[2] Born in 1948[3] to Ernst, a typographer, and Miriam (née Brudno),[4] her German-Jewish refugee father and American-Jewish mother,[5] Reichl was raised in Greenwich Village and spent time at a boarding school in Montreal as a young girl.

She attended the University of Michigan, where she earned a degree in sociology in 1968[6] and met her first husband, the artist Douglas Hollis.

[6] Reichl and Hollis moved to Berkeley, California, where her interest in food led to her joining the collectively owned Swallow Restaurant as a chef and co-owner from 1973 to 1977.

[9] Despite her success and tales of how she used to disguise herself to mask her identity while reviewing, eventually she said: "I really wanted to go home and cook for my family.

[10] During her tenure, the magazine sold 988,000 copies per month (as of March 2007)[11] and commissioned works like David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster".

[2] From 2011 to 2013, Reichl appeared as a judge on seasons 3, 4 and 5 of the Bravo reality television show Top Chef Masters.