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“A Frank Conversation with Bruni About Being Born Round”

When a restaurant critic from the New York Times comes out with a memoir, it’s pretty big deal. Ruth Reichl was the first to do it (Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, and Garlic and Saphires), and now comes the much-awaited memoir from departing critic Frank Bruni: Born Round, The Secret History of a Full Time Eater (Penguin Press).

The surprise about this book is that it’s not a gossipy tell-all about his life as the best-known food critic in the country. In fact, only the last chapter is dedicated to his critical eating adventures (there are some great stories tucked in there). Rather, the book is a rare, honest and intensely revealing story of decades of battling his weight with everything from fad diets to Mexican speed. It’s hilarious and at times crushingly sad as well.

The book is a also a love letter to the matriarchs in his life: his mother (whom he lost to cancer), and his grandmother, the woman who made him love food as much as he hated its effects on his waistline.  

I had a chance to chat with Bruni last week about everything from the therapeutic effect of writing a memoir, to the wars with Chodorow and McNally, where he’ll be eating now that he’s not a critic, and the restaurants he’d take his mother and grandmother to dinner if they were alive today.

Strong Buzz: Why do a memoir like this one where you open up and really pour out your soul?

Frank Bruni: I thought I had a compelling story to tell, and that many, many people who struggled to balance a love of food --- even a lust for food ---with a desire to stay reasonably trim and healthy would relate to it. My relationship with food was unusually rocky, my episodes with it extreme and my behavior sometimes in the realm of eating disorders, but the basic theme --- having your appetite run roughshod over you, the struggle to control that yearning for food and more food --- seemed to me quite universal.

Once I'd decided to tell the story, I didn't feel I should, or could, pull punches. I wanted to tell the story in the most compelling and sometimes humorous fashion possible, and that meant candor, full disclosure, specific details: all those things a journalist would demand or try to coax from a subject. The subject was me, but the principles of storytelling were the same. I shouldn't spare myself.

SB: Were you considering a more straightforward book about life as a critic?

FB: Never. The story I wanted to tell most from the start was the story of my turbulent, comical, surprising relationship with food, and how I finally made that relationship work --- how I came to terms with my appetite. I thought that story had a wider resonance and would be less insidery. But since the ironic destination in the story is an appointment as a professional eater --- as a restaurant critic --- and there are so many funny stories to tell about being a critic, I didn't want to leave that out, either. So I put it all in. You know the way a grocer talks about "giving good weight?" I wanted to give good weight to readers.

SB: Was it hard to go back and relive those experiences where you were at your heaviest? Were there parts of the book that you had to sort of put down and come back to?

FB: It was hardest to write about my mid-30s, when I gained so much weight, my worst nightmare coming true, and I retreated socially and romantically from the world. Only when those years were over did I let myself fully feel the anger (at myself) and sadness over so much prime time of life lost. Reconnecting with that anger and sadness when writing about those years was painful. It's a tough thing in life to realize you missed out on so many things and on so much potential happiness by being screwed up --- that you were foiled by your own hand --- and I still have huge regrets. Dwelling in those regrets during the writing about those years was very, very hard.

SB: I imagine writing about your mom and grandmother were bittersweet. They were amazing women.

FB: By far the most satisfying part of writing this book was paying tribute to those women. I realized quickly when thinking about doing the book and broadly plotting it out that it would give me that opportunity, and I was so, so excited about that. And by the far the aspect of the finished book that gives me the most satisfaction and pleasure is the fact that it paints, for people who never knew them, loving portraits of two wonderful women who gave me so much love and meant so much to me. When the excerpt of the book appeared in the Times with a picture of Grandma Bruni, my father and my uncles were so, so touched and moved. Grandma was this peasant immigrant who let go of a lot to move here and start a new life; as my uncle said, she would have been crazy-happy to see herself in the New York Times. I'm thrilled I could do that for her, even though she's not around to celebrate it.

SB: Did you find the experience of writing therapeutic? Speaking of therapy, did you go into therapy at all?

FB: I never went into therapy for eating problems, though I probably should have. I was in therapy once when living in Detroit, for about eight to 12 sessions, but that was to talk about my habit of ending romantic relationships at the two-month mark. At that point in time, I was relatively trim, and wasn't seeing eating as a problem, though my extreme efforts to STAY trim were indeed a problem I wasn't confronting yet.

Writing the book was intensely therapeutic. It enabled me to see and understand even more patterns of my behavior than I'd come to understand already.

SB : Okay, let's talk about the food scene here in New York. Where is it going? What will be eating next year this time? Any trends that are heading out the door that you will miss? That you are glad to see go?

FB: I want the small-plates trend, in which suddenly EVERY cuisine has some sort of never-before-discovered tapas tradition (I'm being facetious), to ebb more than it has. Enough already.

The food scene grows ever more casual and, in the latest twist, puts accomplished food in ever more unlikely, untraditional contexts, be it the Redhead, a dessert truck, an athletic stadium, etc. I think that's great.

Where I'll be eating this time next year? Restaurants more casual and affordable than the ones I frequently reviewed, for obvious reasons: I have no dining expense account anymore. I hope I'll eat frequently at Peasant and Vinegar Hill House. I like eating in wine bars like Terroir and Gottino. I like eating in pizza places like Motorino and Veloce Pizzeria, both of which have enough decent wine to fill that need and both of which are good values, in the sense that pizza can cost only so much.

SB: You recount some push-back from folks like Chodorow and McNally. Any other examples of chefs or owners who took a shot at you for a bad review? What about after you wrote about the tsunami of white wine at Ago?

FB: I never heard from the Ago folks, I'm guessing in part because they had no case to make, no counter-argument to offer. That restaurant was a flat-out sloppy experience for which there was no plausible defense, and the review detailed that pretty specifically. A server calling something a "rack of lamb veal chop," or whatever I quoted in the review? I mean, that wouldn't play as a scene in a movie comedy. It was beyond ridiculous.

SB: Other push-back?

FB: Nothing that comes instantly to mind, beyond a few distressed letters. You know, the other day I realized that the Chodorow push-back bothered me much, much less than the McNally. Chodorow, hot-headed as he is, questioned my credentials, my judgment, my method of operation: all relevant, fair-game stuff.  All stuff that's within bounds. McNally called me sexist, and the language with which the charge was originally rendered even seemed to suggest I was more generous to male chefs because of my sexual orientation. That was a meaner and lower form of argument, and way off base. You've read my book. It's a tribute to two fiercely competent women, and fiercely competent, wonderful women probably represent the lion's share of my friends. Call me incompetent, as Chodorow did. Don't call me a bigot.

SB: Did you feel like you needed to review certain restaurants (like USC/EMP) before you left office? Did you get an email from Danny after the USC review? After EMP?

FB: I didn't feel I had to review them "before I left office," per se; there are too many restaurants due or overdue reviews for any one or two of them to be put into that category, that thinking.I felt for more than two years that USC was really, really overdue a reappraisal; given its high-high profile and popularity, it's a restaurant that shouldn't go as long as it had --- what was it, something like 8 years? --- without a reappraisal. And in its case my occasional drop-ins over my tenure suggested it wasn't living up to its three stars. I felt that should be noted.

EMP just seemed to me to have risen above other three-star restaurants, and I wanted to note that.

No, I never heard from Danny Meyer after either of those reviews, nor did I expect to. There's no reason he or any restaurateur should reach out in such situations; I'm just doing my job, not doing them a favor or an unkindness. There's nothing personal about the transaction.

SB: What is the most surprising meal you had either good or bad?

FB: Wow, there are simply too many meals to riffle through to name just one, I think. And they're all so incredibly different. One meal that springs to mind is dinner at Ubuntu in Napa. It's vegetarian cuisine at an unusually high level.

SB: I particularly enjoyed your reviews because of your writing -- you do give good color as you call it in your book. The line from a Del Posto review where you said their arugula made all other arugula look like iceberg in drag is one that has stayed with me. I use it when I teach my writing class. I also loved the description of the sundae at Elizabeth. There were many times when I laughed out loud reading your reviews. Do you have any recommendations for foodies/bloggers who are yearning to be "real" food writers?  How can they make it like you have?

FB: Thank you very, very much for the compliment. I'm really grateful. Advice: I don't know. I'm very, very lucky, in the sense that I think there are many, many people who write well and vividly and there just aren't as many platforms/showcases for them as, in a perfect world, there would be. I think a writer increases her or his chances of being noticed and having some success if she or he lets loose a little bit, tries to write with some originality, doesn't merely pantomime the rhythms and approaches seen elsewhere. Be unorthodox, though not perversely and pointlessly so.

SB: I loved the piece you did about becoming a waiter up in Boston. You didn't write about that in the book. Whose idea was that? What was it like? Did it effect the way your reviewed service in restaurants? Did it change your perspective?

FB: Again, thanks. I loved writing that piece. It was my idea, and editors instantly embraced it and helped me make it happen. It was a grueling week, because I did, for the sake of gathering as much good material as possible, more shifts in a row than servers in that restaurant or other restaurants typically do. And my learning curve was so steep: I had just a week to get to a point where I was juggling five or six tables at once.

It definitely gave me a better appreciation of what servers go through, and I hope that was a sensitivity that informed reviews. In general in reviews I cut service and servers many breaks --- more than you'd probably guess or think.

SB: Will you miss your job?

FB: Yes. It's a fantastic job. It gets grueling over time, and I felt more elation and more of a sense of liberation at the end than I thought I would. But I'm guessing I'll miss it intensely at times. It's the kind of exceptional life experience I wish more people, more writers, more food writers could have. I was very lucky to have the opportunity. I'm grateful to the Times and to the many readers and bloggers and restaurateurs who put up with me.

SB: Will you make reservations in your own name now?

FB: I don't know. Probably. It would be weirder at this point to use a fake name than my real name. But I won't state my name at the start of a call, before I make the reservation inquiry. I'll say it only when asked whose name the 9:30 p.m. table should be in. I won't brandish it to get the 8 p.m. I initially asked for. This hasn't come up yet: all my post-critic eating has been done under friends' reservations or in no-reservation places. So far.

SB: Any advice for Sam Sifton?

FB: HAVE FUN. Enjoy your time at the table. If you don't, your readers won't, and you're their proxy --- you're the guide through whom they live vicariously. You actually owe them your enjoyment; there's no guilt in making sure to have a good time. That's your job.

SB: At the end of the book, in your acknowledgements you mention your mom and grandmother, two very women who meant a great deal to you. You say, we will eat again. If your mom and grandmother were still with us, where would you take them to dinner and why?

FB: I love this question. This is, seriously, one of the best and most interesting questions I've been asked in interviews about the job and book.

My grandmother didn't like restaurants, really. She seldom found cooking that she, in all her pride, felt was any better than her own, and it irked her to pay high prices for someone else's inferior (to her mind) cooking. But my grandmother loved to feel fancy; she was an immigrant from something of a peasant background in southern Italy, and certain regal rituals were consistent with her dream of what life in the New World might be like. I would have taken her to Eleven Madison Park. She would have loved that room, loved the pampering, and since the prices there are lower than, say, Per Se or Daniel, she might have been able to look past them. I might also have taken her to Daniel in its new guise. Those fluted columns circumscribing the room: that was Grandma's idea of decor. She thought decor should make a BIG statement. This was a woman who once painted her telephone gold.

My mother --- I would have taken her to Le Bernardin. She loved fish and, because her sons (apart from me) and husband for a very long time were much, much more interested in red meat, she never got to eat as much seafood as she wanted. And my mother had a terrific palate: she would have instantly appreciated and adored Eric Ripert's play of flavors and sense of subtlety. She would have been mad for Le Bernardin.

SB: Where are you having Thanksgiving this year?

FB: Undetermined. Either Uncle Mario's, per usual, or my sister Adelle's, since she's newly engaged and hosting for her fiance's family. There's some tension here. Let's not go here!

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Posted: September 10, 2009

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