Scan barcode
A review by greensalbet
Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
A great frolic through the New York restaurant scene from the 1980s up to the pandemic. Cecchi-Azzolina gives readers a front row look into the kitchens, dining rooms, design and marketing teams, house staff, bartenders, and waiters who make fine dining happen in the city that never sleeps.
Cecchi-Azzolina holds nothing back in this telling. Readers learn about the drugs, the drinking, the sex, the coke snorting, and the palm greasing that occurs in most high-end restaurants where seats are hard to reserve, expectations for dining perfection are expected, and restaurant employees bust their asses nightly to serve demanding guests. The staff consume whatever uppers and downers they can get their hands on to keep their equilibrium in check. High levels of repressed rage have to be monitored when dealing with cruel, demanding patrons in a business designed for their every need.
Cecchi-Azzolina holds nothing back in this telling. Readers learn about the drugs, the drinking, the sex, the coke snorting, and the palm greasing that occurs in most high-end restaurants where seats are hard to reserve, expectations for dining perfection are expected, and restaurant employees bust their asses nightly to serve demanding guests. The staff consume whatever uppers and downers they can get their hands on to keep their equilibrium in check. High levels of repressed rage have to be monitored when dealing with cruel, demanding patrons in a business designed for their every need.