Quick Take
- Narration: Ruth Reichl narrates her own memoir with the casual intimacy of someone telling a story over wine, technically unpolished in places, emotionally precise throughout.
- Themes: ambition and identity, the golden age of print media, food as language and memory
- Mood: Warm and elegiac, with flashes of corporate tension
- Verdict: A rich listening experience for anyone who cares about food culture, magazine journalism, or what it costs to lead something you love.
I finished Save Me the Plums on a Sunday evening with a glass of something cold and a vague sense of having read something that mattered more than I expected. I had come to it as a food book, Reichl narrating her years editing Gourmet, and it is certainly that. But somewhere in the chapters about Conde Nast’s corporate machinery and the slow realization that the magazine was going to die regardless of what she did, the book became something else: a meditation on what it means to love a thing into its best form right before you lose it.
Ruth Reichl spent years as a restaurant critic, at the Los Angeles Times, then the New York Times, before Conde Nast offered her the editorship of Gourmet. She initially declined. She was a writer, not a manager. She eventually said yes, and this is the story of what that yes cost her, gave her, and took away when the magazine was shuttered in 2009.
Our Take on Save Me the Plums
The book works on several registers simultaneously. As a portrait of a specific cultural moment, the late 1990s through the 2000s, when food went from hobbyist interest to genuine popular culture, it is invaluable. Reichl was present at the beginning of the farm-to-table movement, at the moment when chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert became cultural figures rather than professional specialists. She commissioned David Foster Wallace’s famous cruise-ship essay (published in Gourmet) and fought for the kind of ambitious long-form food writing that the magazine’s corporate owners did not always understand the value of.
As a personal narrative about a Berkeley hippie navigating the world of expense-account lunches and corporate retreats, it is frequently funny in a specifically rueful way. Reichl is honest about the seductions of the position, the travel, the chefs, the access, and equally honest about the costs to her sense of self. Her husband and son appear throughout as anchors; the chapters that involve them feel the most real.
Why Listen to Save Me the Plums
Reichl narrating her own memoir is essential to the experience. One reviewer described her style as sitting with a glass of wine telling you a story, and that is precisely right. Her voice is not the voice of a trained narrator, there are moments of irregularity, places where the emotional weight shifts her rhythm, but these are features, not flaws. The chapter on 9/11, which several reviewers singled out as particularly moving, achieves its effect partly because Reichl’s delivery in that section carries the weight of actual memory rather than performance.
The recipes embedded in the text are an unusual touch for a memoir narrated on audio; Reichl reads them with the same casual care she brings to the prose, so they feel like part of the story rather than an appendix.
What to Watch For in Save Me the Plums
The book is most vivid in its first half, when the Gourmet world is new and Reichl is still discovering its dimensions. The later chapters, dealing with the corporate pressures and eventual closure, are more uniformly melancholy and occasionally feel compressed, as though the author was not quite ready to linger in that territory. For readers who loved Gourmet, the closure of the magazine is a genuine loss, and the book does not shy away from that; some listeners may find those sections more difficult.
The book also sits at a cultural moment, the cusp of the internet disrupting print media, that is now historical, and some of its institutional references will be clearer to readers who remember that transition firsthand.
Who Should Listen to Save Me the Plums
Food writers, food readers, and anyone who subscribed to Gourmet or followed its final years will find this essential. Magazine journalism insiders will recognize the corporate dynamics Reichl describes with wincing familiarity. Listeners who prefer tightly plotted memoir may find the discursive, anecdote-rich structure loose, this is the book of someone who thinks in flavors and associations, not in chapters with clear arcs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to know Gourmet magazine to appreciate this memoir?
No, though familiarity deepens the experience. Reichl provides enough context that the magazine’s significance is clear even to readers who never encountered it.
Are the embedded recipes useful in the audio format?
Reichl reads them as part of the narrative, so they function as texture and memory rather than practical instructions. For actual use, the print or ebook versions are more functional.
How does this compare to Reichl’s earlier memoirs like Tender at the Bone?
Save Me the Plums is more institutional and less purely personal than her earlier food memoirs. The corporate world of Conde Nast adds a new register; longtime Reichl readers will find it a distinct but complementary addition to her memoir work.
Is the 9/11 chapter difficult listening?
Several reviewers found it the most moving section of the book. It is handled with care and personal specificity rather than broad sentiment, but listeners should know it is present and substantive.
