Save Me the Plums

“The same logic had compelled her to bring home a can of fried grasshoppers, a large sea urchin with dangerously sharp spines, and a flashy magenta cactus flower.”

In the early chapters of the memoir, Reichl establishes her authority as a food writer by demonstrating her lifetime of experience with food. In this passage, Reichl’s mother encourages her early interest in food by buying a series of obscure ingredients. Reichl emphasizes the formative nature of these early food experiences, introducing the text’s thematic exploration of The Connection Between Food, Memory, and Emotion.

“I might be the restaurant critic of The New York Times, but at heart I was still a sixties rebel with a deep mistrust of corporate ways.”

Despite the memoir’s emphasis on her food expertise, Reichl presents herself as an outsider at Gourmet—the opposite of the corporate, conservative attitude she anticipates at the magazine. Ultimately, Reichl’s arc sees her becoming the face of the magazine itself by the end of the memoir.

“In its heyday, the newspaper was known as ‘the velvet coffin,’ a workplace so relaxed that reporters sometimes spent an entire year on a single story. Condé Nast, on the other hand, was a notorious pressure cooker filled with the most aggressive people in the business. Was I ready for that?”

Although the focus of the memoir is Reichl’s transition from food critic to magazine editor, it also serves as an examination of Changes in American Publishing in the 20th Century. This passage uses the metaphors of a “velvet coffin” and a “pressure cooker” to capture the contrast between two media giants: The Los Angeles Times and Condé Nast, the media company that owns Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.