Food Read: Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter

After last reviewing Anthony Bourdain's back-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential, I thought it would be most appropriate to review a front-of-the-house book next (no it's not Waiter Rant). Phoebe Damrosch's Service Included was published in 2007, and I picked up my copy after hearing an interview with her on The Splendid Table in February 2008. The book (Damrosch's first) chronicles her experiences moving up the ranks at Thomas Keller's acclaimed Per Se in New York, where she is hired as a backserver for the restaurant's opening and eventually attains the status of captain (not an easy feat for a woman). The book is quite captivating from the start. Any food devotee will understand the chapter "food porn", and will know exactly what Damrosch means when she says she, "had a crush on the French Laundry Cookbook for ages". Those who are not familiar with the inner workings of very fine dining will be enthralled by her listing of The Rules ("When asked, guide guests to the bathroom instead of pointing"), by her description of VIP canapes (soup, savory sorbets, caviar, etc.), and by her explanation of the elaborate and specific intricacies of coordinating service at a restaurant like Per Se. Like Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, Service Included is studded with tips , which, for obvious reasons, are actually called out as such, and include items like "There's no need to say that you are allergic when you don't like something." And the recounts of serving food critic Frank Bruni, or any guests really, are delightfully executed. I wish I had marked the spot in the book where I began to realize it was losing me, so I could tell you exactly where that was. There is no doubt that Damrosch got extraordinary lucky (whether or not she made that luck herself is beside the point). Not only did she receive a free culinary education, compliments of weeks of Per Se training, but she was a frustrated writer who stumbled on a gold mine of book-ready experience! So it is a bit disconcerting that she seems to have lost her way a bit about two-thirds of the way through the book, when it becomes decidedly more about her romance than about the restaurant. Not that the romance isn't interesting, but let's face it, anyone who is picking up a book called Service Included is interested in the food! But all of that aside, there are more than enough well-written food facts in here to make Service Included worth the reading. Just be sure to savor the beginning, instead of holding out for the dessert!