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A review by sbelasco40
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl
5.0
"It's hard to remember a time when food memoirs were not part of the general landscape," Ruth Reichl writes, "but when I was writing TENDER AT THE BONE, the genre did not exist. As I was trying to think about telling my story through food, it occurred to me that the recipes could function the way photographs did in other people's books. I wanted readers to get to know the characters through the food they cooked and ate, to be able to taste the time."
I'm not sure why I've never read Reichl before, but she's so great. I think there's this tendency in the food world, especially these days when so much food is fetishized, to cultivate this snobbery around food that basically implies the only good food in the world exists in so-called food cities like New York or San Francisco or Paris. While there's no denying there's an abundance of options in such places, Reichl makes a pretty good argument for the fact that you can find good food everywhere, and not only that, but you can create it. The most powerful foodies are those that can cook. If I learned anything growing up in a house with a food scholar for a father, it's that food isn't really about place. It's about people, and stories, and history. Reichl understands something very fundamental about that, and her food photographs in this book feel authentic and personal and beautiful and sometimes heart-wrenching. Food is love. Love is food. I want to read everything she's written now.
I'm not sure why I've never read Reichl before, but she's so great. I think there's this tendency in the food world, especially these days when so much food is fetishized, to cultivate this snobbery around food that basically implies the only good food in the world exists in so-called food cities like New York or San Francisco or Paris. While there's no denying there's an abundance of options in such places, Reichl makes a pretty good argument for the fact that you can find good food everywhere, and not only that, but you can create it. The most powerful foodies are those that can cook. If I learned anything growing up in a house with a food scholar for a father, it's that food isn't really about place. It's about people, and stories, and history. Reichl understands something very fundamental about that, and her food photographs in this book feel authentic and personal and beautiful and sometimes heart-wrenching. Food is love. Love is food. I want to read everything she's written now.