Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: dear bruni, salmon cornet, food porn, New York, Chef Keller, French Laundry (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A charming debut by a former waiter at the New York City restaurant Per Se slips in some high-end tricks of the trade. Vermont-bred foodie Damrosch was a few years out of Barnard College when she landed a job at chef Thomas Keller's Per Se. Fast-talking and prone to do her homework, in this case assiduously absorbing Keller's French Laundry Cookbook, Damrosch starts as a backserver, and her training is intensive: attending food seminars, memorizing the acreage of Central Park and learning how not to interrupt dining couples holding hands. In a few months, she's elevated to captain (a rare job for a woman), which entails navigating guests through the elaborate menus and essentially learning the subtleties of putting the guest at ease. Anticipating desire becomes Damrosch's role, as well as making sure New York Times food critic Frank Bruni has the best meal of his life. (Indeed, the place receives four stars.) She begins a romance with Andre the sommelier. Much of the latter half of this youthful, exuberant memoir is overtaken by their burgeoning affair, although the most delightful chapter, I Can Hear You, is full of vignettes of Damrosch's real-life waiting, i.e., the delivery of the Fabergé egg as a marriage proposal, and the parade of celebrities she meets along the way. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

Damrosch details her brief, yet remarkably fulfilling, career as a waiter and lays bare for readers the intimate workings of restaurant table service. Damrosch's ascent through the ranks at chef Thomas Keller's Midtown Manhattan's Per Se offered her a unique glimpse into high-end dining. Demystifying the hierarchy of captains, waiters, and busboys, Damrosch gives the uninitiated a crash course in those management and organizational issues that keep food streaming in perfect synchronization from kitchen to table. Although maintaining perfect service is a good restaurant's habit, success flows equally from good publicity. So Damrosch describes the frenzy produced in the kitchen by every sighting of a critic in the dining room. Without naming names, Damrosch also offers tales of overbearing, self-involved celebrities and their dining foibles. Tips on how to earn a waiter's respect (don't be a no-show; don't send back an entrée that you've nearly finished) pepper the text. Knoblauch, Mark

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (September 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061228141
• ISBN-13: 978-0061228148
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #385,085 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A portrait of the profession from the inside, January 21, 2008

By	Jessica Lux (Rosamond, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Phoebe Damrosch is an impeccably educated English major who fancied herself an artist and loathed the thought of taking a job as a drone in a publishing industry to ensure a steady paycheck. She writes, "eventually I had to accept that I wasn't working in restaurants to support my art like most of my co-workers; I was posing as an artist to justify my work as a waiter." When she failed to find solid work utilizing her degree, Damrosch joined a hellish underground bootcamp to score a job in one of New York's most elite restaurants (a place at which a party could easily drop $20,000 on dinner, and the service captains made six digit salaries).

During her year working at Per Se, Damrosch memorized the life stories of the ingredients in every dish in the restaurant, became well-versed on the architecture visible from the restaurant's windows, and learned to anticipate the needs of her guests before the guests themselves voiced them. She worked eight to ten hour shifts on her feet, juggling the needs of her tables and the whims of her guests while appearing calm and composed. She was one of the only female captains the elite circle of NYC 4-star restaurants.

Service Included is a secret window into the world of ultra-high-end hospitality, and a foodie's delight. It is not, however, an "eavesdropping" tale. Damrosch would have done well to title her memoir more accurately, because it stands on its own as a glimpse inside an unusual and elite profession. Her memoir is also unique among restaurant confessionals, because she's reporting from the front of the house, not the kitchen. The allows her to provide the reader reservations at the best seat in the house for their vicarious experience at Per Se.

Service Included suffers from a lack of clear direction. For the most part, it is a "year inside a restaurant," with a twist of romance, but in one strange passage, the author launches into a diatribe against "gun-toting, pro-life, pro-death, gas-guzzling, warmongering, monolingual, homophobic, wiretapped, Bible-thumping, genetic-engineering, stem-cell-harboring, abstinent creationist" fans of President Bush. This occurs out of context in the middle of an otherwise excellent passage about the family connections among a restaurant's wait staff, and never again does Damrosch discuss politics at length.

The cynical reader might even suspect that Damrosh selected "a year in high-end hospitality" as her first professional writing exercise. She certainly joined and left the industry as if it were an experiment, a chapter in her life accomplished. With fodder for her first book deal, Damrosch submitted her resignation and walked away from her restaurant reputation.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the Dish? , December 18, 2007

By	G. Shepherd (florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Another annoyingly overrated memoir, about as badly written (and in some cases very similar to) Gael Greene's "insatiable," but from the other side of the table. The only reason to read this book is for a handful of interesting details about the food and service at Per Se; otherwise, this "tell all" tells nothing. The story of the relationship with her sommelier is beyond boring, and she's impenetrably "discreet" with her recollections of customers and the other staff at Per Se -- she doesn't have the courage or wit to name, spill, or dish. (Oh Truman, where are you when we need you?). The "tips" for diners at the end of each chapter are just ridiculous (Do customers at Per Se really "make faces" when the server recites the evening's specials?): If you want truly useful dining-out tips, read the engaging and informative "Turning the Tables" by Steven Shaw instead.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One disappointment after another..., December 28, 2007

By	Laura Smith "Laura" (NY USA) - See all my reviews

The marketing for this book has been great - sadly, none of it came through in the book. Maybe the marketing set me up for a huge disappointment - but I really did have high hopes for this book....and was disappointed every step of the way.

A "delicious behind-the-scenes" memoir.....a "Sex and the City" love affair....the "highly competitive and frenetic world" of fine dining....an "eavesdropping waiter".

None of these things came through in Damrosch's writing. The tone of the book from the beginning to end never once allowed you to feel as if you were getting a real "behind-the-scenes" view of the dining world. On the contrary - her tone seemed quite the opposite - more protective of the wait staff and the kitchen staff, and even the diners themselves, than discussing anything eye-opening or revealing - or even remotely educational for that matter. (Okay, Okay, we get that "marking" a table takes some minor skill set -that is what? the ability to predict what utensils might be required during a given encounter with a specific food? Brilliant!)

As far as the sexy-romance goes....the few chapters that were dedicated to her affair with the sommelier - well, were just plain boring. It left me with one feeling: "who cares". There was just nothing of consequence to report - it would have been best to just leave it all out.

This semi-creative non-fiction just flopped. Damrosch would have been better off actually being creative - if she has any talent in that deapartment - and given us something to enjoy - with interesting characters, exciting romantic ventures, exaggerated diners, perhaps all based loosely on the real thing - but far less boring than this supposed real-life look at the restaurant world.

The only thing that Damrosch seems to be able to write about genuinely is her love of food and her interest in every kind of prepared food. This is the only area in the book which actually felt authentic. I suppose that alone would not have sold her first book - but it certainly would have been more honest. There just wasn't enough real substance to anything else she had to say and it showed in every chapter.