Critics dish about dining

People tell me I have the best job in the world because I get paid to eat. I tell people that I wish I had that job since I earn my salary researching and writing.

For this month's edition of our Denver Diners Reading Club, consider autobiographies by two opinionated and complex writers who filled the restaurant critic's role at The New York Times.

Mimi Sheraton started writing for the Times in 1975 just as America's obsession with all things culinary was picking up steam. In Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life (Harper Perennial), she details the joy of discovering great eateries and the pain of being attacked by editors, readers, chefs and even her mother who called Sheraton "Big Mouth."

She started wearing disguises in order to have an average dining experience and makes a strong case for anonymous critics. She writes:

"The longer I reviewed restaurants, the more I became convinced that the unknown customer has a completely different experience from either a valued patron or a recognized food critic; for all practical purposes, they might as well be in different restaurants."

By the time Ruth Reichl got the job, she was forced to develop many alter egos, each with wigs and costumes, in order to do the job. "Every restaurant is a theater," writes Reichl in Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (Penguin), and she played her role with gusto. She delighted in covering ethnic cafes and high-profile joints.

"Yes, there are still restaurants where rich people get to remind themselves that they are different from you and me," she writes.

"But there are fewer and fewer of them. . . . Going out to eat used to be like going to the opera; today, it's more like going to the movies."

Join me again in about a month when I'll recommend a book written from a chef's perspective.