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A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career ma\\xeetre d\\u2019hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants.\\xa0

From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen\\u2014or just to gawk\\u2014at 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\\u2019d never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O\\u2019Keefe\\u2019s casually elegant River Caf\\xe9 (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally\\u2019s Minetta Tavern to Nolita\\u2019s 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\\u2019t), 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\\u2019s somewhere between a George Orwell \\u201cdown and out in\\u2026.\\u201d dungeon and a sleek showman\\u2019s smoke-and-mirrors palace.

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

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\\u2019s most famous and influential restaurants, including The Water Club, The River Cafe, Raoul's, and Le Coucou. He lives in Manhattan.

Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - \\u200b
https://wellingtonsquarebooks.indiecommerce.com/book/9781250281982