Gael Greene Shares 'Sex' Secrets

Formidable food writer Gael Greene has a not-so-secret wild side. The woman known as the “Insatiable Critic” is as passionate about sex as she is about food. And she’s not afraid to tell everyone all about it.

The subject of sex will most definitely be on the menu on Sunday, August 7, when the author, critic and frequent “Top Chef Masters” judge—well-known for her deliciously wicked wit and a penchant for hats—comes to Almond in Bridgehampton to share some of her sensuous stories. Specifically, Ms. Greene, who for more than 30 years held the post of restaurant critic for New York magazine, will talk about her books “Delicious Sex” and “Blue Skies, No Candy,” over a decadent three-course French dinner prepared by chef Jason Weiner, complete with wine pairings.

Ms. Greene wrote “Delicious Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Pleasure for Women ... And the Men Who Want to Love them Better” three decades ago while vacationing in the Hamptons during her summers off.

“I learned some of the most illuminating truths about sex when I fell in love while living in a small cottage on the bay in The Springs,” she wrote in a pre-interview email exchange.

In “Delicious Sex,” which was recently reissued in an updated and uncensored 25th anniversary edition e-book, Ms. Greene explained the primal connection between her two greatest appetites.

“What do great sex and great food have in common?” she wrote. “Each makes you ravenous for more. They are two of life’s unsurpassed sensual thrills.”

And 25 years later, the woman who coined the word “foodie” (according to the American Edition of The Foodie Handbook) is still passionate about both subjects, though the one that comes takes precedence might surprise some.

“Great sex is even better than great food,” she said during a telephone interview last month. “I’ve never had anything to eat that was better than great sex.”

During the interview, Ms. Greene also divulged some of the juicier tidbits from her 2007 memoir, “Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess.” Her candid talk included some jaw-dropping morsels about a few of her famous conquests—Elvis Presley, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds.

Mr. Presley was the first of the legendary men she bedded.

“I was a huge, mad Elvis fan. I dreamed I would have sex with Elvis,” she said, recalling that she met and bedded the legendary performer when she was a reporter for United Press International, though she was off-duty on the day of the actual tryst. “He invited me to come back between shows to ‘have a Coke and read the funny papers.’ I didn’t do this to get a story, I did this because it was my wildest dream.”

Ms. Greene said that Mr. Eastwood, the soft-spoken actor, holds a special place in her heart.

“Clint Eastwood, he was so gorgeous. I had no intention of seducing him to get a story,” she said, adding that the combination of his beauty and vulnerability is what did her in when she went on set to the desert to meet him. “He fell asleep in the middle of the interview, which ended up being quite revealing. I was very excited.”

And bedding Mr. Reynolds, who was known to be an infamous skirt-chaser, was perhaps the biggest surprise, she said. Especially since she had sartorially girded herself for the encounter.

“There was no way I was ever going to sleep with Burt Reynolds because he was the cartoon of a ladies man,” Ms. Greene remembered. “That’s why I wore the jumpsuit, there was no way to get out of a jumpsuit briefly. But then I met him and he was so charming and funny, there was no way I was not going to go to bed with this man.”

Today, Ms. Greene is happily in a relationship with a man she calls “the road food warrior, a Bronx cowboy,” who she’s been with for more than two dozen years. She reported that it’s his passion for life that first drew her to him, and is what keeps her coming back for more.

“He’s very loving and caring. What we have is very similar tastes in what we like to do, where we like to go,” she explained, adding that she does not subscribe to the theory of opposites attracting and lasting. “Can you imagine falling in love with a man who doesn’t love food? I would be very suspicious of a man who didn’t drink red wine.”

The confessed sensualist also talked about how a girl from the Midwest ended up becoming one of the most feared and celebrated food critics of all time.

“I don’t really know what it was about my upbringing in Detroit, the Velveeta cocoon of my childhood, that made me so interested in the things of the senses,” she said. “But when I went to France and ate at some of the great restaurants of the world, that’s what made me aware of how things look, taste, sound.”

In “Delicious Sex,” the woman who describes herself as a “food and sex purist” wrote that, for her, the two are inextricably connected. Summing up her two greatest passions in life, she wrote, “Food and sex have another crucial link. The same neural link registers the crunch of celery, the chiaroscuro of an Oreo cookie, the smell of a young Beaujolais, the curve of your lover’s mouth, the scent of his hair.”

Gael Greene will discuss “Delicious Sex” and “Blue Skies, No Candy” over a three-course wine dinner at Almond in Bridgehampton on Sunday, August 7, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets to the event, which will include a Q&A with Ms. Greene and a downloadable copy of one of her books, are $65 per person. For reservations, call 537-5665 or visit almondrestaurant.com. To read Ms. Greene’s blog, visit insatiable-critic.com.