Ruth was the restaurant critic for the LA Times, then moved to the NY Times where a bad review from Ruth could shutter a restaurant. From there she joined Gourmet Magazine as editor in chief for ten years until it closed in 2009. She has written 12 books, including several cookbooks, five memoirs and two novels. The Paris Novel is her second novel. And it will make you lust for 1980’s Paris.

In The Paris Novel, a young woman named Stella has had a difficult start to life in Manhattan due to her deeply narcissistic and sexy mother Celia and a predatory older man named Mortimer. To cope with her traumatic upbringing, Stella lives a very controlled, friendless, joyless existence. But all that changes when Celia dies unexpectedly and her will orders Stella to go to Paris for reasons undisclosed.

Read some highlights from my talk with Ruth below. They have been edited for brevity. You can listen to our full interview on my podcast Elena Meets the Author wherever you listen to podcasts. So, find it, subscribe to it. And thank you.

Hello Ruth, welcome. Your novel is an enchanting love letter to the world’s most romantic city where the simple, sensual pleasures of life – food, wine, fashion, art, and architecture abound. It’s also a novel with intriguing characters some made up like the loveable octogenarian Jules, others real, like the late writer James Baldwin and the famous Michelin star chef Marc Meneau. When did you first fall in love with Paris?

My parents took me to Paris for the first time when I was 10. And I have loved it ever since.

Your mother was not a talented cook. In your memoir Tender at the Bone, you wrote that she was a bit dangerous in the kitchen. As a child you had to warn guests not to eat the casserole. Can you tell us where your love of food came from?

My first taste memory is in my highchair. My mother put something in my mouth, and it tasted vile. I spit it out. And then my mother takes a bite, and a puzzled look came over her face. What’s wrong with you, she asked. I knew in that moment that my mother and I did not taste the same things and that she was dangerous. From that moment I took a tiny first taste of everything to see if it was going to kill me. The first story in Tender is the Bone is called Queen of Mold. It’s about how she hosted an engagement party for my brother and put 26 guests in the hospital for food poisoning. I quickly learned to push her out of the kitchen. It was not a game. It was survival.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

There’s a chapter in my memoir Save Me the Plums where I go into a vintage clothing store in Paris and try on this dress, which transforms me completely. I became a fabulous creature who I never imagined I could be. I desperately wanted that dress. The sales lady said, This is your dress. How much is it? I asked. And when she said 6,000, I didn’t buy it. After the memoir was done, my editor said, I love that little black dress chapter so much. Could you imagine a novel where the character does buy the dress? And the moment she said that the book pretty much came to me fully formed.

I read that you chose to set the novel in the early 1980’s because you had firsthand knowledge of the restaurant scene then.  Can you tell us about that?

(In the early 1980’s) I was dirt poor, living in a commune in Berkeley, writing about restaurants. In 1984 the LA Times asked me to be their restaurant critic. It was the first time I was not freelance. I get to the LA Times and ask my boss, what is my expense account limit? And he said, we’ll let you know when you’ve gone over it. I had never been to a three-star restaurant in France. And so, I thought, ok, if I have an unlimited expense account, I’m going to Paris and eat in three-star restaurants. It’s ridiculous to be a restaurant critic for a major newspaper and never having eaten in a great French restaurant. All the meals in the novel are meals I actually ate in 1984.

What’s your favorite home cooked meal?

This time of year, summer, pasta with fresh tomato sauce. Just the smell of the sauce cooking is total comfort to me. When you’re a restaurant critic, your tastes get simpler and simpler. A roast chicken is perfect to me, a perfectly poached egg, heaven.

I’m lucky. I live in the Hudson Valley. I’m surrounded by farmers. Most of my food is locally grown and I eat with the seasons.

I think that’s what the American food revolution was really about. Julia Child came and told us that technique would make you into a great cook. You could go to the supermarket and make a great meal. Alice Waters said, no you cannot make great food without great products. It’s not about technique. It’s about getting really good fresh food. And that had a huge impact on me. In my childhood you could not buy a great tomato or a great strawberry.

Thank you so much Ruth.

August 2024

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Luckily for me, LAS founder Kate Gordon

answered my prayers with an  on-line site which is both informative and entertaining. If you want a quick fix- go to LAS Loves and see what Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dancing to at the Louvre in Paris, or what Wes Anderson and his partner author/costume designer Juman Malouf have selected as their top pix at the  Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.

If you want to go deeper – like I did recently after seeing “Obsession: Nudes by Schiele, Klimt and Picasso” at the Met Breuer,

LAS has five minute videos on specific artists, artworks, city tours and more. Pay a yearly, monthly or even a daily pass fee and you can watch over a 100 short videos hosted by screen-friendly art historians.

I  Beamed Me Up Scotty to  Vienna where LAS’s art lecturer Richard Stemp told me what to see, how to get there and where to get the tastiest  slice of Sacher torte, not to mention a few artistic tidbits about Hitler.

To complement the Vienna tour,  I watched LAS’s videos on Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and Egon Schiele’s Nude Self Portrait, Grimacing. Both Klimt- a very modern painter of fin de siècle Vienna and Egon Schiele,  the scandalous and hugely talented painter, died in 1918. Schiele was just 28 and Klimt 55.

As it’s  the centennial anniversary of their deaths there are shows galore, (7 this year) including one about bad boys  Schiele/Basquiat at the Foundation Louis Vuitton now in Paris

and   Klimt/Schiele at the Royal Academy next month (November) in London.

If you can’t beam yourself up to Vienna, Paris, London or any major European capital for that matter, LAS’s videos are the next best thing to being there.

October, 2018

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She observes how Parisian waiters seemingly overnight started addressing her as Madame. What happened to Mademoiselle? And even in full hair and makeup, strolling the streets of Paris, Druckerman could tell men would appraise her and conclude:

I would sleep with her but only if doing so required no effort whatsoever.

The book touches on sex – her husband didn’t want a watch for his 40^th, he wanted a ménage à trois,  what to wear, friendship, how to say no and a whole host of funny and wise observations and tips for us Madames. Three personal Druckerman faves:

You know you’re in your forties when you don’t want to be with the cool people anymore: you want to be with your people.

You’re surprised that someone is flirting with you. You had written yourself off too soon.

And the first commandment:

Never wave at someone while wearing short sleeves.’

Here is an excerpt of my Q&A with Druckerman. The rest can be read here on writer’s site 26.

You say that often you don’t know the point of a decade until you are through it. Can you sum up what the point of the forties is?  

The forties are the decade when you finally become who you are…or else. There’s a showdown between your aspirational and your actual selves. Hopefully, your actual self wins. And the forties are “real life” – that future that we’ve supposedly been preparing for.

You have so many laugh-out-loud sections in your book. I promptly would read them aloud to my 20-year-old daughter who didn’t find them quite as hysterical and on-point as I did (Give her 20 years). Which are your personal top five discoveries about hitting 40 and why?

You know you’re in your forties when…

You can tell when something is ridiculous.

You’ve discovered cellulite on your arms.

You sometimes wake up hungover even when you’ve had nothing to drink.

You no longer blame your parents for your flaws.

Forty somethings tend to be less neurotic than younger people, which allows them to take in more information about others.  I think of the forties as a journey from “everyone hates me” to “they don’t really care.”

 What would you like your tombstone to say?

Correction: She’s still alive

PS Not to be all about me (it’s so hard!) but after reading Druckerman’s book I quickly added her alongside Nora Ephron and Anne Lamott as one of my favorite writers on my site’s About Page.

Buy the book!

September 2018

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Who doesn’t love a touch of glamour, plenty of backstage access and visuals, plus some intriguing background from Harper’s Editor Justine Picardie?

Shot over six months, Waldman captures not just the breathtaking clothes, models and star power behind the $12 billion dollar brand, but the personalities that make it all possible.

Part One of the documentary focuses on the fashion house’s colourful past when Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ reclaimed Paris as the fashion capital after WWII.

The visionary designer died unexpectantly at 52, just ten years after establishing the brand, leaving his 21 year old genius protegé Yves Saint Laurent to take the helm. Picardie is full of insights about Saint Laurent, as well as subsequent creative directors – including enfant terrible John Galliano –

Each left  their personal mark on the fashion house over the next several decades.

Part Two looks at Dior today,  following Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri as she rushes to prepare for her debut show at the Rodin Museum with only a few week’s notice.

Unlike her intense Belgian predecessor, the Italian Chiuri seems to take the pressure in stride. With cropped dyed blonde hair, baggy jeans nipped at the waist with a big belt, sneakers and an infectious laugh, Chiuri is a joy to behold, a woman at ease in her job.

I like a fairy tale, I love a fairy tale, laughs Dior’s first-ever female creative director.

Chiuri jokes and smiles a lot on camera, especially  with her 20-year old daughter and muse Rachele.

Dior’s head seamstress is equally charming. Asked whether she’d ever like to wear one of the couture dresses she spends hours making, she replies,

No, they are for princesses. I am of  ‘le terroir’ (the earth)

The documentary captures every level and occupation that make the brand what it is from the fourth generation family member who heads Dior Fragrance’s jasmine-picking operation in Grasse, France to the Danish model who reads One Hundred Years of Solitude between fittings to the boss, not Springsteen but Bernard Arnault – France’s richest man who controls Dior through his stake in LVMH.

Perhaps most compelling is Waldman’s footage of the real boss – Anna Wintour, who Waldman was told he could not film.

Undeterred, the director learned surreptitiously  that Wintour was visiting Dior for a private viewing. Waldman and his camera man hid in the atelier above the showroom. Waldman held the camera man’s hips steady as the latter dangled from the rafters above the showroom grasping his heavy equipment trying clandestinely to film the unsuspecting Wintour. He catches her without her signature dark glasses, smiling and perhaps most coup-worthy, taking two chocolates.

This is my lunch, Wintour apparently told an assistant.

Get it on film first, ask for permission later – Waldman’s winning strategy.

February, 2017

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or decide ‘Man in Mud’ needs my Girl in Boots (Thomas Schutte, much appreciated), I couldn’t stop snapping.

Kelly Green and Kate – Ellsworth Kelly, you’re a star.

Some things are hard to pose in front of (kind of annoying, but whatever) like starchitect Frank Gehry’s model of the building.  I decided the maquette is cool enough to merit a standalone.

Ditto Eliasson’s reflecting Grotto.

Hey, what am I thinking?! Reflecting?

Gehry’s genius glass creation and civic-minded Bernard Arnault’s passion for art have made Paris even more wonderful – more modern, astounding and breath-taking. This is a must-see for those who get inspired by architecture, design and art.  For the narcissists among us (those with toned right arm biceps), you must go fully charged and flash those pearly whites.

February, 2015

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