Your Table Is Ready

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.

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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.

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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.

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