born round: the secret history of a full-time eater

Apart from eating food, I also love reading about it. Restaurant reviews, cookbooks, food lovers' guides, foodie biographies, food-travel memoirs - I love it all. Jeffrey Steingarten, Ruth Reichl, Amanda Hesser, Jay Rayner, Julie Powell - all masters of the food-as-memoir genre, are all on my bookshelf. The most recent addition is Frank Bruni's Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater.

Until September 2009, Bruni was the chief restaurant critic at the New York Times. This means he was one of the most feared men in Manhattan. As in Ruth Reichl's biography Garlic & Sapphires, he explains the lengths he went to in order to disguise himself from cunning chefs and waiters. Pseudonyms (complete with credit cards), moustaches, hats and even wigs helped Bruni escape recognition. But the real story here isn't like Reichl's - who explained how she disguised herself as a series of "nobodies" in order to see what it was really like to be served in New York's top restaurants - it's the story of Bruni's struggle with his love of food and his ongoing weight battle.

From an Italian family who was big on showing love through food, Bruni developed problems with food from an early age. Always bigger than his brothers and sister, he learns early on that food is his chief comfort - and his parents are only too happy to indulge him. As he gets older, his sedentary job (journo) coupled with low self-esteem lead him to a dangerous binge-and-purge cycle (otherwise known as bulimia). When he finally gets it all together and manages to lose weight properly and healthily, he's offered one of the most coveted jobs in the food world - restaurant critic for the New York Times. Mmm.

He decides to accept, but sets himself a series of unenviable limits. His favourite personal trainer - the one with whom he achieved fantastic results - lives in Washington. Bruni pays a small fortune to take the train to Washington each week to work out with the powerhouse. He walks from restaurant to restaurant - often miles apart - to ensure that he's burning off the highly calorific meals he's consuming. He doesn't eat much during the day, so that he can indulge at night, when he's reviewing. Because a food critic can't just try one meal - you have to give a sense of the entire menu, after all - he only eats a few bites of each. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

It's fascinating reading, not least for the gossipy side notes about New York's food scene (plus, an anecdote about the time Sarah Jessica Parker invites herself and husband Matthew Broderick to dinner with Bruni).

DDS verdict: read, with a glass of red and a bowl of pasta. Hearty stuff.

Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater, Frank Bruni
Available from Amazon