Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

Prominent chef, food writer, and editor Ruth Reichl’s 1998 memoir Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table incorporates recipes with narrative and commentary to create a portrait of Reichl’s coming of age. Reichl’s sometimes-chaotic childhood with a mother who had untreated bipolar disorder made her into an independent and rebellious young person determined to distance herself from her parents’ world. Her adolescence and young adulthood in New York; Montreal; Berkeley, California; and Ann Arbor, Michigan brought her into contact with friends and colleagues from all walks of life. This memoir explores Reichl’s early passions for both art and food and shows how the people around her shaped her understanding of both life and cooking as an artform.

This study guide refers to the 2010 Random House Trade Paperbacks edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, mental illness, sexual harassment, child abuse, and substance use.

Language Note: This study guide utilizes the word “Black” in discussions of race, where the original text uses “Negro,” which was commonly used in the United States during Reichl’s early lifetime but is now outdated. Reichl also uses the offensive slur “Gypsy” to refer to both Romani people and a bohemian visual and cultural aesthetic. This slur originated from the misconception that Romani people, an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, had Egyptian heritage. These terms will only appear in this guide in the form of direct quotations.

Summary

Ruth Reichl’s mother, Miriam, had bipolar disorder that was untreated during Reichl’s childhood. She experienced extreme mood swings, and her behavior was unpredictable. Reichl describes her as self-absorbed and unable to understand the effects of her behavior on others. One way in which this manifested was in her cooking: She was oblivious to the quality of what she served and often made others ill with her food. At one memorable party for her son Rob’s engagement, she succeeded in giving dozens of people serious cases of food poisoning. Reichl believes that growing up this way encouraged her to focus her attention on food and to study the ways in which food choices intersect with personality.

Another relationship that taught Reichl powerful lessons about food was her relationship with Alice, her Aunt Birdie’s housekeeper. Alice was meticulous about sourcing her ingredients and was methodical and precise in the kitchen. She let Reichl help her cook often, and Reichl learned that not only could good cooking be a source of comfort and happiness to the people who ate it, but the process of cooking good food could also be grounding and calming to the cook.

One of the Reichl family’s maids, Mrs. Peavey, also influenced Reichl’s understanding of food and life. Mrs. Peavey worked for the family when Reichl was eight. She had grown up wealthy, and she taught Reichl the prestige associated with European foods. She also taught her that cooking is an act of imagination and advised Reichl to take responsibility for herself and not let other people control her.

For three years beginning when she was twelve, Reichl attended a boarding school in Montreal. Her mother sent her there against her will to learn French, but even after attaining fluency, Reichl elected to return to the school. She had made a good friend, whom she bonded with over her knowledge of food, and felt accepted among her classmates. It was only the lure of attending an American high school that eventually brought Reichl home to New York.

Reichl’s mother moved the family to Connecticut, but Miriam soon grew bored in the suburbs. She and Reichl’s father, Ernst, started spending weekdays in New York, leaving Reichl on her own for most of the week. Reichl used her cooking abilities to make a new crowd of friends, whom she entertained at endless parties in her parents’ home while her parents were away. She began drinking with them and developed a terrible crush on a boy named Tommy, with whom she eventually entered a relationship.

When Reichl was 18, Tommy joined the navy. Devastated, Reichl began drinking even more. Before entering the University of Michigan that fall, she worked in France as a summer camp counselor. There, she and a fellow counselor, Danielle, spent time with a local cheesemaker who stressed the importance of carefully chosen ingredients and taught the two girls to make an exceptional raspberry tart.

At the University of Michigan, Reichl’s roommate was a young woman named Serafina, who introduced herself as the child of French Indian Guyanese parents. Reichl and Serafina both enjoyed cooking and had similar political beliefs. They grew very close and continued to live together throughout their undergraduate years, constantly feeding a rotating crowd of friends in their small apartment.

Reichl began working at L’Escargot, a very upscale French restaurant that had recently opened in Ann Arbor. The restaurant did not find an audience and closed after a year, but in the time she worked there Reichl learned important lessons about the presentation of food, the match needed between food and its audience, and the workings of the restaurant industry.

In the summer between Reichl’s junior and senior years, she worked as a social worker in the South Bronx, commuting from her parents’ Manhattan apartment each day. Since her parents were away for the summer, she had Serafina staying with her, and her friend Mac—a Black man—also visited from Ann Arbor. When she brought Black clients over to use the bathroom one day, the doorman called her parents to ask that her Black friends use the service elevator. Reichl refused this request.

Despite her belief in equality, Reichl struggled to fully understand Serafina’s experiences as a nonwhite student. When, in their senior year, Serafina learned that she was adopted and was Black, not French and Indian, Serafina withdrew from their friendship and began spending most of her time with Black friends. Reichl was surprised and pleased when Serafina suggested a trip to North Africa following their graduation. The two explored Tunis and Algiers and learned a great deal about the local food cultures, but Serafina struggled with conflicting emotions when locals in Tunis reacted to her as if she were one of their own.

Reichl decided to stay at the University of Michigan for graduate school, studying art history. Early in her program, she met an artist named Doug by chance when he stopped by her apartment looking for its former occupant. Quickly, Reichl and Doug developed a romantic relationship and began living together. Gradually, Reichl realized that one of the things that attracted her to Doug was his similarity to her father. Reichl was jealous of how instantly close Doug and Ernst became.

After Reichl and Doug married, they took a protracted honeymoon to Europe. They stayed in Greece with a former professor, toured Spain and Portugal, and then met up with the professor again in Italy. Reichl took advantage of this time to thoroughly explore the food cultures of each of the four countries and ate some of the most delicious food of her life.

When they returned to the United States, Reichl and Doug moved into an apartment in lower Manhattan. From this home base, Reichl explored the diverse food cultures of the area’s ethnic neighborhoods, learning many new recipes and techniques. She also had her first experience as a cooking teacher when an acquaintance named Jerry asked Reichl to teach her how to cook. Another acquaintance, Izzy, told her that she should write a book about cooking, which Reichl took as a joke—but Izzy assured her he was serious.

Eventually, Reichl could no longer stand living so close to her mother, whose neediness, mercurial temper, and manipulations started giving Reichl panic attacks. Reichl and Doug moved to Berkeley, California. There, they lived in a commune with close friends, and Reichl learned how to grow her own food, gather ingredients from unconventional sources, and craft flexible vegetarian recipes. She took a job at The Swallow, a worker-owned restaurant, and by so doing, became a co-owner. Reichl loved the hard work of cooking in this highly regarded restaurant, but when a customer with mental illness began harassing her constantly, she decided it might be time to leave.

In 1977, Reichl gave a series of popular cooking lessons and demonstrations at Artpark, an art festival that featured Doug. She had to cut her commitment short, however, to help her mother with the party for Birdie’s 100th birthday. It was a huge effort to bring order to Miriam’s chaotic plans, but the party was a great success, and Reichl realized how much Birdie and Alice had done to help prepare her for the world in a way that Miriam could not.

That fall, Reichl was offered her first job as a restaurant critic. Her editor was pleased with her writing, and she soon had steady work. She felt very well prepared to analyze food and restaurant service because of all of the mentors she had had in her life, but she felt underprepared when it came to judging wine. She made friends with a wine seller she respected and traveled with him to France on a tasting tour, where she learned a great deal about the production and selection of fine wines.

Reichl began to struggle with panic attacks and phobias again. After meeting and becoming friends with Marion Cunningham, however, she was inspired by Marion’s friendship and strength. Marion had recovered from her own phobias and an alcohol addiction to become a great food critic. Reichl realized that she, too, could overcome her fears; instead of obsessing about becoming like Miriam, she could focus on her dreams and her future and become whomever she wanted to be.