Red Menace’s Reading Room

Almost two years, I read and then reviewed Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. In that review I called it “The best book I’ve ever hated.” No doubt because of listening to that book, Audible’s algorithm suggested Your Table is Ready to me. The opening line of the description was “The Front of House version of kitchen confidential.” Since I’ve spent 99% of my career in the Front of House portion of the hospitality industry, I was very interested in this book. 

Premise

Much like Kitchen Confidential, Your Table is Ready is a summary of Michael Cecchi-Azzolina’s career in New York City restaurants from the 80’s right through to 2020. There is a good portion of early life back story and growing up in New York in the 70’s. Cecchi (which is how the author is referred to throughout most of the book) came to restaurant work gradually, helping out at his neighborhood breakfast spot and moving up. As Cecchi moves into fine dining and becomes a server and later Maitre D’Hotel there are stories so relatable that I had to pause the book because it reminded me too much of nights I’d worked myself. There are comical anecdotes of ridiculously demanding guests, interactions with celebrities and mobsters, as well as insights into the strain a Food Service career can put on relationships. 

My Opinion

As I mentioned, this book is very much in the style of Kitchen Confidential, and while it is very good, Mr. Cecchi-Azzolina’s writing is not quite on par with Anthony Bourdain’s. There were two things I really loved about this book, the perspective, and the message. The perspective of Front of House staff made it a lot more relatable for me compared to Kitchen Confidential. The stories are more focused on interactions with guests as opposed to the staff’s interaction with each other (although there is a lot of that as well). Talking with angry chefs, dropping food on guests, and dealing with know-it-alls who seemingly only go to restaurants to complain, I’ve experienced all that and it was very validating to hear the authors’ similar stories. What I loved even more however, was the message.

Bourdain’s message in Kitchen Confidential (although he recanted it slightly in later books) was how to work in food service you need to embrace the long hours and terrible conditions. That starting work when the rest of the world was heading home gave you some kind of line cook bushido that I definitely did not agree or identify with. Cecchi-Azzolina’s message, which is summed up very nicely in the epilogue, is that Hospitality is an exhausting, miserable industry and that most of the people who are in it (including the author), are using it to live until “something else” comes along, but it takes so much out of you that “something else” never comes. Cecchi describes it as a drug, an addiction, that you’re stuck in even if you don’t want to be. That might come across a little melodramatic, but the way the epilogue is worded was eloquent enough to make me choke up a little. The difference is that Cecchi’s response is to go down the rabbit hole and open his own restaurant, whereas mine is to continue to try and get out.

Overall rating: 9.5/10