Entries tagged with 'Served'
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I blog by day and wait tables in a New York City restaurant by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy! “We’re like Babbo!” P. says, referring to our seemingly miraculous popularity. It’s Friday night, and our restaurant is swinging. “Only at Babbo, people actually spend money,” B. chimes in. He’s sort of right. There are two women on table eight sharing one glass of madeira and one piece of chocolate cake. Our place is tiny, so we save our tables for those who are eating—drinkers get a seat at our bar or at the smaller bar wedged in the front window. The lanky ladies promised they were dining, so I shepherded...
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Being away from work for a long time makes me vaguely nervous. What if there is a deluge of new wines on our list, none of which I have tasted? Someone, with my luck a sommelier, will ask me about the new red from Rhone and I will have to artfully bullshit. Which I hate to do. Or I'll have to ask someone who does know and risk receiving a roll of the eye that means “
you shouldn’t have to ask!”
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Every cook knows you better be on your deathbed before you even consider calling in sick. (Might you be able to pop off your deathbed for a few hours during dinner rush?). It’s part of the culture of the kitchen. Everyone is needed, no matter what.
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I blog by day and wait tables in a New York City restaurant by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy! If you find waiting tables to be an easy pursuit, I would gauge that you have never worked as a waiter. As a perfectionist, I admit with regret that I am far from achieving waiter perfection. Like the natural athlete and the musical prodigy, some people are blessed (or cursed?) with an innate knack for the rhythm and nuance of service. Sometimes, I find myself in the groove: filling wine glasses and clearing tables like nobody’s business, stopping to say hi to a couple that has just walked in, and running...
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"The waitress is pretty, she's friendly, she's sexy, she's serving you this wonderful stuff, taking care of you. You start to get ideas. You and everyone else. She's just not going to be interested."
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I blog by day and wait tables in a New York City restaurant by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy! The restaurant owner’s parents had flown in from Texas. After all, their son B. was opening his first restaurant, in Manhattan. They sat on table one, which had yet to be designated table one. It was our second night of service, and we were still ruminating about how to classify our tables and split them up into waiter stations. Yet somehow, it happened that I was to wait on B.’s mom and dad. They seemed thoroughly easy-going and amiable, yet I was mildly terrified. They made maybe the seventh assemblage whom...
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I blog by day and wait tables in a New York City restaurant by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy! T., my friend from school, asked me if she should work on New Year's Eve. “I don’t know,” I said, really not knowing. “Do you think you’ll make good money?” Our friend Andrew, who graduated last year, now runs the front of the house at a newish East Village spot. It’s the kind of restaurant that makes great boozy drinks and often employs a DJ, so it seems like a natural New Year party setting. He recruited T. to play hostess and/or coat check girl for the night. “I don’t know...
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I blog by day and wait tables in a New York City restaurant by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy! D. was the effervescent wine director at an awesome restaurant nearby, and a regular at my place. A year ago, D. sat at the table by the cheese case, waiting for his girlfriend. He had just finished work and was bursting with energy. I, on the other hand, was fading fast. I poured him a glass of aglianico and we chatted. “Do you have Christmas Eve plans?” he inquired. I didn’t. Five minutes later, that had changed. Feast of the Seven Fishes The Feast of the Seven Fishes, also known as...
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I'm exhausted. But it's not so much from running up and down the stairs for more bottles of moscato or from being on my feet all night. It's from
being on, all the time. Nice to
everyone. I'm tired from having to be funny, witty, bubbly, and relentlessly, uncompromisingly hospitable all night.
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I blog by day and wait tables by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy! I was 17 and about to graduate from high school. My parents were moving to Hoboken, New Jersey. By default, I was going with them. During my first-ever trip to the place, I got off the train and walked across the street and into the first establishment I saw—there was a neon orange sign above the door and a shiny, modern, spacey feel. The Wolfgang Puck Express was right on the waterfront, the New York skyline majestic across the river in the sunshiny afternoon. I decided that a job in a restaurant would be perfect for my...
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