Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,53

the time. They send their most talented kids to stage with other chefs so they can gain experience.”

Giulio shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“What an amazing world you live in. I’m used to fashion people. Do you think Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan would even be in the same room together? Food people are a different species.”

This was, of course, before the #MeToo moment tore down the curtain and exposed the ugliness behind the kitchen door. How much did we know? I’d been writing articles since the seventies about the rise of the woman chef, and I’d heard the stories about the old days. But I’d thought that was behind us.

Still, if I’m being honest, I have to admit that working women everywhere accepted casual misogyny. We were so accustomed to taking what men dished out that we thought it was up to us to find ways to deflect the advances of bosses and co-workers without hurting their feelings. As someone who spent many years in restaurants as a waitress, cook, and writer, I can’t say that the chefs I met were any worse than the men I encountered in publishing or the art world. In retrospect I feel like a coward for having put up with any of that, but it was what we all considered the way of the world. I hope my granddaughters will live in a better one.

At the time, my only thought was that Giulio was a quick study; in one night he’d intuited everything that enchanted me about the restaurant world. When I first started writing, there were only a handful of us—men and women—who were interested in food and wine, but we felt we were in it together. There had been no boundaries, no distinction between writers and chefs, and I’d felt part of a close community intent on improving the way America eats. Back in the seventies the food world was so amorphous that, when I was reporting a long piece about the opening of Michael’s Restaurant in Santa Monica, Michael McCarty had asked, seriously, if I had any money to invest in his restaurant. I didn’t, of course, but it was a sign of how loosely the lines were drawn.

All that changed when I became the restaurant critic of The New York Times. I didn’t know any New York chefs and I couldn’t get to know them. I was the enemy, the person whose picture hung behind the swinging kitchen doors with WANTED written across the bottom in giant letters.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them. But I was very happy to be home.

WHEN LAURIE MENTIONED, WITH STUDIED casualness, that she had thought of the perfect person to replace her if the time should ever come, I was completely unsuspecting.

“Who?” A good manager, after all, needs a contingency plan.

“John Willoughby. Do you know him?”

I’d met the editor of Cook’s Illustrated at least a dozen times, but I could hardly say I knew him. “You sure?” I said. Tall and striking, Willoughby had bright-silver hair, startlingly blue eyes, and the cool elegance of a New England Brahmin. “He always kind of frightens me.”

“I can see why.” Laurie, aware of my deep aversion to change, did not mention why she had brought this up. “But I taught a food-writing class with him, and beneath that aristocratic manner is a smart man with a generous soul. The students were all in love with him. You should invite him to New York and spend some time with him.”

Why not? I thought, putting in the call. It would be good to be prepared, should we ever have an opening. Willoughby, however, did not seem thrilled when I asked him to come for an interview. He agreed to make the trip from Boston, but I had the distinct impression that he had little interest in a new job. “I’ve been longing to visit the Condé Nast cafeteria,” he admitted.

Si would have been pleased; this was exactly why he’d lured Frank Gehry to 4 Times Square. The cafeteria might masquerade as the company canteen, but Si had wanted to create New York’s most exclusive club.

It was a singularly brilliant move, and it worked exactly as planned. The cafeteria got so much press that the whole world yearned to visit Gehry’s soaring space with its sinuous glass panels and curving titanium walls. The fact that an invitation was required made it that much more enticing.

For prospective employees, the cafeteria was always an