Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'
A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d’hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants.

From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen—or just to gawk—at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.

Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we’d never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O’Keefe’s casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern to Nolita’s Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.

From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at La Rousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In Your Table Is Ready, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don’t), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that’s somewhere between a George Orwell “down and out in….” dungeon and a sleek showman’s smoke-and-mirrors palace.

Your Table Is Ready is a rollicking, raunchy, revelatory memoir.

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Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'
A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d’hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants.

From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen—or just to gawk—at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.

Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we’d never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O’Keefe’s casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern to Nolita’s Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.

From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at La Rousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In Your Table Is Ready, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don’t), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that’s somewhere between a George Orwell “down and out in….” dungeon and a sleek showman’s smoke-and-mirrors palace.

Your Table Is Ready is a rollicking, raunchy, revelatory memoir.

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Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'

Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'

by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'

Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'

by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina

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Overview

A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d’hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants.

From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen—or just to gawk—at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.

Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we’d never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O’Keefe’s casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern to Nolita’s Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.

From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at La Rousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In Your Table Is Ready, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don’t), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that’s somewhere between a George Orwell “down and out in….” dungeon and a sleek showman’s smoke-and-mirrors palace.

Your Table Is Ready is a rollicking, raunchy, revelatory memoir.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250325747
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date: 01/23/2024
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 30,991
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Cecchi-Azzolina has been in the restaurant industry for more than thirty-five years. From his early career at La Rousse, he has gone on to run the front of house at New York’s most famous and influential restaurants, including The Water Club, The River Cafe, Raoul's, and Le Coucou. He lives in Manhattan.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Part I The James Beard Awards, Civic Opera House, Chicago, May 1, 2017 3

Brooklyn 8

Fran and Lou's 15

Part II Back to the City 27

Playwrights Horizons 30

Restaurant 101 33

So This Is What It's Like 41

A Kick in the Dick 46

Althea 51

All Good Things Must Pass 55

Part III Life on the Water 59

Another World 66

Partners in Servitude 70

How Soft Is an Opening? 75

Success 80

And They Came … 84

Mimi 87

Extracurricular Activities 90

The All-Star 97

The River Café 100

The Call 105

It Begins 108

The Family That Dines Together … 111

The Trail 113

"Do Not Fuck Zees Up!" 121

Guilty 127

Jumpers 135

The Door 137

Mr. Debonair 143

The Donald 148

"Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In!" 152

Acting Proceeds Apace 163

Part IV Raoul's 167

The Meet 170

Another Beginning 173

The Raoul's Brothers 177

Service 181

Celebrity 184

Drag 188

Harvard 190

9/11/2001 193

The Mob Redux 195

Crushed 200

Part V Unwanted 203

Minetta Tavern 206

Hope 213

"Failure Is Simply the Opportunity to Begin Again, This Time More Intelligently"-Henry Ford 216

The Resurrection 221

Bobo 226

Part VI Starr Ship Coucou 231

Le Chef 233

Starr Man 235

Le Coucou 237

Iron Bottoms 244

Soufflé 247

The Arrival 251

Gone at Last 256

The Shah 264

Fashionistas 270

Mr. James Beard 275

The Awards 277

Epilogue 279

Author's Note 285

Acknowledgments 287

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