From April 2004 until just a few weeks ago, Frank Bruni spent every day of his life in what many would consider the most enviable job in the country: food critic for the The New York Times. But in his funny, heartbreaking, charming memoir Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater Bruni reveals not only what it was like to eat and critique (for better or worse—who could forget the infamous Jeffrey Chodorow incident?), but his own formidable struggles with weight, eating, and self-image—and how he finally found his way from round to well-rounded.
AZ: One of things I truly loved about this book was how honest it is; you’re very open about the turbulent relationship you’ve had with food. That one of the most respected food critics in the country would be so candid about struggling with his body image and his relationship to eating—from your bout with bulimia, to taking speed to be thin, to the yo-yo life of dieting—it’s beyond surprising.
FB: You know, I had never thought I was someone who had a memoir in me. I never had the sense that my life was that extraordinary or unusual or interesting, but when I thought about my relationship and my history with food in the context of becoming a professional eater, I realized for the first time that I really did have an interesting story to tell along that axis; that I had a kind of widely resonant story to tell. I felt very strongly that I had to tell it as completely and with as much detail and as much candor as possible. Long before I became a critic, I did what I guess for lack of a better term, I’ll call more conventional journalism. You know, I interviewed people and was constantly writing long profiles. Like any decent journalist doing those profiles, I was urging and coaxing people to be candid because that’s always the best story. So to tell my own story, I thought I shouldn’t hold myself to any lesser standard.
AZ: On the topic of candid, you speak out and out unapologetically in the book of eating things like Shedd’s Spread and Tyson chicken pieces and Cool Whip and longingly describing the congealed edges of mac n’ cheese, things no one would expect you, of all people, would have spent a minute of your life lusting over. Did you worry about being judged for that?
FB: I didn’t, because I think if most people are honest with themselves, even the most enlightened epicure, has his or her guilty pleasures. Anyone who is enough of a food snob not to admit certain fast-food vulnerabilities; to certain junk food love; to certain weaknesses for food that is not by anyone’s estimation accomplished, distinguished food; is someone who is just either not being honest or not living in the real world. I know what great food is when I taste it, but I also have those moments when I want to eat something that’s not great—that’s triumphantly mediocre. As for mac n’ cheese with congealed edges, congealed edges are good! We all want those sort of congealed, crisp hard parts in our mac n’ cheese—that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing.
AZ: There were people in your past who bore witness to some really embarrassing and vulnerable low points in your struggles with food. Most of those people seem to be good friends in your life, but what if some weren’t? When you became the New York Times food critic did you worry about someone in your past outing you for your previous bad food behaviors?
FB: I didn’t worry about it because I didn’t think there was anything relevant to be outed for. Yeah, in my freshman year of college I threw up meals, but it was freshman year of college. It was many decades ago. I didn’t feel like that was really an era that anyone could put into a quiver and find a target with. We all have in our past secrets and foibles and all that sort of stuff. It never occurred to me that any of that was stuff that could discredit me. I’m a private person in some regards, but when it comes to the people in my life I’ve always been very, very open. If you don’t keep secrets from the people around you, then you don’t have to worry about them being revealed. I’ve always been the kind of person who wears my weaknesses and flaws on my sleeve. One of my very best friends always tells people that it’s no fun to tell stories on me because I’m always the first to tell them on myself. There’s something freeing about that.
AZ: In the past, there were myriad, awful ways that you abused your body in an attempt to be thin or thinner, but it seems that when you’d be teetering on the edge of a cliff you had the ability to stop and say, ‘Oh no! This is going too far.’ Did you know this about yourself beforehand, or did you discover it after you finished writing Born Round?
FB: I don’t think I knew it when I was a freshman in college and was throwing up meals, but I think it’s something that I came to understand or believe about myself as time went on and long before I wrote the book. I had thought I had the ability or tendency to pull myself back when things were getting a little bit too messy, and I always assumed the same would be true for my weight. I think on some level I believed that, with the eating—as with the speed and as with the bulimia—I would always pull myself back before it got too terrible, and that’s exactly what didn’t happen in my 30s. It was horrifying and upsetting to me to look up one day and be 270 lbs. I was 70 or 80 pounds overweight.
AZ: There’s a scene in the book from that point in your life where you describe a particularly awful New Year’s Eve spent with your family. You have a fight with one of your brothers and he lashes out at you with what he knew would cut you to the quick—the topic of your weight. It’s a pretty heartbreaking chapter.
FB: It devastated me at the time, but the in the scheme of hardships and life problems, it’s a pretty minor one. The one worry I have with a book like this is that it says to people that the greatest tragedy is being overweight, because it’s not. It’s one of the reasons I tried very hard to put a lot of humor in the book because I don’t want people to take away the message that I think being fat is the world’s greatest shame and tragedy. Being fat was something that made me very unhappy. To those people who are overweight and at peace with it and not miserable, I say great.
AZ: Living in Italy prior to becoming a food critic was a real turning point for you. How come?
FB: Italy came along right after I had pulled back from that worst period and lost the majority of the extra 75 pounds I was carrying around. People will always tell you—and I think there’s some truth to it—that the hardest part of a major weight loss is maintaining it in the immediate aftermath once the goal is no longer winnow-winnow-winnow. It was my great fortune that I went to Italy at that point because if you are looking for models and motivation and examples for weight maintenance and sensible eating strategies, you actually find them in Italy. Western Europeans in general eat much smaller portions than we do. Moderating portions and readjusting one’s thinking as to what makes an acceptable and generous amount of food is so key. I wonder if I hadn’t gone to Italy and had remained in the States if I would have been as successful at keeping the weight off.
AZ: So what do you think life will be like when you go back to eating like a civilian?
FB: I think it’s going to be a challenge and I’m going to have to put a lot of thought into it. Working as a restaurant critic, the enforced eating night after night after night gave me a structure for the rest of my day. It gave me a motivation to exercise; it was an inescapable fact that let me organize everything around it. It left no room for the binge/purge cycle. What I hope to be able to do is to take the kind of lessons and usefulness of that and incorporate them into a non-critic’s life.
AZ: What’s one of your favorite meals, as critic or a regular, ol’ eater?
FB: I’ve had so many. It’s like picking grains of sand from the beach. But later in life, my family developed a tradition when we got together in the summers: My dad would go out and buy the most amazing, unbelievably delicious, high-grade, expensive Porterhouse steaks from a gourmet market near my parent’s house in Scarsdale. It was insane—he’d get a pound-and-a-half per person. There was a particular spice mixture that we liked to put them down with that my parents had found and had mail-ordered from New Orleans. Then we’d grill them. It was such a specific ritual with such rigid rules. The steaks had to come from that one store even though it was astronomically expensive. We had to do it with the spice rub. And we’d usually have them with martinis. Well, that spice mixture became unfindable [sic]; that particular store closed; and my mother died. I kind of feel like it was this recurring culinary moment that is now unduplicable [sic] and I think back on that fondly.
