I am not sure now what inspired me to pick up this book originally for it has been in my reading pile for awhile. From the dust jacket flaps.Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise Book Review She writes, Every restaurant is a theater, even the modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. As Reichl metes out her critical stars, she gives a remarkable account of how one's outer appearance can influence one's inner character. She becomes Molly the school marm, Chloe the seductress, and Brenda the downtown earth mother-and imagine the complexities when she dines out as Miriam, her own mother. As she puts on her disguises, she finds herself changed not just superficially but in character. When restaurateurs learn to watch for Molly, Reichl buys another wig and becomes someone else, and then someone else again, from a chic interior decorator to an eccentric redhead on whom her husband - both disconcertingly and reassuringly-develops a terrible crush. The result: Reichl's famous double review, first as she ate there as Molly and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, New York Times food critic. Molly is duly ignored, mishandled and condescended to by the high-power staff at Le Cirque. She takes to the assignment with astonishing ardor, and thus Molly Hollis, the retired high school teacher from Birmingham, Michigan, nouveau riche from her husband's real estate speculation, is born. She dons a frumpy blond wig and an off-season beige Armani suit, and on the advice of a friend - an acting coach with a Pygmalion complex-she starts to assemble her new character's backstory.

What's a critic in search of the truth to do? And so begin Reichl's adventures in deception. Managers offer cash bonuses for advance notice of her visits and roll out the red carpet whether she likes it or not.

Reichl knows that to be a good restaurant critic you have to be anonymous, but when she signs up to be the most important restaurant critic in the country, her picture is posted in every four-star, low-star, and no-star kitchen in town. She throws back the curtain on the sumptuously appointed stages of the epicurean world to reveal the comic absurdity, artifice and excellence there, giving us (along with some of her favorite recipes and reviews) her remarkable reflections on role playing and identity. The author's delicious and readable account of her experience undercover in her position as food critic for The New York Times.

Garlic and sapphires book