Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

by Ruth Reichl

I was thinking of a meal in a small restaurant in Florence when I was twenty and another in Tours a few years later. People would lean in to tell me what to order and to share their favorite dishes. And every once in a while a chef would simply start feeding me, a point of pride because I was so new to the food. It was a generosity that was not reserved for restaurants. Once, stranded at Heathrow because of a canceled connection, the girl who’d been sitting next to me on the plane took me home to stay with her family. They were lovely people with a large house in Wimbledon, and I ended up staying a few days. Those things never happen when you travel on the excess express. The more stars in your itinerary, the less likely you are to find the real life of another country. I’d forgotten how money becomes a barrier insulating you from ordinary life.