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

Introduction

FROM THE MOMENT I trained as a waiter (we’d yet been neutered into servers), inexperienced, eager, excited, I fell in love with the restaurant business. Thirty-five years later I’m still at it. I haven’t served a table in years, at least not all the way through, yet here I am, still toiling away, greeting guests, overseeing staff, and doing my best to create an environment of good food and great atmosphere and hopefully bring a bit of sustenance and joy to my guests. Restaurants have served as the family I never had. Nothing matches the feeling I get when I am in a packed dining room, the bar full, guests talking, laughing, having a cocktail or a glass of wine while waiting for a meal. I get comfort from the families who come, the couples, the dates, the music, the dim lights, the laughter, conversations, orders being taken, drinks poured, the clatter of plates, the clanging of silverware, glasses tapped together in toast, a bartender’s shaker—the sound of the ice and liquor slamming against the top and sides of the tin (I still salivate at the sound)—the arguments, the nasty customers, it’s all a grand symphony to me. It’s why I love this sometimes-shitty business and why many others like me are drawn to it.

We restaurant workers are a band of misfits, many of us unable to work a real job, one in an office or a factory, or the millions of variants we call normal. Many in the business, especially the front of the house, are transient. I never met anyone who grew up wanting to be a server. Most are there because they needed work in college or something temporary because of a lost position, or they are pursuing other careers and take a restaurant job while they wait for something in their desired line of work. And there are those who do this every day and have made a career out of it. To all of you, I tip my hat.

Restaurant jobs are plentiful, and honestly, what does it take to write down hamburger on a piece of paper, walk to a machine, punch the order in, pick up the food when it’s ready, bring it to the table, drop a check once the meal is finished, then collect the money. You don’t need an advanced degree or to be highly intelligent (though many of those I’ve worked with over the years are incredibly so), though it does take a special sort of person to put up with the long hours, the demands of the customers, the multitasking, the sometimes awful ownership, the shit managerial staff, the abusive chefs and cooks—yet there’s a beauty in all of it. A well-run dining room is an art, a ballet, a confluence of pieces that come together to bring a guest a meal.

Our guests come not just for sustenance, but to celebrate—birthdays, anniversaries, a wedding, a death, a date, friends getting together, the pursuit of sex, love, it’s all happening on any given night, and on any given night most of my working life has been spent in this environment. I am just a piece in the show. For many years, restaurants enabled me artistically, socially, and sexually. I’ve met the loves of my life in restaurants, my greatest friends have worked alongside me, and many are still my friends even though the name above the door has changed numerous times for us. I’ve had trysts, got naked, fucked, laughed, drank, drugged, puked, and shared the gamut of our human existence in restaurants. It’s now time to share these experiences, the people, the food, the insanity of the places so many of us take for granted.

This industry is composed of misfits and losers, artists and drunks, unbelievable beauties, downtrodden addicts, and some of the greediest and most narcissistic people you will ever meet, all counterbalanced with the most generous, loving, hardworking, and creative people on the planet, those of us who create, inhabit, and give life to the hospitality industry. I’ve spent thirty-plus years working with or have been in the company of some of the best this industry has. Legends that turned American cuisine on its head: Larry Forgione, hailed as the Godfather of American Cuisine; Charlie Palmer, who made it elegant and insightful; David Burke, who built gravity-defying structures of food, turned things upside down, and reinvented what we thought was beautiful; Rick Moonen; Buzzy O’Keeffe; the Raoul brothers; Keith and Brian McNally; Thomas Keller—the list goes on and on.

Do I love the industry? Yes. Do I hate it? Fuck yeah. This business helped pay the bills, kept me fueled in booze, drugs, and women. Has given me entrée to the richest, the most powerful, the most celebrated of actors, designers, politicians, heads of state, industrialists, stockbrokers, prostitutes, porn stars, alcoholics, millionaires, and billionaires. I’ve drunk and played with many of them, celebrated with them, fucked some, shared stories, and, most important, welcomed them as who they are—fellow humans with the same desires, drives, wants, and problems we all have. Who am I? I’m your neighborhood waiter, bartender, and maître d’hôtel. I’m the one you come to for a table, the right table, at any time, greeted with a hug and sometimes a kiss—always a smile, treating many of you as if you were my brother, sister, or lover. I love it because it’s real, because I love the people who come to me every night. I want to be in their orbit, and because of my position, where I work and have worked, they want to be in mine. I am you. All of you, and you are all of me; we need to escape, celebrate, run, hide, and live. We give one another life.

What follows is my story. As best I can remember, since many of those days are recalled from when I was under a haze of alcohol and drugs. 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. It’s a cutthroat, shitty business, the hours long, the work grueling, at times the only relief being the booze up at the front bar. Sometimes, if you get really lucky, maybe a chance to screw the closing hostess, though that presents its own set of problems. If you’ve ever dined in a restaurant, partaken of food in its all glories and abominations, if you are a foodie, chef, cook, server, busser, dishwasher, or hungry patron, you’ve experienced at least some of this, or, I guarantee, you have been in the proximity of it all. It goes hand in hand, from ours to yours. Those EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS signs are no joke—our hands are dirty, very dirty. Will I offend here? I expect so. Most of this book takes place in a very different age from today. The restaurant industry, as many others, has been rocked by abuses of power, horrific sex scandals, and a complete disregard for women. #MeToo is here for a reason, and a very good one. What I chronicle in these pages was of a time, and I write about those times as they were. To edit what happened or to soften some of the details would not be true, nor would it be a representation of the times, which were both amazing and heartbreaking. This is the way it was for me and many of those I have worked with and for.

PART I

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

THIS IS THE NIGHT the food industry salutes itself, it’s our Oscars, our Tonys, and our Grammys. The night when the best of the best are celebrated. Hundreds of restaurant industry stars and professionals are hugging, kissing, glad-handing, or, in the words of the first great maître d’hôtel I worked with, giving each other zee beeg blow job. Le Coucou restaurant, the creation of Stephen Starr and Daniel Rose, that heralded, new bastion of classic French cuisine in SoHo, New York City, is a finalist for the Best New Restaurant in America. Starr is up for Restaurateur of the Year. This is the seventh time he’s been nominated. If he loses this one, he’s destined to be the Susan Lucci of the restaurant world. Daniel Rose is the chef of Le Coucou. Me, I am the maître d’ of Le Coucou. After thirty years in the business, with a failed acting career along the way, this is the closest to the Academy Awards I will ever get.

Paparazzi are everywhere, cameras clicking as the stars walk down the red carpet. Rachael Ray is leading the Food Network stars and is a presenter. The staff of Chicago’s legendary Alinea, as well as those from Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Ken Friedman of Spotted Pig with his posse, unaware of the impending accusations against him, chef Jonathan Waxman, legendary Leah Chase of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans, who is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award—all are here, the biggest and best of the restaurant world. I walk the red carpet because Daniel Rose doesn’t want to walk it alone. Rose, a kid from Chicago who left his home country for a failed attempt at the French Foreign Legion, eventually ending up in cooking school, spent ten years honing his craft throughout France before opening up his legendary sixteen-seat Paris restaurant, Spring. While a genius of the sauce and a star in his dining room at Spring, he hates the adulation, the crowd. He’d rather be stirring a sauce in the beautiful movie set of a kitchen he helped create in the back of Le Coucou. Yet here he is, me by his side, flashbulbs popping, the smiles and handshakes, the incredible energy of walking the red carpet into the Civic Opera House. So this is what it’s like. I like it. The attention, the acknowledgment. Even if it’s not meant for me.

Once the carpet is walked, we enter the grand foyer of the opera house, whose thirty-six hundred seats are sold out at the steep price of $500 each. Stephen Starr shelled out for at least twenty of them. We are ushered through the lobby and into the gilded and chandeliered auditorium, the space buzzing with the heightened energy of an awards evening. Tuxedoed and gowned, the crowd is befitting of such a grand space. The first inkling that it was going to be a long night was the roped-off lobby, behind which many local restaurants had set up booths to feed and water the crowd. Of the scores of booths, not one was open and nary a bar was in sight. There were rows of unopened bottles, all out of reach and all unavailable. Insanity? Oui, chef! The majority of us, we who each day shove copious amounts of food and booze down the throats of millions of Americans, have our tipple at the end of a shift, sometimes in the middle of the shift, and though some sip throughout the night, we professional enablers couldn’t get a drop. I can’t say I blame the folks at the Beard Awards. Who wants thirty-six hundred or so chefs, cooks, servers, managers, and all the other staff getting wasted? Most would be out in the lobby downing shots and champagne because this crowd never passes up a free drink. They’d only head into the auditorium to see if they’d won or lost. Most couldn’t give a fuck about the others. The business is so fragile that, for many, it comes down to only fifty or so guests a week between you and Chapter 11. Win or lose, they’d just head back to the lobby to drink more, either in celebration of the gold medallion hanging from their necks or, as in Starr’s case, in consolation for maybe losing once again. There’s no in-between in the restaurant business. You’re all in or nothing.

No booze for us. We are instead ushered into the great hall to our seats. Most of the Starr retinue is already there. Two full rows of Starr’s directors, managers, VIPs, and such. I needed something to stabilize the anxiety and suddenly remembered the flask handed to me at one of the pre-parties as a commemorative that I’d stuffed into my jacket. Already fueled by a half dozen glasses of bubbles, I didn’t at the time have the need to see if the party favor was full. I reach into my tux, pull it out, and open it, and the sweet smell of bourbon fills my nostrils. Thank God. This was going to get me through the next couple of hours. Yes, I was anxious, I wanted this. To be here. To be celebrated. I wanted this, for me, for my team, for every single cook, server, manager, busser, dishwasher, and porter who works tirelessly, endlessly, every single day in restaurants throughout the world. Enduring the abuse, the ridiculously long hours, the constant training, the cooking, the serving, the screaming, the hugs, the kisses, sometimes a blow job in the bathroom or a fuck in the locker room. All after a fifteen-hour day and too many drinks at the end. The everything that goes into creating something that most everyone takes for granted: sitting in a restaurant and eating a meal. The something that has a 60 percent chance of failing the first year and of which 80 percent are closed after five years.

Insane? Probably. Addicting? Yes. For most of us here, this night was big. Every major restaurateur, chef, cookbook writer, manager, sommelier, you name it, was in attendance. This was the percent that had made it, and I wanted to be a part of it. I also wanted to give a big fuck-you to the doubters and naysayers. If we lost, there’d be the sniggers, told-you-sos. All that money and publicity and they didn’t win! We did have the publicity. Three stars in The New York Times, the New York Post calling us one of the best restaurants of the century, all the magazine write-ups, it seemed endless. Le Coucou is a $5 million gem. A gorgeous restaurant incredibly lit and designed. Staffed with an army of all the necessary personnel it takes to put out an amazing meal at $150 a head. Minimum. Many restaurateurs are unable to do this. Stephen Starr has the firepower, the cash, the will, and the desire to do it and do it big. This creates a lot of resentment. Hence the seven nominations without a win.

In all fairness, this business is full of great people—those who love the business, the insanity of it, the desire to make people happy. In all my years of doing this, in some of the most heralded restaurants in NYC, I’ve never seen a response like that of our guests at Le Coucou: Amazing! Incredible! Best dining experience ever, the giddiness of our guests as they savor classic French dishes, the quenelle de brochette ris de veau à la tomate and tout le lapin. I hear the accolades night after night. Some guests wait a year for a table and are not disappointed. Many of those in the audience this evening had been to Le Coucou. We were celebrated and singled out at the slew of pre-parties leading up to the awards. Many Chicago restaurant professionals had dined with us and had positive experiences. We’d hear, Hey, there’s the Coucou team! You guys are going to win! and the like from many in the room. Am I contradicting myself? Nah. The ones who hate you always will.

Did I think we were going to win? Nope. Not a chance. I’m figuring there will be a backlash against our elegance, the millions Starr pumped into the restaurant, and the expat chef, famous in Paris, returning to the Big Apple. Stephen’s street cred with the fine-restaurant folk was shit. He is known for big palaces, the Buddakans and Morimotos, his small restaurants in Philly, rip-offs of other people’s ideas, but not fine dining. We had gotten so many words already, so much press, I figured there’d be a huge backlash, and that little restaurant in Brooklyn, funky, interesting, quirky, the one with the garden in back, would take it home.

So. Why am I here? For that we need to go back.

The term maître d’hôtel translates as master of the house. It popped up around the sixteenth century and was given to the head servant or butler. We restaurant folk have continued the tradition of servitude for five centuries. It seems the role we currently think of as the maître d’hôtel—that person formally dressed, standing guard at the door, keeping the riffraff out, prowling the dining floor, terrorizing staff, and soaking guests for a good table—appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century. It’s generally accepted that the term was cut to just maître d’ in the 1940s. It seems two accents in one term was too much for Americans to deal with. In Europe this person was usually formally trained at a hotel school and well versed in all aspects of service—from knowing where the fork goes to carving a bird

tableside. In the States the role generally went to someone who’d worked his way up, with on-the-job training, from busboy to captain and eventually the master of the dining room.

My uncles always referred to the maître d’ of the famous Copacabana club as a god, someone everyone needed to know to get a table. To me, becoming a maître d’ was the pinnacle of my restaurant career. The money was great, until, that is, the IRS decided that a maître d’hôtel was in actuality a manager and couldn’t be included in the tip pool but had to be salaried. Given that most restaurant owners are among the cheapest people in the world, this wasn’t going to fly, and overnight, maîtres d’hôtel went the way of the dodo. Though this may actually have resurrected the dodo since the owners then hired mostly dimwits for minimum wage to stand at the door and greet people. What was once the best-paid position in the dining room soon became the least paid, the duties essentially given over to a moderately paid manager and a team of hosts.

Brooklyn

EVERYTHING HAS A BEGINNING. Mine was in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in the sixties. The neighborhood was mostly made up of Southern Italians whose parents or grandparents emigrated from either Naples or Sicily. My mother’s mother was from Naples, her father from a small mountain town in Sicily. The best thing my mother got from them was how to cook. She saved the best for Sundays, when the aunts and uncles would come over. I’d wake up early Sunday morning to the smell of garlic and meat frying, the searing of ribs and meatballs in her big cast-iron skillet. She always left three meatballs on the side of the stove for me to eat when I got back from church.

My mother raised me herself. I was the classic latchkey kid and took myself to school from first grade on. I never knew my father. What I did know was that when the conversation between my mother and aunts became hushed, they were talking about him. I’d strain my ears to hear what they said, and from what I did hear, it was never good. He had apparently disappeared when my mother was pregnant and, according to her, reappeared at the hospital the day I was born with the promise of marrying her should she give me his last name. She did; he disappeared and never returned. Not until I found him years later did I learn the truth.

Before anyone came over on Sunday, there was church. I was an altar boy, and every Sunday I’d leave the smell of that kitchen knowing the meatballs my mother set aside would be there when I returned. I hated church. It was an hour or so of kneeling, standing, sitting, kneeling, standing, sitting again, and praying; on and on it went. While my mother made me go every Sunday, the only time she went was for a wedding or a funeral.

Frankie G, one of my buddies from the neighborhood, was an altar boy. He was the smallest, the only one smaller than me, and with a bigger nose. God that kid had a beak. He was born with Jimmy Durante’s schnoz. When he entered the altar from the side, his body arrived about three minutes after the entrance of that glorious nose. He convinced me to be an altar boy. He came home one day after serving at a wedding with a five-dollar bill from the best man. It was customary, at the conclusion of the wedding ceremony as the bride and groom exited the church, for the best man to stay behind and pass out bills like he was trying to get a great table at the Copa. The priest got the most, usually $100 handed to him in an envelope. The altar boys got anywhere from one to five bucks. The first palm tip I ever received (a palm for those who, sadly, are not aware is when someone places money in your hand for good service and even more money for a better table) was after the first wedding I served. The best man came over and, with much-practiced skill, slid a five-dollar bill into my hand. Back then five bucks was a fortune! This was my introduction to the service industry.

The church was my theater, wonderfully lit, with the warm glow of the candles, the chandeliers hung low, softly illuminating the congregants beneath. The light shining through the stained-glass windows bathed the entire space in soft hues of green, blue, and red. The mood was enhanced by the statues lining the perimeter, set pieces creating the mood—from the beatific look of the Virgin Mary to the pained and tortured expressions of the martyrs and sinners. This was drama! We were told we were all here to serve God. We knew better. We were there for what we could get. The Italian American ethos of the time was espoused in the words of my uncle Joe: You get what you can, because if you don’t, somebody else will.

Altar boys serve at mass. Serving at a mass or serving tables in a restaurant, it’s all the same. In restaurants, the first thing you do is go down to the locker room to change into your uniform. At church, I went into the rectory to change into my costume, a beautiful white robe. I loved putting on that robe, it made me feel special. Walking down the aisle, I’d hear the whispered comments from the old ladies: Look how cute he is! He’s adorable! So handsome! This was my stage, my moment to shine, to be seen and get what I could. I always tried to serve the later masses. They were the most crowded, and the more people, the more money you made. Had I known the term then, we’d have called the number of worshippers the same name we use in restaurants today, covers. The number of guests you begin a shift with is the cover count. Covers mean money. For you, the restaurant, your vendors, et cetera. Covers at mass meant more newspapers to sell and more money in the collection baskets.

Before the mass begins the altar needs to be set. In restaurants, all the work done prior to opening is the pre-shift, the polishing of silver and glassware, setting up linen stocks, folding napkins, setting tables and sweeping floors. Mass was the same. The altar had to be prepared, linens laid out, cruets filled, rugs vacuumed, and the gold plates polished. After the setup, we’d go through the motions of the mass. The endless, boring prayers, the constant kneeling and standing, kneeling and standing, over and over—my knees were chafed for years. We’d then supply the priest with his condiments for the drinking from the chalice of Christ’s blood, cheap red wine, and Communion wafers.

There was always a lot of jockeying among the altar boys for the right job. It’s like jockeying for the best station in a restaurant. Everyone wanted the cool jobs—filling the cruets, handing the priest the incense holder, and of course carrying the plate to put under the parishioners’ chins to catch any dropped hosts. If you didn’t get one of these plum positions, you wound up hanging back at the altar and trying your damnedest not to let out a killer yawn. If your job was holding the plate to catch the wafers, you got to see up close all the pretty girls in church that day and smile at all the old ladies from the neighborhood, who would, seeing your angelic presence in those damn white robes, get you an extra quarter every time they asked you to run errands for them. We were always looking for tips. By the time I started in restaurants I was already well versed in earning money from the guests.

At the end of the mass we’d retrieve the offering baskets, round wicker baskets with long wooden arms like broomsticks, used to reach across the pews to collect donations. You’d walk down the aisle and pass the baskets, each person dropping in offerings, from coins to dollar bills. Once finished, we’d take the baskets back behind the altar and dump the money into a big pot. One of us, usually the oldest altar boy, would skim a few bucks off the top. Then, once mass ended, we’d run outside and sell The Tablet, the Catholic newspaper. We’d each take a bunch of copies and stand outside the church, shouting, "Tablet, Tablet, ten cents a copy!"—staying till we sold out. Once back in the rectory we had to count out all the money we earned and hand it over. We always made sure we’d keep at least $1. We’d skim from both the baskets and Tablet money to reach the magic number.

Once finished, we’d head over to the candy store on the corner and sit at the counter. Frankie G and I would get two orders of buttered toast and two cups of coffee. The only toast you ever ate was white bread, and they always buttered it for you while it was piping hot, steam rising from the two diagonally cut slices, the warm butter oozing out the middle. This was my madeleine. We’d take the perfect piece of toast and dunk it into the creamed and sugared coffee. Years later, I’d hear chef David Burke refer to this simple deliciousness as good eating.

As we got older, the coffee and toast became the after prize. Once mass ended, we’d do our best to beat the priest back to the rectory. We’d steal a bottle of unopened wine, a bag of unconsecrated hosts to snack on, and skim the pot for seven bucks. The extra five was to buy a nickel bag of pot, which we’d score from one of the older kids who always came to mass with pot to sell. We’d then hide behind the church, get high, drink a bit of wine, and finally head to the candy store for our toast and coffee, which was now even more delicious since we were high out of our minds.

Returning home from church, the first thing I’d see as I turned down my block were the double-parked Cadillacs. These belonged to my uncles, cousins, and family friends, all headed to my house for the Sunday meal. It was an unspoken rule on the block that if you needed to use your car that day, you’d better not park it on the side of the street where we lived. The Cadillac Eldorados and Coupe de Villes were all in a line, blocking any car that was legally parked. My uncles and their friends—always well-dressed, in tailored suits, shoes shined to a mirror finish, black or brown fedoras atop the heads of the older ones, slicked-back hair for the younger ones—were all connected in some way to the Mob. They’d unload the boxes of cakes, pastries, loaves of bread, wine, and Dewar’s Scotch and leave their cars there. No one in the house worried about the illegally double-parked cars, since every few hours a cop car would cruise down the block to make sure the cars were safe. These guys were connected, and, as Uncle Joe always said, One hand washes the other. They weren’t the mobsters with the money and cachet flouted by John Gotti and the like. These guys were the type played by Al Pacino in the film Donnie Brasco. His character, Benjamin Lefty Ruggiero, was the sad-sack mobster, living in a shabby apartment with never enough money and always wanting to be what he wasn’t and never could be, a capo di capo. These were my role models.

These Sundays are when I first began to serve and bartend. The men would settle in the living room, put on the game, light up their cigarettes, start dealing gin rummy or poker and wait to be served. They all smoked. A lot. My mother and many of the others would later die of lung cancer. Once the men sat, drinks and food had to be served and ashtrays needed to be emptied. This is when I’d get to work. I’d serve the food, pour shots of Dewar’s, empty ashtrays, and listen to the stories and cursing as the gin rummy game commenced. I’d get everyone what he needed and, when the men finished, clear or bus the plates and glasses. I’d take the used shot glasses to a corner, combine all the little drops of Scotch left in the bottom of each glass, and make myself a little shot. I’d hold my breath and down it.

The Mob was a constant in my life during these years. My mother worked as a secretary in a real estate office. I’d spend days there during the summer months since she couldn’t afford a sitter or camp. The four large brown desks in the office were each topped with a sheath of glass, and they were always littered with papers. The office smelled of old wood and cigarettes. I’d hang out in the office or outside, the summer heat excruciating, the days interminable. Except for Fridays. One desk at the front of the office looked out onto the street and was always unoccupied except on Friday, when Uncle Joe would enter like a celebrity, a huge smile on his face, kissing everyone on the cheek. He wasn’t my real uncle Joe. My mother had me call him that, and it always insured a crisp dollar bill was handed to me. He’d come into the office and shout Mikey!, pinch my cheek so hard I thought he was ripping it off, and thrust that dollar bill into my hand. He’d then sit at the front desk, which meant we were open for business. People would line up outside the office for