Food maven Ruth Reichl: 'I'm starving!'

NEW YORK — Starving seems an unlikely state for Ruth Reichl, one of the leading ladies of the American food scene.

Yet on a recent Friday, the post-lunch fare was slim in the cafeteria of the Conde Nast skyscraper in Times Square — home to Gourmet magazine, which she heads. "I'm starving! Maybe they can make me something in our kitchen?" she asked.

But even in the culinary magazine's eight test kitchens, the pickings were paltry on a Friday afternoon — an avocado creme brulee and avocado marshmallows that two cooks were just finishing. Reichl dove in anyway. "Mmmmmmm!" she exclaimed after pushing a spoonful of the creme brulee into her mouth.

It was a moment that offered a glimpse into the work that has won Reichl and Gourmet a combined nine James Beard Foundation award nominations this year.

Reichl has been in the culinary spotlight for decades, first as a food critic for the Los Angeles Times, later for The New York Times. She became Gourmet's executive editor in 1999.

Along the way, she's written three food-centric memoirs — "Tender at the Bone;" "Garlic and Sapphires;" and "Comfort Me with Apples" — and served as host to Gourmet's public television program, "Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie."

But her latest project, another memoir, diverges from food. The topic is Reichl's mother, a woman who in her previous books came off as neurotic, frustrated and a hopeless cook hampered by "taste-blindness," says Reichl.

Much of the material in the new 112-page "Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way," is drawn from her mother's letters and diaries. Reading them was a rich, defining experience for Reichl, giving her what she calls "a second chance" to get to know her mother, who died in 1991 at age 83.

For instance, Miriam Reichl desperately wanted to be a doctor, but her family pushed her to get married. Her father told her in one letter, "you're going to have to deal with the fact that you're homely, and it's going to be hard to find a husband," says Reichl.

That's why, she says, her mother encouraged her to pursue whatever work she loved instead of rushing into marriage.

"She said that 'no matter what, I am going to make my daughter feel like that's not important, so she doesn't have to go through what I went through,'" says Reichl, citing various entries in her mother's writings.