I have always watched a lot of TV and movies but due to various circumstances, there have been many times in my lives where I didn’t have cable. First I was overseas and relied on DVDs to binge all the popular series, then Netflix became popular and networks like ABC and The CW all had their own apps so I could watch the last 5 episodes of the shows I was currently into. In other words, I have never really watched channels like The Food Network or TLC or Discovery, simply because I didn’t have access and never developed the habit. Still there are certain names that you just pick up because they break out of that niche and become part of the broader pop culture – Guy Fieri, the Duggars, Rachel Ray etc.
While I am pretty sure I had heard of her previously, the moment Ina Garten really broke through and became someone I was aware of was when she posted that viral IG reel making a cosmo during the pandemic (she even talks about it in one of the later chapters of the book). I ended up with her 2020 cookbook as well, Modern Comfort Food (she said she was inspired to write a book on comfort food in 2019 because of everyone’s general anxiety from the election and then COVID just happened to make it all the more timely), though I am not sure if I bought it or my mom gifted it to me. I made the tomato soup once – it was good, even better when reheated, though it was a bit of a disaster to make because I overestimated the size of my pot or underestimated the true volume of the ingredients and halfway through had to pull out a second pot and try to split the ingredients.
In other words, I had very little knowledge of Ina Garten or her background coming into this – in fact, I’m not usually a big memoir person but this was the book club selection for the month.
There were some things that I learned that really surprised me – for example (she reveals this in chapter 1 so no spoiler) Ina didn’t actually come up with the name (title? Brand?) “Barefoot Contessa” – she bought a gourmet food store in the Hamptons in 1978 with the name and kept it … and then was able to grow it into the brand it became over the years. She actually has Polish, Russian and Jewish heritage, no Italian ancestry to speak of.
She made a good choice with the structure of the book, starting in 1978 with her finding the notice for the store and putting in the offer before backtracking and telling her life story in a linear fashion. Overall, I found the first third the most engaging which included her childhood with distant and difficult (emotionally abusive, even) parents, chronicled the beginnings of her relationship with Jeff and overall, did a good job of setting the context for her background and her personality. When she was describing her younger self, I found myself thinking she would have been the type of person you either love because she is outgoing, spontaneous and friendly or get incredibly frustrated with because she dives in headfirst without thought and seems to just jump from thing to thing. Much of that early part talks about the struggles of parental expectations, growing up with very little independence and coming off age just slightly before the women’s movement. As much as she loved Jeff, it also set up their marriage to be on uneven footing, and meant she would have to figure out herself later in life than she otherwise might have.
Having said all that, once we get further in, I feel like she didn’t dig quite as deep and glossed over a lot details as she talked about how her career progressed with the store as opportunity either knocked or challenges forced her to change directions, often resulting in improvements. Her long term success seems to be a mix of the hard work she put in and a personality that allowed for risk-taking combined with the perfect circumstances and timing working out for her.
There also was a certain amount of privilege shining though this book – I’m not sure how much of that is because 1) she had privileges even for that time (she really lucked out finding the perfect guy early on), 2) she is now able to see it through rose colored glasses or 3) she was living in slightly more forgiving times. On the one hand, she was born early enough that she didn’t grow up with the idea that women could do anything. I know the 1970s weren’t a magical time of opportunity and that people struggled and yet, you get the impression from her writing that there was just more room to explore and fail and start again. Jeff went from government employee to investment banker to professor. She picked up a government job through a friend of friend … so many stories of buying houses and then selling again after realizing “we made a mistake.” I don’t know if it’s just that I have too careful of a personality compared to Ina or it’s because of the times (I’m sure there’s a bit of a little bit of both) but some of the things she mentioned doing, I would just be worried about having much more negative consequences. Or maybe it’s just a sign of having enough of a safety net to take those chances though I think she would have considered herself middle class in her early married years.
There was also a point later in the book where there are just a myriad of famous celebrity names rolled out. Some of them, like Jennifer Garner, we get more context on how the friendship developed but for so many, I was left wondering, “so did you just meet this person by owning and working at a gourmet food store in the Hamptons? How did you become friends with all these people?” The memoir mentioned friends and business partners in passing but her husband is really the only relationship we get too much detail about. Towards the end I actually started wondering, are her parents even still alive because we had only heard about them in her adult live a few times, and a few pages later, she does wrap up some of the threads about her relationship with her parents and how it changed once she was older.
Overall, likely another book where I am overthinking it. I read it but I imagine it would be better as an audiobook where it would feel like Ina is telling you these stories. And the last few chapters especially feel like they would work better as a gossipy story told by a friend about her life and success without getting too introspective about it all.
