Eat Me or Waiter Rant

Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin

Author: Kenny Shopsin

"Pancakes are a luxury, like smoking marijuana or having sex. That’s why I came up with the names Ho Cakes and Slutty Cakes. These are extra decadent, but in a way, every pancake is a Ho Cake.” Thus speaks Kenny Shopsin, legendary (and legendarily eccentric, ill-tempered, and lovable) chef and owner of the Greenwich Village restaurant (and institution), Shopsin’s, which has been in existence since 1971.

Kenny has finally put together his 900-plus-item menu and his unique philosophy—imagine Elizabeth David crossed with Richard Pryor—to create Eat Me, the most profound and profane cookbook you’ll ever read. His rants—on everything from how the customer is not always right to the art of griddling; from how to run a small, ethical, and humane business to how we all should learn to cook in a Goodnight Moon world where everything you need is already in your own home and head—will leave you stunned or laughing or hungry. Or all of the above.

With more than 120 recipes including such perfect comfort foods as High School Hot Turkey Sandwiches, Cuban Bean Polenta Melt, and Cornmeal-Fried Green Tomatoes with Comeback Sauce, plus the best soups, egg dishes, and hamburgers you’ve ever eaten, Eat Me is White Trash Cooking for the twenty-first century, as unforgettable and mind-boggling as its author.

Publishers Weekly

Kenny Shopsin hates publicity the way a magnet must hate metal filings. With a documentary, a New Yorker profile and several New York Times articles clinging to him, this supposedly reluctant restaurateur now adds to his own troubles by releasing a totally hilarious and surprisingly touching treatise on cooking, customer loyalty and family bonds. As his brood grew to include five kids, his Manhattan eatery shrunk in size, yet maintained its idiosyncratic 900-item menu (reproduced here in a 12-page spread). Recipes for more than 100 of the offerings are presented, including Mac n Cheese Pancakes and Blisters on My Sisters (sunny-side-up eggs placed atop tortillas and a rice and bean concoction). But the real treat is Shopsin's salty philosophizing. Sure, pancakes are tasty, but he reminds us that, "They are flour and milk drowned in butter and some form of sugar. They're crap." And the customer is always wrong "until they show me they are worth cultivating" as customers. Two such well-cultivated customers were the writer Calvin Trillin and his wife, Alice. They pop up throughout the book, providing not only happy reminiscences, but a roux of poignancy as both Shopsin and Trillin become widowers, bonded together over the love of a decent meal, quickly rendered. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter

Author: Steve Dublanica

FROM THE PRIZEWINNING BLOGGER OF WAITERRANT.NET, AN INSIDER'S HILARIOUS LOOK AT A WAITER'S LIFE AT AN UPSCALE NEW YORK-AREA RESTAURANT—KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL AT THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE.

According to The Waiter, eighty percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining twenty percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths. Waiter Rant offers the server's unique point of view, replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen bits of human grace transpiring in the most unlikely places. Through outrageous stories, The Waiter reveals the secrets to getting good service, proper tipping etiquette, and how to keep him from spitting in your food. The Waiter also shares his ongoing struggle, at age thirty-eight, to figure out if he can finally leave the first job at which he's truly thrived.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

…amusing and informative…Waiter Rant is as delightful as it is irreverent.

Publishers Weekly

The anonymous restaurant professional behind the Bloggie Award—winning WaiterRant.net expands on his postings in his first book. The result is an enjoyable if utterly unromantic personal exposé on the inner workings of the New York City—area restaurants that have employed him since 1999. To his first job, the Waiter brought abandoned dreams and ambitions for a religious vocation, an eventual psychology degree and employment experiences in a drug-rehabilitation center. That history proved useful in professional service, particularly a restaurant that, with its corrupt manager and dictatorial boss and despite its upmarket setting, clientele and business volume, was an example of the very worst in the industry. The narrative hangs on the author's professional development from restaurant newbie to jaded industry-spokesperson; he makes ample room for extended riffs on manners, money, morals and even meals. He catalogues the grime-and-gross-out factors (some obscene), so comparisons to Kitchen Confidential are inevitable. (Aug.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sarah Statz Cords - Library Journal

These two working life memoirs seek to capitalize on the popularity of books like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential but fall somewhat short of the mark. Alexander, a former marine officer and advertising executive, left his high-powered career in his early forties owing to client-contact burnout to become a minimum-wage pizza delivery driver, ice cream scooper, medical tech, construction site cleanup guy, fast-food worker, and cowboy. While he describes the jobs adequately, at times even humorously, he offers no analysis of the experiment or descriptions of its impact on his financial bottom line. What final insights he does list are too specific to be broadly applicable (tip your pizza guy at least five bucks and be polite to ER staff); his closing recommendation to become a big fish in a little pond and find work as a consultant will be valuable only to other career executives who have built strong portfolios and contacts.

The Waiter (real name unknown) unfolds his story along more stereotypical memoir lines, mixing anecdotes from his near-decade of waiting tables with stories from his personal life. The author first found an audience at his blog WaiterRant.net, and although the book starts much too harshly (in tone and language), it eventually settles into an engaging and funny narrative that leaves the reader with a sense of the dignity that can be found in performing any job, even one as prone to customer abuse and lack of respect as food service. Alexander's title is not recommended, although a blurb from Stephen Colbert may deliver some readers; Waiter Rant is recommended for larger public libraries andthose seeking to add depth to their memoir collections.

Kirkus Reviews

A popular blogger offers behind-the-scenes tales about working the front of the house. After defecting from seminary and losing his subsequent job, the author took a temporary position as a server in an upscale New York restaurant. Six or seven years later, much to his own surprise, he was still waiting tables and anonymously recording his experiences at WaiterRant.net. In the casual, confessional tone of a seasoned blogger, The Waiter tells of corruption, intrigue, drug abuse, heated romance and of course tips, weaving it all into a humorously detailed memoir. Restaurant work can be emotionally toxic and brutalizing, he reveals. Living outside the nine-to-five world's boundaries warped and changed him and his fellow servers. Holidays became a source of stress, not joy, and accepting a friend's Friday night dinner invitation amounted to sacrificing hundreds of dollars in unearned pay. Worst of all were the bad customers, many of whom exhibited an astonishing level of self-absorption and entitlement. Required to endure abuse with a smile, many waiters unsurprisingly blew their night's tips on drinks after hours. Still, the life of a server wasn't all groveling and bingeing; some learned, as The Waiter did, to wield subtle, psychological control over even the most recalcitrant customers. He's good on psychological analysis too: His taxonomy of tippers comes complete with shrewd assessments of their various motivations, such as the mistaken assumption of "the verbal tipper" that heaping on praise will make up for a shoddy tip. The author began to relish the intimate glimpses he got into diners' personal lives, and underneath his hard-earned cynicism he seems justifiably proud of his progressin a difficult job. A heartfelt, irreverent look at the underbelly of fine dining.