Comfort Me with Apples picks up in 1978; Ruth is still living in a commune with her husband, Doug, but she's decided to put down her chef's toque and embark on a career as a restaurant critic. After a bumpy start, at the end of her very first on-the-job dinner, her credit card is unceremoniously rejected, she is soon visiting restaurants all over the world in search of a meal to write home about.
Ruth Reichl's pursuit of good food and good company leads her to New York and China, France, and Los Angeles. She encounters world-famous chefs such as Wolfgang Puck and the three-star aristocracy of French cuisine, and her accounts of these meetings range from the madcap to the sublime. From a transformative lunch with M. F. K. Fisher to a friendship with Alice Waters, Reichl lovingly re-creates all her memorable meals in such succulent detail that listeners will yearn for truffles in Provence and shrimp in Beijing.
