The Closer Podcast brings you the inside story of deals changing the world, told by the people who know how it all went down.

Understand the human motivations behind groundbreaking business decisions with host Amy Keene.

Listen to The Closer, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the H-Bere Ideacast. I'm Allison Beard.

I'm on the phone today with Ruth Ryschel,

former New York Times Food Critic,

an editor of Gourmet magazine,

and a best-selling author.

Her latest book is her first work of fiction, a novel called Delicious.

So I'd like to start with your career.

It's been full of interesting transitions from being a cook to a critic, newspapers to magazines now non-fiction to fiction.

The one move I think our audience will find the most interesting was your switch from

being an individual producer, a writer, to a manager when you became editor-in-chief of Gourmet?

I had been a manager before. I mean, it's not evident from my resume, but when I was at the LA Times I was the restaurant critic and I

kept complaining about the food section which at the time was the largest food

section in the country it was 60 or 70 pages every

week with a big staff and a test kitchen and a photo studio and I was abruptly sort of blackmailed into becoming the food

editor as well as the restaurant critic. So that was the big moment of

learning management. And tell me about that switch.

It was completely on the fly.

You know, it was like one day I was the restaurant critic and the next I suddenly had 20 people

working for me and it was a shock and they kept saying to me we'll give you management lessons but I never had time

to take management lessons.

...