Monarch Restaurant owners Jeff Orbin (left), and Aaron Teitelbaum flank author and food writer, Ruth Reichl

BABE RUTH: As someone who doesn’t drink at lunch, I thoroughly enjoyed the wine pairings yesterday afternoon at the Sauce Magazine luncheon with Ruth Reichl and then had to come home afterward to take a nap.

“You’re not a professional,” Allyson Mace, publisher of Sauce Magazine said to me when I got giddy after a couple of glasses of Bill Kniep’s excellent wine choices. Kniep is the president of Pinnacle Imports, which imports and distributes fine and rare wines.

Right Mace was - which is why I am writing this blog posting now instead of many hours ago, as I had intended.

Scores of people packed the dining room at Monarch Restaurant to enjoy the amazing lunch prepared by a quartet of St. Louis’ best chefs: Gerard Craft of Niche, Josh Galliano of Monarch, Kevin Nashan of Sidney Street Cafe and Michael Roberts of Atlas.

Proceeds from the $100-a-plate luncheon are going to charity.

Here’s what Reichl tweeted about it shortly afterward: “Sauce lunch in St. Louis was great. Four talented chefs. Impressive touches: concentrated onion gelee on chicken liver mousse. Glistening … mushroom consomme, intense and silky. Bacon powder and bacon ‘meringue.’ Butternut squash papardelle. Hazelnut gelato. Fine wine pairings…”

As one of the country’s premier food writers, Reichl should know.

She was a restaurant critic for the Lost Angeles Times and the New York Times before becoming editor in 1999 of Gourmet magazine, which Conde Nast announced last month would cease publishing. This month’s edition is its last.

Reichl’s trip to St. Louis for a signing of her most recent book “Gourmet Today: More than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen,” which was recently published by Houghton Mifflin, was originally scheduled for last month but she had to cancel because of the sudden news about Gourmet.

She said yesterday that she’s still reeling over the decision to close the magazine, which is a publication that many food lovers credit with helping to turn people into serious and knowledgeable eaters.

But Reichl’s plate is full - she recently finished a new public television show, “Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth,” that consists of 10 half-hour episodes of Reichl going to cooking schools in far-flung destinations with celebrity pals such as Frances McDormand, Dianne Wiest, Lorraine Bracco and Tom Skerritt. By the way, she noted that Bracco brought a dozen pairs of shoes to the cooking school in Morocco, while McDormand complained that her room was too large during their trip to Blackberry Farm in Tennessee.

Reichl also said she is familiar with St. Louis because it’s where her husband, Michael Singer, grew up. She volunteered that he’s a U. City High grad, and said he’s jokingly known as the fifth Landesman brother because he’s so close to the family, which includes Rocco Landesman, new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. The other brothers are Cliff, Wyatt and Knight.

She also said that Missourian Calvin “Bud” Trillin, the author and humorist from Kansas City, is a close friend. “Bud spends Thanksgiving at my house,” Reichl said.

Catherine Neville and Mace hosted the lunch. Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of Left Bank Books, was responsible for bringing Reichl into town for a book signing at Left Bank, 399 North Euclid Avenue in the CWE.