Books: Ruth Reichl and The United States of Arugula

Ruth Reichl, currently the editor-in-chief of Gourmet, is my current favorite food writer. She makes everything she tastes vivid and makes me wish I could taste as well as she can. Her three books about her life as a food critic (one, two, three) are funny and occasionally touching, but the focus is always on food and the wonderful way in which it can transport someone. She started out as a hippie in Berkeley and did food reviews because she loved food, and worked her way up to the LA Times and then the New York Times.

The United States of Arugula traces the “food revolution” from its early days of imported French chefs in New York City to the current spate of celebrity chefs such as Rachael Ray and Mario Batali. This is a great book if you love food but want to know more about why people focus so much on organic & locally grown foods, or why the Food Network is a viable business. It starts with French chefs and Julia Child and quickly moves to James Beard, who, though he did publish several cookbooks, perhaps did more for the revolution by drawing the revolutionaries together under one roof, literally and figuratively. USA also talks about the rise of specialty suppliers such as Niman Ranch in California (whose quality I can personally attest to) and Peet’s and Starbucks (which was started by one of Peet’s cofounders). It also talks about suppliers such as Zabar’s, which focus on a wide variety of artisan goods. If you’d like to know more about the rise of foodie culture in the United States, I can do no better than to recommend this book. If you can, please comment.

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