Things I ate while reading Garlic And Sapphires: bourbon chicken with a side order of Shanghai noodles; a Big Mac and fries; frozen Crustini; an orange. These convenience eats took on the flavour of four-star meals, thanks to Ruth Reichl's delicious descriptions of sumptuous dining. Garlic and Sapphires is a book that you read with all your senses. As a professional food critic, Reichl is a virtuoso at making tastes, smells and textures waft from the page to the palate, and her technique is in fine form throughout the book.

These delectable descriptions, however, are not the meat and potatoes of the book, but its dessert. The main course is Reichl's story, her recollections of her personal experiences as the "Gray Lady's" official taster. Food is a part of that, food is sometimes a metaphor for the life of that, but it's not the whole story.

Restaurant reviews are a serious business, perhaps nowhere more so than at the New York Times. They can transform a restaurant's bottom line from red to black; their stars can make or break a chef's career. It is, therefore, in a restaurant's best interest to try to please a visiting reviewer, wowing them with quicker service and plumper berries, dazzling with the best seat, the best staff, the best food, the best wine. They'll post reviewers' photos like a wanted list, researching the methods that might be used to impress them. Restaurants do their best to create a coordinated attack, a gastronomic shock and awe.

Critics, meanwhile, try to protect themselves from the flashy fireworks, to experience the restaurant the same way their readers would. Reichl discovers the degree to which this will be a challenge in New York before she has even left L.A., when her seatmate on the plane declares:

"You're the restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times, but you're about to become the most important restaurant critic in the world. You start at the New York Times on"—she pauses for a moment, calculating—"Friday, September third... The place I work isn't the world's best restaurant, but the boss has a standing offer of five hundred bucks to anyone who spots you. Forget anonymity. A good review from the New York Times is worth thousands... Could be millions."

And so Reichl becomes of a mistress of disguise, festooning herself in unlikely jewelry, shellacking makeup on her usually naked face, stuffing her wild hair beneath wigs of every colour. The process itself is fascinating, as Reichl finds a disguise, and the character to go with it. Her experiences are a primer for creating alternate personae, detailing the hunt for clothing, hair, makeup, and the subsequent transformations. It's fascinating to watch how Reichl inhabits these made-up people, and how they change the way she experiences fine dining, both from external measurements, but also how her own internal gauges readjust to change her measures of a positive visit.