critic at the Los Angeles Times: "It was painful, and it still is. I still have a lot of friends who disapprove enormously of what I'm doing with my life."

This is something she wrote about for the New York Times in 1996, in a piece called "Why I Disapprove of What I Do." She tells NY1's Mishkin, "There's still this voice inside me that says 'Yeah, but all you're really doing is telling rich people where to go to eat.' And if I had thought that was all I had done with my life, it would make me very sad."

Next up for Reichl, says Mishkin: A book that explores women of her mother's generation and what food meant to them. Coming out on Mother's Day 2009.

You can watch the interview on NY1.com, if you have the patience to deal with the fact that they're still using RealPlayer to deliver video.

6 Comments | Tags: NY1, Ruth Reichl, TV