{"id":323938,"date":"2026-05-20T03:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T03:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323938\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T03:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T03:27:15","slug":"a-farewell-to-ruth-reichls-reluctant-gourmet-dining-world-everyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323938\/","title":{"rendered":"A farewell to Ruth Reichl’s Reluctant Gourmet, dining world everyman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An appreciation for one of the dining world\u2019s great curmudgeons. Also, two reasons to head to L.A.\u2019s Fairfax neighborhood: love and plantains as well as a don\u2019t-miss art show, and two Route 66 destinations to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Mother Road. Plus more food stories worth a read. I\u2019m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with a special edition of Tasting Notes.<\/p>\n

The dining world\u2019s everyman \"Ruth <\/p>\n

Ruth Reichl and Michael Singer at L.A.\u2019s Yuchan, the Koreatown restaurant known for its cold noodles naengmyun.<\/p>\n

(Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

When you went out to eat with the Reluctant Gourmet, as journalist Michael Singer was known to readers of restaurant critic Ruth Reichl\u2018s reviews when she worked at this paper, you were never sure if he would still be at the table by the time dessert arrived.<\/p>\n

If a meal was too long, too stuffy, too trendy, or if he just wanted to get home to catch the end of a football game, he was out. <\/p>\n

A check of The Times\u2019 archives shows that Singer \u2014 who died May 13 at 85 in his Manhattan home after a long illness \u2014 made his first appearance as the Reluctant Gourmet on Nov. 18, 1984. <\/p>\n

Reichl, who was reviewing a restaurant called Oscar\u2019s at the Premiere in Universal City, introduced him with a dress code complaint:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018A jacket!\u2019 groaned the Reluctant Gourmet, the last man on Earth least thrilled by the prospect of another wonderful meal, when the person taking the reservations gently suggested that he would not be welcome without one.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fortunately for the restaurant, Singer ended up enjoying his blackened steak and even the lemon souffle:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Reluctant Gourmet looked positively pleased,\u201d Reichl wrote at the end of her review of her husband. \u201cYou could almost see the cigar he pictured himself waving in the air. \u2018It was worth putting on a jacket.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After that, \u201cthe RG,\u201d as she frequently called him, appeared in more than 30 reviews, the everyman of the dining world who could puncture the pretension out of restaurants that served what he called \u201cfrilly food<\/a>\u201d or \u201cchichi nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t like \u201cwimpy Westside stuff,<\/a>\u201d restaurants \u201cwith names I can\u2019t pronounce,\u201d obsequious waiters, \u201c$14 [in 1988] for a puny plate of greens\u201d or \u201cbaby pizzas with skinny crusts<\/a> and fancy toppings \u2014 the kind you have to eat three or four of before you get full.\u201d<\/p>\n

What did he like? \u201cSimple food that\u2019s more satisfying than fancy<\/a>\u201d in restaurants \u201cwith the kind of food that ordinary people want to eat.<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n

That could mean everything from Mr. Jim\u2019s barbecue (\u201cThis tastes like St. Louis barbecue,\u201d he said, citing his hometown roots) to a $17.50 crab Louis from the Grill in Beverly Hills. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mind restaurants being expensive,\u201d he told Reichl<\/a>, \u201cas long as you don\u2019t feel like you\u2019re getting ripped off.\u201d <\/p>\n

And he loved everything about<\/a> Evan Kleiman\u2018s much-missed Melrose Avenue Italian restaurant Angeli: \u201cThe way it looks. The fact that it doesn\u2019t take a long time to eat here. The reasonable prices. The friendliness of the people who work here. But most of all the food.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a time when Los Angeles was quickly evolving into one of the world\u2019s most exciting restaurant cities, it was useful for Reichl to have Singer\u2019s Reluctant Gourmet to help ease less adventurous eaters through the transition. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe made great copy,\u201d Reichl wrote in her farewell column<\/a> before she left Los Angeles in 1993 for the New York Times. \u201cBut as restaurants became more sensible, and the excessively pretentious ones died off, the Reluctant Gourmet became less reluctant.\u201d<\/p>\n

He made only one appearance in her New York Times pieces, when she reviewed the restaurant Patroon after Geoffrey Zakarian revamped the menu. Reichl rewarded the place with three stars, and the Reluctant Gourmet ended up liking his clams, Caesar salad and steak with onion rings. But he started the meal, she wrote, with a familiar complaint: \u201cDo I have to wear a jacket?\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, there was more to Singer than his Reluctant Gourmet persona. <\/p>\n

He emerged as an investigative reporter in the Bay Area, winning his first of at least four Emmy Awards for news at KRON-TV for an examination of local police corruption. With David Weir<\/a>, co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Barbara Newman Canfield, he wrote a deeply reported story for<\/a> New West and New York magazine about the threat of nuclear extortion, leading with a 1975 blackmail attempt against Union Oil in Los Angeles. During Reichl\u2019s years at the L.A. Times, he was managing editor and then news director of KCBS, where he shared a Peabody Award for the 1988 investigative series \u201cMCA and the Mob,\u201d which, according to an L.A. Times account<\/a>, explored \u201calleged ties between MCA\/Universal and organized crime syndicates.\u201d In New York, he was a CBS Network News producer and did investigative documentary reports for MSNBC and NBC. <\/p>\n

A genuine newshound, he fought hard to uncover uncomfortable truths. And he fought hard for his reporters. When the judge overseeing the 1993 Rodney King civil rights trial threatened to take away the press credentials of KCBS reporter Bob Jimenez over a \u201ctechnical accident\u201d that led to the judge\u2019s voice being broadcast from the bench, \u201cCBS producer Michael Singer started yelling about a violation of the 1st Amendment,\u201d wrote L.A. Times reporters Greg Braxton and Faye Fiore <\/a> in a terrific media scrum story. \u201cThen he got on the phone to the lawyers. Then he demanded to see the judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an L.A. Times magazine cover story<\/a> on a day in the life of KCBS News, the late reporter-turned-prolific author Dennis McDougal<\/a> wrote, \u201cSinger is impatient. He wants to get to the main event. … He rocks back and forth in his seat, a 47-year-old hyperkinetic kid with gray at his temples and glee in his eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt its best,\u201d Singer told McDougal<\/a> in a companion piece to the feature, \u201ctelevision news … give[s] people a visceral sense, rather than an intellectual sense, of what the news of the day is. … When TV news is at its best, when it is visually and journalistically on the mark, it has a kind of impact on people that is quite extraordinary. … This country was profoundly changed by the civil-rights movement and the Vietnam War, and those events could not have changed this country without television news.\u201d<\/p>\n

That passion for news and its ability to change the world for the better when done well is one of the things that drew Reichl to Singer, as she so beautifully wrote in her memoir \u201cComfort Me With Apples.\u201d Last week, in her newsletter La Briffe<\/a>, she published an excerpt from the book telling the story of how she took Singer to meet author M.F.K. Fisher. At first glance, Singer and Fisher would seem to have little in common, but the two clicked and he was able to get her to talk about her time teaching at Mississippi\u2019s historic Piney Woods School for Black students in 1964, the year members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. After their talk, Fisher told the couple, \u201cNow I\u2019m going to send you on a walk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe took us to the door,\u201d wrote Reichl, \u201cand pointed up a path winding away from the house. \u2018Just follow it until you get to a special place. You\u2019ll know it when you get there. … I won\u2019t expect you back for a few hours.\u2019 …<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was dark when we got back to Mary Frances\u2019s house, and she looked at us and smiled. \u2018It\u2019s magic, isn\u2019t it?\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not go home that night. Or the next.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michael <\/p>\n

Michael Singer, a.k.a. the Reluctant Gourmet, and former Times food critic Ruth Reichl in 2017 in Panicale, Italy.<\/p>\n

(Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Plantains are for lovers \"Lucia's <\/p>\n

Lucia\u2019s pastelon <\/p>\n

(Ron De Angelis)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt tastes like the sort of thing you\u2019d want to make for someone you\u2019re falling in love with.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s restaurant critic Jenn Harris on the pastel\u00f3n from Lucia chef Cleophus \u201cOphus\u201d Hethington, who uses sheets of delicate plantain pasta instead of plain plantains in the classic Puerto Rican and Dominican lasagna-like dish and layers them Wagyu sofrito. In her new review, Harris says that restaurateur Sam Jordan\u2018s Lucia with Hethington\u2019s Afro-Caribbean cuisine is \u201cpoised to help usher in the great revitalization of one of the greatest streets in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gary <\/p>\n

Artist Gary Baseman inside Johnie\u2019s Coffee Shop, which has been turned into an art gallery featuring his work on menus, life-sized versions of some of his animation and plush toy characters and 3D-printed sculptures of his cats Beverly and Fairfax.<\/p>\n

(Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Drawing on napkins and menus is a habit many diners pick up as kids at the table with their restaurant-loving parents and sometimes continue into adulthood. It\u2019s why Jessica Koslow sets out jotting paper as part of the place settings<\/a> during her recently introduced dinner service at Sqirl. <\/p>\n

And this month, artist Gary Baseman <\/a>centered his most recent solo exhibition<\/a>, \u201cOff the Menu,\u201d on his practice of drawing on menus. \u201cFeaturing about 40 colored pencil drawings \u2014 mostly on real menus from L.A. restaurants,\u201d writes reporter Iris Kwok, \u201cthe whimsical show is a love letter to his Fairfax neighborhood.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where the Hasidic Jews and the punks lived side by side together in harmony,\u201d the L.A.-raised Basemen told Kwok in a feature on the artist.<\/a> <\/p>\n

In addition to the menu and paper coffee-cup art displayed on tables, countertops and walls at the classic Googie-styled Johnie\u2019s Coffee Shop on Wilshire and Fairfax, the show includes life-sized versions of some of his characters, who sit in booths that haven\u2019t served real customers since 2000 when the restaurant closed. (It\u2019s mostly been used as a film set in the decades since.) The free exhibit continues Wednesdays through Sundays until June 14.<\/p>\n

1 <\/p>\n

\"Los <\/p>\n

2 <\/p>\n

\"Baseman's <\/p>\n

3 <\/p>\n

\"Baseman <\/p>\n

4 <\/p>\n

\"Plush <\/p>\n

1. Gary Baseman\u2019s colored penciled drawing of the Apple Pan. 2. Baseman\u2019s drawings of Canter\u2019s, Irv\u2019s Burgers and more L.A. restaurants. 3. Baseman at Johnie\u2019s Coffee Shop. 4. Life-sized plush toys (left to right), Toby, Emmanuel Hare Ray, Manny Moa and Ahwroo at the press preview for Gary Baseman\u2019s \u201cOff the Menu\u201d exhibition. (Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times) <\/p>\n

Get your kicks … \"Illustration <\/p>\n

(Tanya Cooper \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Restaurant critic Bill\u2019s Addison\u2018s Route 66 mecca is Albuquerque, \u201cthe city with the longest continuous urban stretch of Route 66.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two places draw his appetite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Monte Carlo Liquors & Steak House, \u201ca lone brick island in a large asphalt lot … just over 100 feet from the Central Avenue Bridge that stretches over the Rio Grande\u201d is what Addison calls \u201cthe platonic ideal of a Midcentury dive.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe staff grounds the beef sirloin daily,\u201d he says, for one of New Mexico\u2019s greatest green chile cheeseburgers.<\/p>\n

Duran Central Pharmacy, on the other hand, is \u201cthe finest destination along Central Avenue for immersion into regional cooking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI start at Monte Carlo for a cheeseburger and martinis,\u201d he writes, \u201cbefore a second lunch of sopaipillas, \u2018Christmas-style,\u2019 at Duran, knowing I can pick up ibuprofen and calcium carbonate for dessert.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Embroidered <\/p>\n

(Embroidery and photography by Jenna Blazevich (Vichcraft) \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Food reporter Stephanie Breijo\u2018s Route 66 heart lies at the end of the Mother Road<\/a>, where \u201ca Googie-architecture marvel of angular windows, rock walls and little cartoons of penguins hanging above swivel stools and an open kitchen\u201d sits \u201cbeneath [a] jumbo tuxedoed penguin.\u201d <\/p>\n

The former Penguin Coffee Shop, opened in Santa Monica in 1959, is where Breijo would frequently eat with her father, who worked nearby. The Armet & Davis-designed building never lost its penguin sign, but after a time as a dentist office, it\u2019s been a Mel\u2019s Drive-In since 2018. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed like a no-brainer to make it Mel\u2019s and bring it back to the glory days of being a diner,\u201d said co-owner Colton Weiss. Since then, writes Breijo, \u201cthousands of guests have ended their travels with a meal in the diner.\u201d<\/p>\n

As her dad told her, \u201cEnding on a diner is nostalgia.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019re reading Tasting Notes <\/p>\n

Our L.A. Times restaurant experts share insights and off-the-cuff takes on where they\u2019re eating right now.<\/p>\n

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Also … \"Grilled <\/p>\n

Grilled cheese sandwich from Loose Cannon Cafe in Glendale.<\/p>\n

(Loose Cannon Cafe)<\/p>\n

Eat your way across L.A. <\/p>\n

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