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.
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.
Reviews-
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July 1, 2022
From the 1970s to 2020, when Cecchi-Azzolina proclaimed Your Table Is Ready, he meant it; he was ma�tre d' for sparkly New York restaurants like River Caf�, Minetta Tavern, and Le Coucou (50,000-copy first printing). Critic, journalist, and author of the National Book Award finalist Lifting as We Climb, Dionne uses personal experience--from harassment to health issues--to plumb issues of size, race, and gender in Weightless (100,000-copy first printing). A vending-machine entrepreneur by age nine now famed for TikTok's Her First $100K, Dunlap was surprised to learn in college how many female friends lacked money-management skills and now seeks to bring out the Financial Feminist in every woman (100,000-copy first printing). Following nine sometimes glamorous, sometimes painful decades and publication of the New York Times best-selling memoir Lady in Waiting, Glenconner asks Whatever Next, then delivers lessons learned while living in proximity to the Crown (50,000-copy first printing). In Why We Meditate, internationally best-selling author Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) and Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Rinpoche join forces to explain why and how meditation can help practitioners push back destructive emotions. In Screaming on the Inside, New York Times opinion writer Grose examines 200 years of unrealistic, even morally questionable parenting expectations to reveal the damage done to generations of mothers in particular (100,000-copy first printing). In Smitten Kitchen Keepers, her much anticipated third book, star food blogger Perelman tests and retests classics to offer failproof recipes for cheddar broccoli quiche, lemon poppy seed cake, and more. Quilter's Hatching draws on both reportage and personal experience to explore the impact of assisted reproductive technology today. From Forbes staffer Sorvino, Raw Deal details the current crisis facing the U.S. meat industry, flailing after consolidation, price fixing, and supply-chain issues even as alternative meat producers emerge.
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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October 15, 2022
An industry veteran dishes on more than three decades of service in New York City's hottest restaurants. "The restaurant industry is not just about truffles and sweetbreads, caviar and cream, a prime fillet of beef or a freshly caught Dover sole. It's also about sex, drugs, and an array of misbehaviors perpetrated by both staff and guests." So writes Cecchi-Azzolina in the introduction, highlighting the reality that intertwined with the glamour of fine dining is plenty of bad behavior. The author grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and started working at a local luncheonette while in high school, where he learned the basics of the business. He moved to Florida and attended college, then back to the city to pursue his master's degree in theater at NYU. After a stint at La Rousse, the author went to "Michael 'Buzzy' O'Keeffe's soon-to-be-mecca to WASP cuisine and the yacht-club lifestyle, the Water Club." Then it was on to the River Caf�, an even hotter venture, where Cecchi-Azzolina was named captain of the front of the house. He eventually became the ma�tre d'h�tel at Le Coucou, which won a James Beard Award during his tenure. The author's account of life in the restaurant industry is fast-paced, long on the meticulous details of service, unsparing of the salacious tales of sex, drugs, alcohol, run-ins with the mob, "jumpers" within view of the River Caf�, and much more. Readers interested in the who's who of the NYC celebrity world will not be disappointed, as the high-profile clientele the author mentions runs the gamut from actors and musicians to international ambassadors to "the absolutely horrid Anna Wintour." Cecchi-Azzolina's prose can border on abrasive and overly detailed, but at its best, his tales are entertaining and affecting, as when he describes the toll the AIDS epidemic took on his colleagues in the industry. His honesty in acknowledging the many ills of the industry's past and its continued long journey to legitimacy is enlightening and refreshing. An overlong yet vivid, candid account of an admirable restaurant career.COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from October 24, 2022
“A well-run dining room is an art, a ballet,” according to this riveting debut from Cecchi-Azzolina, a veteran of New York City’s restaurant industry. The author, who grew up in 1960s Brooklyn, landed a postcollege job as a server at the theater district restaurant La Rousse, where writer Tennessee Williams drank to excess. La Rousse closed because of mismanagement, and Cecchi-Azzolina went on to work at the Water Club (where he served actor and comedian Jackie Gleason, who requested off-menu hash browns); acted as maître d’ at Brooklyn’s top-rated River Café (“The lure for me was both egoistic and monetary”); and performed stints at “failing restaurant” Bobo, reliable date spot Raoul’s, and the small but gorgeous Minetta Tavern. The narrative provides plenty of celebrity encounters, but also reveals how restaurants work. Bribery for a coveted table? Sometimes. The main reason for delayed seating? Diners who wouldn’t leave the table. Even when Cecchi-Azzolina thinks he’s had enough of the industry, he’s soon reminded of its ability to “give one another life.” Readers will gobble up the juicy gossip and decadent stories from a man who has seen it all. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. -
November 1, 2022
When Cecchi-Azzolina was a young actor sorely in need of steady income, a sympathetic director walked him across a Manhattan street and finagled him a restaurant job. Cecchi-Azzolina dealt with a host of dysfunctional chefs, managers, and waiters while learning to serve an ever-hungry and demanding public. Thanks to this restaurant's location, he got to wait on the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Tennessee Williams. The restaurant shuttered after a brief run, and he found himself scrounging for another job. He worked his way up to ma�tre d'h�tel at a succession of Manhattan's fine dining establishments, where he witnessed the full range of human behaviors from temperamental chefs to the the daily parade of patrons. Cecchi-Azzolina quickly learned the valuable lesson that no matter how skilled the chef, service ultimately trumps food, and what people truly value and remember is how they were treated and made to feel important. Fans of the late Anthony Bourdain will here find similar tales of restaurant life, this time from the perspective of the front of the house.COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- Michael Fazio, author of Concierge Confidential "This peek behind the curtain reveals how a master restaurateur creates a scene so magical that big spenders, delicate egos and the eternally entitled will do almost anything to be in one of the seats at showtime. YOUR TABLE IS READY is required reading for anyone who wants to crack the code on how to get a coveted reservation in the see-and-be-seen restaurants of the moment in New York--or anywhere in the world!"
- Brooke Shields "This book is funny, nostalgic, and fascinating, an insider's peek into New York City's most iconic restaurants--including so many of my favorites! From late nights dancing at The Water Club when I was a young actress, to impromptu chats over a glass of wine at Raoul's when I was a young mother, Michael Cecchi-Azzolina captures a golden era. I always feel welcome the minute I see Michael wearing his warm smile, cool glasses and elegant suits and I always leave him laughing; Your Table is Ready will do the same for you."
- Andrew Friedman, author of Chefs, Drugs, and Rock and Roll "Michael Cecchi-Azzolina saw it all: the adrenaline-fueled days that built toward the mayhem of a dinner service, the juggling act that conjured a last-minute table when a billionaire showed up on a whim at the hottest restaurant in town. YOUR TABLE IS READY is an uproarious and ultimately endearing look into the personalities and pressures of the dining room in the rough-and-tumble New York City restaurant world of the 1980s and 1990s. Full of tasty bits!"
