The Ruth of the matter

WHAT’S COOKING? Reichl hits the kitchen—and ponders deeper culinary matters.

Even for a magazine editor, former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl (who celebrated her 60th birthday last week) has been rather busy lately. The editor-in-chief of Gourmet has taken to moonlighting as a producer of the PBS series Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, which features personal food stories from around the world and a brief cooking segment led by Reichl herself. The show, which just began its second season, snagged a venerated James Beard Award in 2007 thanks to its colorful, almost-chaotically shot stories from cooks, farmers and artisans in India, China, Vietnam and elsewhere. We asked Reichl to explain why culinary television woos us into a stupor, and how she’s handling the transition from print to tube.

What do you think of the term foodie? It seems to be a polarizing one.
Well, you know, I used to hate it. I think it was coined by Paul Levy, who cowrote a book, The Official Foodie Handbook, in the ’80s maybe? And in those days it had a pejorative bent. But now the world of food has become so much a part of popular culture, and to me, foodies is the word that embraces that, which says that it has come into the culture, and that there are those of us who see the world “food first.” Nobody’s ever come up with a better term for people who are obsessed with food.

When you did your cooking demo during your Southern Indian food segment, you explained in detail what a tandoor oven was, what a raita was and so on. It made me wonder who your main audience is; are they foodies or not?
I think we’re trying for both. Our hope is that people will sample the show and be pulled in.

Is it difficult for you to speak in such plain terms about things that you know so much about?
No. I mean, that’s communication—as a restaurant critic, that’s sort of what you’re trained to do. You think, How do you seduce people into wanting to taste things they’ve never tasted before?

Right. In Garlic and Sapphires, your memoir of your time as a critic, you talk about your review of Kurumazushi in 1995, in which you had to sell people not only on the restaurant, but on the crazy concept of eating raw fish.
Yeah, and I think a big part of what your function is—what my function as a restaurant critic is, and our function in the magazine—is to present this wonderful world of food to people and pull them into it. So, you know, when I wrote that sushi piece, part of it was, How do you teach people something without being didactic? How do you do it without being like, “And this is how you eat sushi”?

Why do you think cooking shows are so popular?
I think it’s part of the DNA of human beings. We are a cooking animal. What differentiates us from all the other animals is that we cook and they don’t. And I think that there’s a reason why, as more and more of us don’t see our mothers cooking every night, we turn to the TV to watch people cooking. I think it’s soothing. You look at the Barefoot Contessa or Lydia Bastianich, and it’s just like watching your mother cooking.

I imagine that you get the whole “What’s your favorite restaurant in New York?” thing all the time at parties.
[Wearily] Um, yup.

Well, what could someone ask you that would completely floor you? Like, are you a wrestling fan?
[Laughing] Oh, I wish I were; it would be so interesting. Although I have to say I know much more about football than I would like to, because my husband is a rabid football fan, and it’s been so horrible.

Okay, so what is your favorite restaurant in New York right now?
At the moment, like everyone else in New York, I’m completely obsessed with Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and I really like Pearl Oyster Bar.

The lobster roll?
No. I like a bucket of steamers, a salad and a little lobster.

Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie airs Sundays at 4pm on WNET Channel 13.