In Ina Garten’s 2024 memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” she traces her journey from a lonely childhood in Connecticut to her rise as a popular Food Network darling.
Known as the warm, unflappable “Barefoot Contessa,” Garten reveals a complicated past — but not always in ways that fully savor the reader’s attention.
Viewers of her cooking show, by the same name, know Jeffrey E. Garten as her dutiful husband who emerges at the end of each episode to sample her dishes.
I grew up watching her program and admiring the recipes she created. And while it was cute at first, I admittedly felt like the Jeffrey cameos were my least favorite part.
Although their little chitchats were the most consistent part in her signature program, it felt slightly forced. Similarly, in the memoir, the frequent returns to him — and the constant referral to his Ivy League education — begin as intriguing but quickly become repetitive and tedious.
Before her beloved Jeffrey was in the picture, she writes candidly about her childhood as Ina Rosenberg, under the rule of a strict doctor father and controlling dietitian mother, noting that she and her older brother “each felt like an only child.”
She stated how she always loved preparing food, but her parents did not support this passion. Instead, her role as a young person was to study — even a meal with family was filled with geography quizzes and she couldn’t fully enjoy the food.
These passages offer insights into her desire to escape that monotone existence and indulge in carving her own path, like she would later carve a chicken on her show.
Garten then goes, once again, into excruciating detail about meeting Jeffrey in the 1960s and being courted by him while in college. As she moved into adulthood, they were married in 1968 and she quickly adopted his last name and seemingly became fully immersed in all things related to him.
While her devotion was charming at first, it also highlighted a detachment from her former life and identity, leaving readers with skimpy glimpses of Ina Rosenberg but mostly following the orbit of her chasing her husband’s world and gaze.
Garten also mentions her early years working in Washington, D.C., before abruptly leaving it on a whim to buy a small food shop in the Hamptons, the origins of the Barefoot Contessa brand — something her parents disapproved of.
Jeffrey, of course, was ever supportive and they made that long-distance marriage, at the time, work. Her account of building the shop into a thriving business is easily the most compelling section of “Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir.” Wish we lingered there in more pages.
To me, the book felt like the main focus was her distaste for her late parents and her utter devotion to Jeffrey, with Ina Garten herself as a side dish in her own story.
