"ruthreichl" news and stories

After nearly 69 years of good tastes, Gourmet Magazine will close after its November issue, the New York Times reports.

The magazine, owned by Conde Nast, has been published since December 1940. Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride are also slated for closure, the paper said.

"Thank you all SO much for this outpouring of support," Ruth Reichl, the magazine's editor in chief, said Monday afternoon on Twitter. "It means a lot. Sorry not to be posting now, but I'm packing. We're all stunned, sad."

The cuts come after a three-month study by McKinsey & Co., which looked at the publishing company's costs, the Times said.

In an e-mail obtained by Gawker, Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend said Gourmet will live on through television and books. "Gourmet magazine will cease monthly publication, but we will remain committed to the brand, retaining Gourmet's book publishing and television programming, and Gourmet recipes on Epicurious.com," he wrote. "We will concentrate our publishing activities in the epicurean category on Bon Appétit."

Drew Schutte, a senior vice president at Conde Nast Digital, said Gourmet.com would "remain up at least through the end of the year," Mediaite reports.

Sources tell Slashfood that staff has to be out of building by the end of day Tuesday.

Leave your thoughts about Gourmet's demise in the comments below.

[Via New York Times]

"Apple planet." Photo: leoncillo sabino, Flickr.

• All about apples -- their appeal, how to pick them and what to use them for.
• A chat with Ruth Reichl about her new 1,000-page cookbook "Gourmet Today."
• Jeff Corwin talks up his new Food Network show, "Extreme Cuisine with Jeff Corwin."
• "The Bear and Fish Family Cookbook" is a mother-daughter effort on family cooking and "modern Asian fusion."
• Toast Mexican Independence Day with a tequila-spiked El Grito.
• Use of the sweet and sticky pomegranate molasses is on the rise in kitchens.
• Campbell's is releasing 100 percent natural soups!
• Placing measured mounds of dry ingredients on a piece of waxed paper before adding them to a meal can prevent measuring mishaps.
• Recipes: Chicken and Black Garlic Linguine and Almond Date Macaroons and Curried Corn and Crab Cakes.

"First let me introduce myself. I'm Craig Claiborne, and this is Julia Child." Photo: Scanned from A Feast Made for Laughter

"And to tell the truth, I was bored with restaurant criticism. At times I didn't give a damn if all the restaurants in Manhattan were shoved into the East River and perished. Had they all served nightingale tongues on toast and heavenly manna and mead, there is just so much that the tongue can savor, so much that the human body (and spirit) can accept, and then it resists. Toward the end of my days as restaurant critic, I found myself increasingly indulging in drink, the better to endure another evening of dining out. I had become a desperate man with a frustrating job to perform." -- from 'A Feast Made for Laughter' by Craig Claiborne, New York Times Dining editor and restaurant critic, 1982

While there have thus far been no reports of departing New York Times restaurant critic and newly-minted memoirist Frank Bruni tipsily pressing ham against the windows of the Second Avenue Deli, rolling members of the Cipriani family for spare change and Bellini drippings, or skulking through the catacombs at Ninja New York, randomly alarming the goofily hooded servers, it's not as if he's going silently into that last bite.

They rarely do.

Frank Bruni is leaving the New York Times dining section. And food bloggers are freaking out.

In a world where restaurants live or die by the awarding of Bruni's stars, blogs like Eater declare this no less than an "Apocalypse." Bruni will be turning his attention to his new memoir come August, and will be a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine.

Now the hunt (and speculation) begins to locate a food critic with the ability to carry Bruni's swagger: Ryan Sutton at Bloomberg, one of the few fairly anonymous critics left in town? Perhaps the L.A. Times' S. Irene Virbila is waiting by her phone, since the Times has pulled from our rival city to the west (a la Ruth Reichl) in the past. Grub Street wonders if (gasp) a blogger will be chosen. And does anonymity, so hard to preserve in the Internet era, matter any more to Pete Wells, the dining editor at the Times?

Perhaps the most curious quote in Bill Keller's announcement is that Bruni "will be turning in his restaurant-critic credentials." Uh, could someone get us a copy of those? Is there, like, a laminated round of foie gras passed from critic to critic? Frank, just drop us a line and let us know.

[Via Diner's Journal]

Yeah, it's a teensy bit Inside Baseball for the fooderati, but we got a big kick out of seeing our favorite Gourmet staffers (Wuzzap, Terrebonne? Lookin' fresh, Knauer and Houghtaling!) in a cute 'n campy Gourmet.com video sending up Editor-In-Chief Ruth Reichl's '90s tenure as an undercover restaurant critic for the New York Times.

Reichl's penchant for wearing outlandish disguises to protect her dwindling anonymity was the underpinning of her 2005 memoir Garlic and Sapphires, but somehow we doubt even she would have the quenelles to stomp into the Four Seasons' Pool Room wearing quite this much codpiece.

[via: Gourmet.com]