Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess [Hardcover]

Gael Greene (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2006

One afternoon in 1968 Clay Felker, founder and power behind the much-heralded New York magazine, asked Gael Greene to be the restaurant critic of his infant weekly. Though a passionate foodie, Greene had never reviewed a restaurant in her life, but the prospect of writing for a magazine that was already the talk of the town, alongside such media stars as Tom Wolfe, Gloria Steinem and Jimmy Breslin, not to mention dining in the world's great restaurants on someone else's dime, was too enticing to turn down. Thus began Gael Greene's long and marvellous career charting the course of social history through the restaurants that changed the way America ate, the chefs who turned cooking into an art form and the foods and wines that launched a culinary revolution. From the afternoon in a Detroit hotel when she didn't say no to Elvis Presley and through trysts with Hollywood icons, celebrated chefs and a notorious porn star, Greene has always maintained that food and sex are inextricably linked, and in this delicious, infectiously passionate memoir, she takes readers on a joyride into some unforgettable kitchens and bedrooms.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As the title of her longtime New York magazine column (which ran from 1968 to 2000) suggests, Greene was indeed an "Insatiable Critic" and not just where food was concerned. Her fun memoir spices up the standard chronicle of food supped and wine sipped with breathless descriptions of sexual trysts, travel tales and signature fashions. Greene's sensual appetite was voracious and her affairs as abundant and indulgent as her meals; her more famous lovers included Elvis Presley, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. With chapter titles like "Splendor in the Foie Gras" and "Bonfire of the Foodies," the book brims with vivid and gluttonously gossipy prose, though it's occasionally repetitive, especially regarding the recent growth of "foodie" culture. At heart a singular story of Greene's gustatory and personal development, the book is also a history of culinary culture since the 1960s. She mentions world events that were occurring as she pursued her sybaritic lifestyle; describes her idols, contemporaries and famous chefs; and depicts spectacular meals throughout France, New York and beyond. This delicious read tells the story of America's haute cuisine awakening as written by the woman who had a seat at the table. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In this freewheelingly sensuous autobiography, restaurant critic and novelist Greene casts the path of her life as an education of her appetites. Born into an unexceptional postwar midwestern home, Greene knew little about taste. Her hunger for good food led her from a successful career as a magazine writer to a coveted position as one of Manhattan's most respected restaurant critics. Simultaneous development into womanhood followed a no-less-stellar trajectory. Her male conquests, begun in earnest when she gained access in Detroit to a visiting Elvis Presley's hotel suite, continue through a host of celebrities and a remarkable doomed marriage. Her culinary appetite takes her to France and a vision of perfection at Fernand Point's temple of French gastronomy. Greene had the great good fortune to become a food critic just as American culture was awakening to a newfound infatuation with all tastes French, Italian, and Chinese, just as the same culture liberated women to revel in other appetites their bodies might hunger after. Greene joyfully and unabashedly celebrates both food and sex, having her own way with both. Recipes (for food) included. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 1ST edition (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446576999
• ISBN-13: 978-0446576994
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,055,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent insider (really inside) look at NY haute cuisine. Buy It., May 13, 2006

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Hardcover)

`Insatiable' is a collection of anecdotal memoirs by Ms. Gael Greene of the overshadowingly broad brimmed hats and long time food writer and restaurant critic of `New York' magazine. While the 51 chapters do touch on Ms. Greene's life before `New York', they generally stay very close to their `New York' wellspring, her column, named `The Insatiable Gourmet' by magazine editor in chief, Clay Felker.

The most immediate comparison which comes to mind is to the three volumes of memoirs by current `Gourmet' editor in chief, Ruth Reichl who, for several years, sat in Craig Claiborne's chair as principle restaurant reviewer for `The New York Times' and whose most recent book, `Garlic and Sapphires' deals entirely with her `New York Times' restaurant reviews and her tactics for maintaining her anonymity while in the hunt for excellence at New York's finer eateries. And, as similar as these two women's careers may be, the differences make both bodies of work that much more interesting.

While Reichl, the younger of the two by at least a decade, grew up in New York City and learned French at a very early age, her professional culinary journalistic career was shaped on the west coast, firmly under the influence of the American food vanguard lead by the California vintners, Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, and Wolfgang Puck. Greene grew up in provincial Detroit, but had her culinary instincts formed by the emerging community of French restaurants in New York City. Her center of culinary gravity was in the dining rooms, kitchens, and cellars of the great French culinary establishment. She even admits that she came late to the California culinary movement. To her credit, as soon as she had her first experience of Alice Waters' cuisine at `Chez Panisse', she recognized that there was something important going on by the Pacific coast.

Reichl's first two volumes of memoirs are more strictly biographical than `Insatiable' in that they are strictly chronological. Reichl's revelations about her life are also unusual to me, at the time, for the remarkable candor about her sexual life. Madame Reichl was a Den Mother compared to Ms. Greene, whose title refers not only to her culinary appetites, but to her sexual appetites as well. I won't dwell on this much, but her exploits make me and most average Americans feel like monks or nuns in comparison.

These sexual exploits include dozens of famous figures from the culinary world, but they also include several notables from Hollywood. As a hint, I will reveal that Ms. Greene tells the tales of how she landed in bed with two very big leading men, both of whom appeared together on the cover of `Time' magazine. And yet, Ms. Greene can be remarkably circumspect about the details of many liaisons.

It is interesting to see the difference in reaction to some of the major figures both have met. Danny Kaye appears in both narratives, however, he is a much bigger part in Ms. Greene's story, as does James Beard, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, Pierre Franey, and M.F.K. Fisher, as Ms. Greene was able to encounter all these people while they were still at or near their prime, unlike Ms. Reichl, who did not arrive in the `big time' at the `Times' until most of these people were retired or gone. The stories regarding Danny Kaye are especially nice, as I have been pining for more information on his culinary abilities ever since I read Ms. Reichl's report of a dinner he prepared in his custom build `kitchen theatre'.

Ms. Greene also fills in a lot of information on some of the more romantically interesting figures in the culinary world. For example, when one reads other accounts of the lives of `Le Bernardin' founders, Gilbert and Maguy LeCoze, you are left with the feeling that their closeness can only be explained by a particularly `unnatural' sexual relation. Miss Gael assures us in no uncertain terms that both Gilbert and Maguy were decidedly conventional (At least for young French natives) in their sexual behavior, each with their own one or more partners, including, for Gilbert, Ms. Greene herself now and then. She also sheds light on the fact that suspicions to the contrary, Pierre Franey was a complete heterosexual, with no erotic connection to culinary colleague, the well-known homosexual, Craig Claiborne.

One feature of New York dining on which Ms. Greene and Ms. Reichl agree is that most of the high end venues are far too inclined to give preferential treatment to favorite customers, most of which are celebrities. One of the most disagreeable cases appears in the chapter about the literary watering hole, `Elaine's' which became popular among celebs almost by accident, when `Harper's' editor Nelson Aldrich (not even Nelson Algren), wandered in and stayed awhile, bringing a few other literary luminaries along in later visits. And, while we are less likely to be inconvenienced by this, this is just as true of Parisian venues as those in the Big Apple.

Like Ms. Reichl, Ms. Greene sprinkles in a few recipes here and there, after every second or third chapter. These are interesting, but I found her passing remarks about dishes within her text to be far more evocative, as when one New York maestro filled a baked potato with creamed chipped beef and how Gilbert LeCoze prepared such simple fish dishes, because he never received the kind of training which showed him how to do elaborate preparations (Under Eric Ripert, `Le Bernardin' is still a temple to simple, fresh fish cooking).

While Ms. Reichl's last book may be more interesting to the serious foodie as it deals in much more detail with the specific restaurants, reviews, and events surrounding her researches, Ms. Greene's book has far more interesting and far more lascivious information about the lives and loves of the culinary great in New York and France.

A delicious tart of a read!

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Bitter Disappointment, September 6, 2006

By 

Fran Sepler "inhaler of great books" (Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Hardcover)

I absorb "foodie" books at the rate that some breathe. Reichl, Bourdain, Child, Buxton and others are the source of hours of fond distraction from my too-busy-to-do-anything life and my aspirations to understand food the way I understand my professional work -- intuitively, technically and personally.

I had read that this book was more of a bawdy personal history than others, but I always adore the personal details of the writers, and am hardly a prude. Nevertheless, I could hardly muster an ounce of empathy for the gratuitous sexual self-objectification of the author who viewed restaurants more as stars in a social strata than producers of cuisine. I did not care about her tortured relationship with a porn star, whom she fed and bedded on her employer's dime. I grew exasperated as she ended a chapter about three marriages with a confession that she wrote it without understanding the point, and still, after writing it and choosing to include it in her book, she did not. The simple reality is that a writer is speaking to a reader, and Ms. Green's reader appeared to be...Ms. Green. While it is apparent that others enjoyed this book, I would suspect that a day with "Garlic and Sapphires" would disabuse anyone of the notion that this is a delightful memoir, and instead expose it for the indulgence that it is.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars empty, empty, June 7, 2007

By 

Natasha (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Paperback)

If Reichl's memoirs were a nourishing meal, then Greene's is a bag of chips. Reichl's trilogy about her life in food is ultimately about developing relationships, and discovering how to make a meaningful life.

Greene's book, in contrast, reads as a series of lists 1) foods she has eaten 2) men she has slept with 3) celebrities she has known. There is no real character development, nor any personal insights.

True, she has enjoyed amazing, sumptious meals, but to what end? There is no meaning to her life beyond the endless quest for rich meals on her employer's dime. Her sexual appetite, although clearly prodigious, leads her to make empty choice after empty choice. Some people will wish that they shared Greene's luck that allowed her to live a completely self-indulgent life. But most sensible people will be grateful that they haven't haven't wasted every moment pursuing nothing.

An empty life leads to an empty book--a bit ironic considering the title. Reichl's books, though far less sexual, are fare more sensual and satisfying.