46 pages • 1-hour read
Save Me the Plums
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 23-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary: “Mene, Mene”
Although she didn’t know it at the time, the promotion of Condé Nast CEO Florio to vice chairman signaled the beginning of the end for Gourmet. When she met Florio’s replacement, Chuck Townsend, she initially thought he would bring positive changes, but she soon realized that his sole focus was financial gain. Despite the protests of art director Ferretti, Florio insisted that the magazine start shooting digital photography, rather than paying to develop and scan analog film. Reichl grew nervous that she was no longer able to protect the creative efforts of her team.
Townsend’s willingness to cut corners caused conflict with Condé Nast editorial director Truman, who left the company. Over a farewell lunch, Truman urged Reichl not to try to be friends with Newhouse and to focus on making the best magazine she could. Reichl realized that Truman must see some sign of trouble in Condé Nast that she could not.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Pull Up a Chair”
Reichl was infuriated to read an article about the opening of a new children’s food store in New York City, believing that children should eat the same food as their parents. Her son Nick pointed out that he hadn’t always eaten the same food as her. Reichl argued that Nick’s situation was different, as it was related to an autoimmune disease he was diagnosed with as a child. The steady dose of antibiotics Nick’s doctors recommended affected his appetite so much that for years, he would only eat white foods, like chicken, rice, and hard-boiled eggs. Despite her career in food writing, Reichl never pushed Nick to be more adventurous. However, her job as a critic brought the family to many well-regarded restaurants. When a sushi chef named Osada gently pushed Nick to try new foods, it unlocked a new world of eating for him, transforming his health.
By age 16, Nick was a healthy, active young man with an adventurous appetite. When he asked Reichl to help him develop a literary cookbook for a school project, she was touched to find that he understood the emotional value of food.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Dot Com”
Reichl argues that the internet is a transformative tool for cooks, who use it to share and comment on recipes, learn about new ingredients, and build community. From the beginning of her time at Gourmet, Reichl pushed for the magazine to create a dedicated website. Instead, Newhouse insisted on funneling all Gourmet recipes, and recipes from every Condé Nast publication, to a central website called Epicurious. As a result, Gourmet recipes were placed alongside recipes from magazines without test kitchens and rigorous strategies, infuriating Reichl.
Newhouse finally agreed to publish a dedicated Gourmet website, but stipulated that recipes published in Gourmet would still go to Epicurious. Recipes published on the Gourmet website would be online exclusives. Reichl realized that publishing twice as many recipes would not be fiscally responsible. Despite her fears, Reichl published ground-breaking online content, including a farm-to-table video filmed on a halal goat ranch.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Editor of the Year”
Reichl was named 2007 Editor of the Year by the industry magazine Adweek, and she spent the day shooting a light-hearted editorial that highlighted how different she was from other Condé Nast editors, like Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter. When she arrived back at the office, she learned that Capua was leaving Gourmet to work at Architectural Digest, whose editor was unhappy with her current publisher. Although Reichl knew that the move was considered a promotion for Capua, she worried that the move was a sign that Gourmet was no longer valued at Condé Nast.
After meeting with Capua’s replacement, Jeff Wellington, Reichl decided that she could make the best of this unexpected change. She spent the next morning with the Adweek team shooting more photos in her office. As soon as the reporters left, Capua arrived with more bad news: Jeff Wellington would no longer be the new Gourmet publisher. Instead, Capua and the lackluster Architectural Digest editor, Amy, would simply switch jobs. Reichl knew that if Capua’s new job was a promotion, Amy’s must be a demotion. She now felt confident that Gourmet had lost its spot as a Condé Nast favorite.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Brand Ruth”
Reichl and the other Gourmet executives grew increasingly nervous as other Condé Nast publications closed. They threw a lavish launch party to celebrate the new Gourmet website, during which Reichl spent her time convincing staff and advertisers that things were stable at the magazine. Although the magazine’s new publisher, Tom Hartman, supported the party, he hinted that the magazine would not be able to survive the forthcoming economic recession.
In order to help save the magazine, the Condé Nast PR team encouraged Reichl to take steps to boost her public image. She served on the boards of charitable foundations, gave lectures all over the city, and was given awards for food writing and her contributions to the magazine. This public-facing work became an essential part of her job, and she quickly fell out of love with her work. While filming online content with the actress Frances McDormand, Reichl realized that thinking of herself as a brand had made her less of a person, and she vowed to be herself in public.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Midnight in Paris”
As the country sank deeper into the recession, Reichl proposed another Paris special issue, remembering how well the last issue sold. Remembering her first trip to Paris as a teenager, she suggested an issue themed around experiencing Paris on a budget, offering to research the trip herself. Travel editor Sertl, who also travelled on a budget as a teenager, agreed to go with her. Sertl and Reichl stayed in separate hotels and changed hotels nightly to review as many budget-friendly options as possible. They avoided the luxurious Michelin-starred restaurants they were used to, instead eating at small restaurants recommended by locals. At one restaurant, when Sertl and Reichl disagreed about an inexpensive set menu, a waitress assumed they were trying to save money and took pity on them, bringing out endless courses. Reichl recalls similar instances where locals shared food with her during her first visit to Paris as a teenager.
On her last night in Paris, Reichl ran into the elderly man she had met years prior, who told her about his late wife, Severine. He was delighted that she remembered him and urged her not to let luxury become a habit, forgetting to enjoy the simple things.
Chapter 29 Summary: “This One’s on Me”
In September 2009, Reichl received news that ad sales were up and the magazine seemed stable. She left for a book tour celebrating the launch of a second Gourmet cookbook. While on tour, she received a call from editorial director Tom Wallace, who insisted that she return to New York immediately. Reichl assumed that she was finally being fired, and felt relieved. She hadn’t been happy in her job for a long time and was privately glad to be able to have time to write and pursue other dreams.
When she returned to the Condé Nast offices, she was shocked to learn that Gourmet was being shut down entirely. The staff were told that their work badges would be functional until the end of the following day. Condé Nast’s owner offered no explanation for the decision to close the magazine. Reichl and the rest of the staff packed their offices in a fury, taking as much wine and food as they could. Reichl invited the entire staff to her home to eat and drink in commiseration. The next day, she returned to the book tour, feeling she must fulfill her duties. At an airport restaurant, a worker offered to pay for her meal, explaining that she loved Gourmet.
Epilogue Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
For the first few months after the closing of Gourmet, Reichl struggled to find a sense of purpose. Although she had always been interested in writing fiction, she found the work lonely and isolating compared to the collaborative work of her time at Gourmet. As her former staff started to find other jobs, she felt less guilty about the magazine’s closing and was able to find joy in her writing again.
When Capua’s mother died, he offered Reichl her archive of hundreds of Gourmet magazines. As Reichl looked through the magazines, she remembered why she fell in love with Gourmet. She found a recipe for a German apple pie similar to one her mother loved and ate weekly at her family’s favorite restaurant. Reichl attempted the recipe, but it was a disaster. She thought proudly of how well-run her Gourmet test kitchens were compared to their predecessors. Reichl adapted the recipe so that it matched her memory. As she enjoyed it with her family, she hoped her parents knew that their support enabled her to have an exciting, fulfilling career.
Chapter 23-Epilogue Analysis
The last section of Save Me the Plums describes the final years of Gourmet before the magazine was shuttered in 2009. Reichl builds suspense in this section of the memoir by explicitly foreshadowing Gourmet’s eventual closure. For example, when describing the promotion of Florio to chairman of Condé Nast in Chapter 23, she questions in hindsight whether any of the staff understood “that this marked the end of life as we knew it.” Reichl describes herself as “a frog in a kettle of water” and Florio’s promotion as “the moment they lit the fire, turning it up so gradually I had no suspicion that Gourmet would soon be cooked” (191). This imagery creates a visceral sense of suspense early in the final section of the memoir.
In her analysis of the circumstances that led to Gourmet’s closure, Reichl identifies two primary causes: the new Condé Nast’s executives’ focus on business over creativity, and the rise of the internet, emphasizing the Changes in American Publishing in the 20th Century. Reichl writes that, when Florio was replaced by Townsend as CEO of Condé Nast, “the exuberant company he’d created vanished with it, the manic energy replaced by something sterner, sturdier, and far more predictable” (191). This passage establishes a tension between creativity, represented by the energetic, artistic Florio, and profit, represented by the more conventional Townsend. Reichl repeats this dichotomy throughout the memoir, arguing that the “strange and ebullient” Florio understood the creativity required to run Gourmet while Townsend “projected solid reliability” that reminded her of a “bland white-bread lunch” (192). Townsend’s example suggests that Condé Nast’s focus on profit over creative innovation and growth was detrimental to the future of Gourmet.
Reichl frames her conflict with Townsend over the Gourmet website as representative of the broader tension between creative excellence and commerce amid a shifting media landscape. She explicitly attributes Gourmet’s closure to Newhouse’s focus on maximizing web traffic, profit at the expense of Gourmet’s carefully curated brand ethos. Despite Reichl’s pleas, Newhouse insists that all Gourmet recipes be published on Condé Nast’s website Epicurious. Reichl is horrified to see Gourmet’s recipes “get tossed in with all the others as if there was no difference between [Gourmet] and Parade, Self” and other Condé Nast publications (208). She argues that publishing Gourmet recipes alongside recipes from magazines with less rigorous recipe testing dilutes the Gourmet brand. For Reichl, the sheer volume and lack of curation on the Epicurious website chipped away at The Connection Between Food, Emotion, and Memory, creating a less meaningful engagement with food and food writing.
Gourmet’s inability to withstand the pressures of publishing in the early internet age epitomizes Reichl’s thematic engagement with The Bittersweet Nature of Achieving Dreams. Her time at Gourmet sees both significant highs and extreme lows in her career—bringing her significant influence, prestige, and creative satisfaction, but also a weighty burden of responsibility that escalated until she no longer recognized herself or the job she’d signed up to do. The shift from print to digital created insurmountable challenges that she couldn’t ultimately overcome. For example, the cost of running the Gourmet website was unsustainable during the recession. She notes that without the revenue from recipe page ads, the Gourmet website was “a money pit that could never be solvent, a hungry maw that could never be sated, a future [they] could never quite reach” (211). As a result, the loss of both the magazine and her position at the helm brings Reichl a bittersweet sense of frustration, shock, and relief.
Despite the challenges of digital publishing, Reichl also acknowledges the internet as a net positive for the food community. She argues that “cooks embraced the internet from the very start,” and identifies two concrete benefits for home chefs: “the ease of googling an ingredient and finding dozens of different ways to use it” and “the ability to comment on a recipe and warn other cooks away from a dud or to suggest alternative methods.” In addition, as a result of these benefits, “instant communities sprang up” for chefs online (207). Reichl also indicates that the internet had concrete benefits for the staff at Gourmet, who were able to develop “crazy recipes for ingredients that would never have made it into the magazine” (211) and publish articles that would not be published in print. As a result of the internet, Reichl suggests, “for the first time we had the luxury of space” (211). Her belief in the endless creative possibilities a digital platform afforded the Gourmet staff and the vision they had for embracing those opportunities casts the closure of Gourmet as a tragic tale—one that could have been avoided had they been given more time and space by Condé Nast to act on that vision.
Unlock all 46 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs