Gael Greene, who reinvented the art of the restaurant review with sass and sensuality in four decades as New York magazine’s restaurant critic, died on Nov. 1 at her home in an assisted living facility in Manhattan. She was 88.

Until her death, Ms. Greene was chairwoman of Citymeals on Wheels, a New York charity she helped create in the early 1980s to provide food for the elderly.

She embarked on her assignment for New York with great flair. A fan of the New Journalism, she put a premium on lively prose and colorful detail, throwing overboard the pompousness of the professional gourmets who dominated the profession. She cast an amused eye over her surroundings and shared the pleasures of her plate with enthusiasm, scrutinizing the tables and offerings at renowned restaurants like La Grenouille and 21.

“I wake every day full of hope that I will discover some great new restaurant of a glorious new dish or even an enchanting new flavor,” Ms. Greene wrote in an autobiographical note for the reference work Contemporary Authors. “I have dedicated myself to the wanton indulgence of my senses. And I shall consider it fitting and divine if on my deathbed my last words echo those of Pierrette the sister of Brillat-Savarin, who died at table shortly before her one-hundredth birthday: ‘Bring on the dessert. I think I’m about to die.’”