The final R....

Now for the other “R”, in fact a couple of them. After finishing our meal at Central Michel Richard, we walked a couple of short blocks to the Baird Auditorium in the Natural History Museum on the mall for a Smithsonian Resident Associates program featuring Ruth Reichl. Alert readers will remember that she is the last person to be editor of Gourmet Magazine, as it was folded during her stewardship. The program was entitled “Ruth Reichl Dishes” or at least that was what was on the ticket. Seemed like it was missing something.

Anyway, it was sort of the same deal as the Lee Brothers were last week, but not as heavily leaning toward marketing any particular book. The “moderator” was Joe Yonan, a food writer for the Post, and he sort of lobbed questions and she took off. Topics ranged all over the place. She spent some time talking about the closing of the magazine, which she said was sad (applause, applause), but ultimately a business decision. Gourmet cost a ton to produce, sending reporters all over the world for shoots, many test kitchens, featured luxury advertising, etc., plus she quoted some ad page metrics that showed Bon Apetit kicked their whatever. Yes, she acknowledged that it was a bible, but she understood it. She said she was not part of the decision, they just informed her, and she was as surprised as everybody else. She is big on local food and educating kids about real food, saying many children believe orange juice comes from a box that grows on trees. She applauded Jamie Oliver for his efforts in that direction. She talked about her days as a restaurant critic as well. She sincerely believes that anonymity is required, and said her usual experience was to take a group of 3 or 4 friends, with the rules that everybody could eat whatever they wanted, just not the same thing, and required at least 3, but preferably 5 courses. Sometimes she took notes under the table, sometimes just remembered and spent hours after the meal recording everything she could think of. There was also a lot of talk about her mother, a continuing subject in her writings.

For the most part I thought she had intelligent things to say, and had a pretty down to earth attitude about most things. Mr. Yonan noted at the end that she is a great “tweeter” and urged everybody to be her friend or whatever you are on Twitter. Apparently there is an alternate ego also, with a nom de plume of “Ruth Bourdain” that responds to her tweets, turning them into pretty profane postings. She doesn’t know who the person is, thinks it’s female, but doesn’t care.

Again, it was an entertaining way to spend an hour or so, you learn some things, laugh at others, but it’s nice to see some of these people you only see in print in person. I think she’s okay.

We didn’t stay for the inevitable book signing dance this time, instead we made good on our promise to return to the first “R”, and went back to Central for dessert. This was around 8:30 and all tables were filled or spoken for, so we sat on the bar side where we were assured we could get dessert. Again, prompt, efficient service from the bar waiter provided a little menu card with the selections available. Again the “playfulness” of Michel was evident with offerings of a Banana Split ($12); Michel’s Chocolate Bar, or Apple Pan Dowdy. There were also more classic options such as Crème Brŭlée and Cheesecake. Still feeling a bit stuffed with Lamb Shank, I went for a chocolate mousse, MFO took a single scoop of malted vanilla ice cream, and our friend fearlessly tried the chocolate lava cake a la mode. Welcomed coffee was brought to the table and shortly our desserts arrived, delivered by our original waiter who had urged us to come back. A nice touch. Well, my thought of a nice light delicate little dessert turned out to be a rather large bowl (bigger than a softball) of pretty dense chocolate mousse with a delicious layer of strawberry “jam” in the bottom of the bowl, and some little coffee bean sized beads scattered on top. More chocolate. I couldn’t eat the whole thing. The lava cake oozed a rich chocolate ganache (?), with only MFO getting off on the “light” side.
Thus concluded an evening of “R”s and we climbed in the Momster and headed back to Southern Maryland. A very nice evening and experience with Reichl and Richard. Now I want to go to the top, Citronelle!

Where we would certainly be

DFD..

Oh, MS. Reichl’s name was pronounced: Ri-chel with emphasis on the Ri part…(soft “h”).