Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter

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Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter

3.35 of 5 stars 3.35 · rating details · 2,205 ratings · 402 reviews

Warning: May contain material offensive to vegans, pharmaceutical lobbyists, and those on a low-sodium diet. Animals were harmed during the writing of this book.

While Phoebe Damrosch was waiting for life to happen, she supported herself by working as a waitress. Before long she was the only female captain at the four-star New York City restaurant Per Se during its first ye...more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published October 7th 2008 by William Morrow Paperbacks (first published September 25th 2007)

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May 02, 2011 Petra X rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-true-story

Its a strange concept, to go to a restaurant and be told that the menu prices cover the cost of the seat, the clean napery, the cover and the food, but you must pay up to 20% more for the food to be served and the dirty plates removed.

This rests on the fake construct that if you really enjoyed your meal it was down to the wait staff and you should voluntarily pay for that. Fake because if they do the job they are employed for quietly and efficiently you will enjoy the meal, they don't really ad...more Its a strange concept, to go to a restaurant and be told that the menu prices cover the cost of the seat, the clean napery, the cover and the food, but you must pay up to 20% more for the food to be served and the dirty plates removed.

This rests on the fake construct that if you really enjoyed your meal it was down to the wait staff and you should voluntarily pay for that. Fake because if they do the job they are employed for quietly and efficiently you will enjoy the meal, they don't really add to it, but they sure can ruin it without hardly trying at all.

So what are we expected to pay for then? Outside of their job description what else is it they contribute? Friendliness, and sometimes in an effort to get a bigger tip, an annoying over-helpfulness - filling your water glass when you've just taken a sip, hovering at your elbow so your private conversation is inhibited. But the friendliness is as fake as the concept of the serving staff contributed to you enjoying your meal.

You want to see friendly? Pay a 20% tip (and if your credit card slip comes with service charge added, you will note there is a blank space for you to add an extra contribution as well, fill it in) and next time you go, your name will be remembered and you will be treated as an honoured guest. Leave less than 10% and you risk having your wait staff turn ugly and tell you what they think of you in sarcastic terms. Leave nothing and feel the blast....

This book, exposes the fakery of their affection for customers, their greed, and often bad relations among the other staff based on whose in the money position. Its thoroughly enjoyable.

I was taught, out of my awkward not-very-tip-friendly UK way to serve like an American by a very cheerful girl who enumerated the many ways to milk a customer of a good tip. It was useful information, but when I became the restaurant manager, I found it wasn't particularly correct. A pretty girl, looking sexy, gets better tips than the most competent and friendly male waiters. Boobs, hair and a trout pout wins every time.

Much later, I was a bar owner and decided to try something different. I paid incremently increasing commission on sales and required my bar staff , male and female, to be genuinely friendly to customers (easy on a small island), whether or not someone tipped. Inside and outside the bar. And guess what, both sales and tips soared. I had people on a waiting list for jobs, people-sharing jobs and the best of those bar staff, ten years on, are still my friends, my closest friends.

I'd still be in the bar business, making good money, rather than the bookselling one which doesn't pay, but I lost the bar to drugs. The landlord of the premises was involved in a rather big international operation. But that's another story. Involved a lot more money than tips as well.

2 May 2011(less)

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Sep 15, 2007 Chadwick rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: waiters

Shelves: memoir, food

Phoebe Damrosch has a perfectly pleasant prose style and a fairly charming way with a story. Unfortunately, this book will probably appeal mainly to those (like myself) who have actually waited tables.

Rather than being a front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential, it comes across more as the usual self-pitying waiters' after-work bitch session, down to the snarky tips for diners that end each chapter. Sure, all of us in the profession wish that people were nicer to us, and had more realistic expec...more

8 likes · like · see review

Apr 29, 2008 Cheri rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: food

Every time I read from this book, I had to put it down and make something to eat.

The memoirs of a waiter at Thomas Keller's Per Se in New York, Phoebe Damrosch does an admirable job of letting us see into a world that we may experience as a customer, but rarely experience from the other side. I certainly never understood the full extent of preparation that goes into the high end dining experience. I have a greater respect for the professional server and for the cost of the meal since reading th...more

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 27, 2008 Drew rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Usually I eat up this sort of foodie porn: fires in the kitchen, romances among the staff, restaurant reviewers disguised in wigs. "Service Included" has all the right ingredients, but in the end--actually, less than half way through--it falls flat. Can't say that I care to know whether Andre the manager finally dumps his on-again-off-again girlfriend for Phoebe (our hero, the table captain at a chic New York restaurant). Whether Phoebe also succeeds at properly placing each and every sauce spoo...more

7 likes · like · see review

Jan 25, 2009 jess rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: foodies, ex-waiters

Shelves: 2009, food

As a former waiter (not in a four-star!) and a person with interest in fine dining and ridiculous food, I tore through this book at a break-neck pace. I ignored silly things, like switching over the laundry and checking my email. I read Phoebe Damrosch's experiences as a captain at a four-star restaurant in NYC for all the self-indulgent guilt and glee that foodie porn can bring. Truffles truffles truffles truffles and truffle oil! This would have been insufferable if I still worked in a restaur...more

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 10, 2011 librarianka rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, food, humour, restaurant, dining, new-york, relationships

Be warned: Don't be without food while reading this book.

Not only I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading this book, I also learnt a great deal about working in a restaurant, chefs, menus and food as well as picked up a lot of new vocabulary. Expect to be completely immersed in fine dining for a few days while you read it. For me, after I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal and Zaklete rewiry by Henryk Worcell, two quirky and fun books about the life of waiters in posh restaurants and...more

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Apr 01, 2008 Brooke Shirts rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-in-2008

What job requires you to memorize nine kinds of salt, know the breeds of cows, AND perfect the art of an 18th-century minuet? Why, being a waiter at a four-star restaurant, of course!

Damrosch's funny memoir chronicles her years spent as a backserver and then captain at Per Se, one of the big-time fancy restaurants in New York City. (Really big-time: it wasn't uncommon for a party to blow through $20,000 at one meal, egads.) She chronicles everything: from dealing with eccentric patrons (such as...more

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Oct 31, 2007 Shea rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I *wanted* to like this book. I did. As someone who's worked in various customer service/retail positions, I thought that I would find common ground with the author as she related her experiences working with the most finicky of finicky people ever...those who spend the thousands of dollars necessary to eat at gourmet restaurants like Per Se in the Time Warner center (the same center I work in, though not at Per Se).

Some of the parts of this book were very amusing (my personal favorites were the...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 02, 2007 Joanna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, books-on-food, favorite-covers

Delicious! This is exactly the light, frothy, tidbit-laden nonfiction I enjoy most. I love reading about food, and I love bits and pieces of information. Meanwhile, the greater message found in the narrator's insistence that we CARE about our food, that we eat well, and in full awareness of it's value, reminded me forcefully of Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle. Of course many of the ingredients she lavishes with attention are not at all local, but she also expounds on the locavore message t...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs

I checked out this book because I thought it would be fun to read about a restaurant worker's crazy stories about her patrons. Unfortunately, there was only one chapter devoted to this particular topic; the rest was a relatively uninteresting culinary memoir of self-discovery, akin to Julie & Julia or The Sharper Your Knife The Less You Cry, but with sporadic political diatribes. Also, this book reaffirms that I have little to no interest in French fine dining.

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 06, 2008 Lynae rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was painful. And I had such high hopes -- I love waiter blogs and hearing details about restaurants and diners and what not. And this was about Thomas Keller's Per Se in New York! Well, it was supposed to be. But unfortunately, this was about Phoebe Damrosch's love affair with herself - detailing her encounters with the NYT restaurant critic Frank Bruni, in which we come away with the fact that she is in her own words "a diva" and stares too much at him -- not to mention her encounters with...more

4 likes · like · see review

Dec 31, 2007 Tiffany rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Service Included is an interesting behind-the-scenes look at service at a top restaurant. However, that's where my interest in the book ended.

To be successful, memoirs need to be more than the story of one person's experience. The must reach out and touch readers in a way in which a broad audience can relate. The author, in my opinion, falls in this aspect. Her story works when it focuses on her training to be a service captain and on the idiosyncracies of the patrons at the restaurant. When sh...more

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 11, 2008 Kerry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Foodies and restaurant enthusiasts

A interesting picture of all the effort required to make a highly acclaimed New York restaurant run properly from a waiter's point of view. It certainly makes you look at the dining out experience in a whole new light. I like the commentaries on some of the dining regulars. I also enjoyed the author's thoughts on the value of fine ingredients and food. Who is to say that a pair of cashmere socks, designer handbag, exorbitant concert tickets or a ritzy dining experience are necessary? Then again,...more

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Dec 08, 2007 Marilyn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I understand the dynamics of the restaurant business a bit better now and although I probably won't be dining in too many 4 star restaurants, I now know why they charge what they charge for their meals. Service is a very important part of dining out and just like everything else, you get what you pay for. I was distressed to learn that in many restaurants the cooks and chefs make less than the waitstaff because of tips. When I dine out, my food is almost always great--the service not so much. So...more

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Mar 30, 2009 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Service Included is a plucky first-person account of a recent Barnard graduate’s plunge into the world of four-star restaurant service. I read this while on a bus from Saratoga Springs to Boston with nothing in my satchel but some dried lobes of mango. This was torture, as the author was describing such delicacies as miniature ice cream cones filled with a dollop of salmon mousse. The restaurant is Per Se at the foot of Central Park in New York. When the author and her fellow staff members have...more

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Sep 12, 2011 Katharine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-bio

I'm just not a foodie. I think you have to have a streak of foodie in you to appreciate this book. Damrosch worked in an ultra-high scale restaurant "Per Se." This book chronicles her experience there as well as her love life during the time.

I guess I was hoping for more restaurant dirt that I could connect to my own dining-out experiences. I will never eat at a restaurant like Per Se, so all the details appealed to me less. (Although I did find it amusing to imagine part of the wait-staff's tra...more

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 09, 2011 Kristine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Service Included by Phoebe Damrosch, a Kindle book I started reading on August 8th while glancing to and from my knitting.

I hadn't expected so much woe-is-me, indecisive, chick-lit, Julie & Julia prose from the get-go. An almost immediate turn-off, but, hey, I thought I'd hold on and see if the juicier waitressy parts of the books got any better.

The book started to gain speed after the author landed the job with Per Se, but spends so, so much time on that same woe-is-me and now everybody-is-...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Kimberly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter - Phoebe Damrosch
Damrosch writes about her experience as a server at Chef Thomas Keller's New York restaurant, Per Se. This is the sister restaurant of the famous French Laundry. Reading about the behind the scenes of the opening was fascinating. The amount of time and money spent on food is hard to comprehend (Chef's tasting menu, ten course meal = $295, service included). The months of training leading up to the opening are intense...more

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Dec 19, 2009 Chris "Stu" rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

This book is quite frankly terrible, and if it weren't such an easy read, I definitely wouldn't have finished it. Damrosch is bitchy, gossipy, and utterly convinced of her own superiority. The book is basically filled with a bunch of anecdotes about things she found funny or things that showed how awesome she is. The anecdote that most sums up her writing is an anecdote about a customer at Per Se crying because she thought Damrosch was going to go out for burgers with her after dinner.

When she's...more

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Oct 12, 2009 Vickie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who REALLY liked Julie and Julia

I have an unfortunate habit of going to the bookstore and grabbing random books in addition to the one I had originally planned to buy. I picked up this book based in the front cover. Like the chef's tasting menu she hawked, these little tidbits encompassed a wide range of Damrosch's life, to the delectable dishes about the restaurant to the underseasoned bits about her personal life.

I must begin by confessing that I am a server, and have been for several years, at different styles of restauran...more I have an unfortunate habit of going to the bookstore and grabbing random books in addition to the one I had originally planned to buy. I picked up this book based in the front cover. Like the chef's tasting menu she hawked, these little tidbits encompassed a wide range of Damrosch's life, to the delectable dishes about the restaurant to the underseasoned bits about her personal life.

I must begin by confessing that I am a server, and have been for several years, at different styles of restaurants. The first half of the book was enjoyable for me, as I recalled my own efforts in opening a restaurant--though certainly not the grilling that the Per Se servers went through--and at rediscovering new foods. Lots of career waiters are foodies at heart, and Damrosch really manages to convey this love affair with food combined with the anxiety that comes with Saturday night dinner rush.

However, as many reviewers have said before, the second half of this book was a let down. Okay, so she and Andre went to somebody's wedding: why is this relevant? The diner the couple frequented started off promisingly, as she compared the two dining experiences, but fizzled when she couldn't really tie it to anything else in the story. The drama between her and Andre's ex should have been much more prominent, especially considering they work together. Restaurant people are all about drama, so the fact that the whole fiasco was so downplayed meant that she was leaving a lot of juicy stuff out. She was either being nice or hiding some details about her own self, which makes for a boring book! And she spoke about the amount of money she was making, yet she and her sommelier boyfriend shared a studio apartment? Though I guess I'm not completely knowledgeable about NYC rent rates.

I guess I'm basically saying that Damrosch could have written a much better book if she had had an editor who had pressed her into bringing all of her stand-alone chapters together thematically. I have a livejournal so I can read about my friends' daily trials, and I don't need to buy a book. There's nothing wrong with Damrosch's writing, technically, and in her food-driven ecstasies I was right there with her. But the book would have been much better if she could have brought it all back to the restaurant, brought it back to the reason we bought the book.

Also, especially after seeing lots of like-minded reviewers here, how did this book become a New York Times Notable book? Is it because it mentions the Gray Lady so often in reference to its food critic, or is the literary committee just that much in love with this blog and it's occasional references to NYC landmarks?

Soapbox moment: she quickly glossed over her reasons for quitting, and that may or may not have had to do with tip sharing with the chefs. Some reviewers have jumped on this as shocking, but it is a fact of restaurant life. Chefs at nice restaurants like that don't work the line because they want to: it's the stepping stone to a better job as executive chef somewhere else. At times, it gets physically demanding, but for waiters, the job is always physically demanding. You may see an older chef, but rarely an older waiter. Unless they go into management, a waiter can't stay in the industry indefinitely, while for a chef it is a career move, as much as one starts in the mail room in an office. And finally, in your local restaurants that aren't vying for Michelin stars, the kitchens are filled with immigrant workers because there isn't a lot of promoting or career roads, and like I said, it's hot and at times, physically demanding. Plus, for some darn reason every guest wants to order their food at exactly the same time, so you're suddenly inundated with twenty orders that still have to be ready in 12 minutes. You're not going to find too many culinary graduates there without a promise of promotion. So I would appreciate it if, whenever you hear someone complaining about the racial heritage of a kitchen staff, you should kindly ask them to rethink their opinions, or even try it for themselves someday. < /soapbox>
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Jun 29, 2009 lana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is generally good for people who have a fascination with restaurants and Keller's places in particular- details about training and service are interesting. The book does *not* provide what its subtitle claims- there are no outlandish or even very interesting stories about the people who dine at per se, despite the fact that there is a chapter ostensibly dedicated to this topic. Partway through the book the subject shifts, and the book is more about the author's romantic liaison with th...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the author's memoir of the time she spent working in an upscale restaurant, Per Se, in New York. This isn't a dishy tell-all (see what I did with the pun there?) of rude customers and nasty chefs, but rather a reverent recounting of the operations of a 4-star restaurant. We learn in detail about the training Damrosch went through, the precise details that make up dining service, and the background of the elaborate menus.

I had two (minor) issues with the book: First, I don't have quite th...more

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Oct 13, 2011 matt rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The title of this book is misleading. Early on, it keeps true to the promise of being a behind the scenes story of a four-star restaurant, but it veers swiftly off course after the opening of the restaurant. The author uses the restaurant experience as an excuse to talk about herself and her relationships, which I didn't sign up for - or feel particularly interested in reading about. Especially because my opinion of her fell after each chapter. For example, while I applaud her critique of fast f...more

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Mar 04, 2010 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Food Porn. You've gotta be a foodie to really appreciate this book: day trips to a family owned dairy farm, etc. Although the title, "...Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter," I could count on one-hand the number of secrets revealed; so don't judge a book by it's cover-title. At first, it is more a mediocre memoir of being in the right place at the right time, but quickly looses any self-indulgence.
A refreshing change of pace from memoirs that are all-to-often overly embellished after recounting a...more

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Aug 26, 2009 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, non-fiction, memoir

I was terribly excited when I heard about this book. After a year of waiting tables in a fine dining restaurant, I had my fair share of horror stories regarding both customers and the restaurant industry in general. I saw this book as an opportunity to see the industry from someone else's eyes but also to kind of "compare battle scars" so to speak.

The book started off well and there were some very interesting and funny anecdotes. I particularly like Phoebe's comments about Mr. and Mrs. Bichalot....more

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Oct 26, 2010 Marfita rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 14, 2009 Lisa rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My husband picked up this book a while ago. As a restaurateur he was interested in learning Chef Thomas Keller’s four-star secrets. Who wouldn’t be? To prepare for our April meal at French Laundry, I decided to give this book a try, even though my husband had warned me: its cheesy.

Service Included was way beyond cheesy. The first few chapters where we learn a bit about the intense training and preparation that goes into opening a 3-Michelin star restaurant really are quite interesting. Beyond th...more

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Nov 05, 2009 Tracy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is hard to rate because parts of it were SO great and other parts were SO dull! So I'll split my review.

Five stars to any parts of the book that are about the author's job, Per Se, or Thomas Keller. These chapters were fascinating and smartly written. This is not a memoir where a waiter rants about the profession--this is a well-crafted exploration of the world of fine dining. It's as close as some people will come to a restaurant of this caliber, and she explains everything so lovingl...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Salli Bauer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This memoir details Phoebe's experience working first as a server and later as a captain at Thomas Keller's 4-star New York restaurant, Per Se.
I found her writing entertaining, her life modestly interesting, but the job description fascinating. The training and the education that is required to work at one of Thomas Keller's restaurant is unbelievable. Not only must they learn the different kinds of olive oils, salts, caviar, mushrooms, meats, cheeses, etc.,but where they come from and who produ...more

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Apr 17, 2010 Kara rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-books

It is a good thing service was included otherwise I would have left this book a very small tip. I had been looking forward to reading this book for some time, but little did I know that it was really ten percent secrets of a four star restaurant and ninety percent the author's personal reflections on her secretive romance with one of Per Se's sommeliers. Do not get me wrong, there were chapters that deserve five stars. Those were the chapters that discuss Tom Keller's vision of the proper dining...more

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“Cafés overflowed anytime but early mornings, for there were few commuters in the neighborhood at that time. After noon, the self-employed, or unemployed, hipsters set up their laptops, soy milk lattes by their side, and proceeded to create ironic and subversive works of art, pausing every so often to brood.” — 2 people liked it

“Our restaurant fostered a sense of camaraderie in a number of ways besides sharing the same nickname of 'chef.' Initially, we bonded through training. Once we opened, we worked in teams each night, meaning that we not only knew our colleagues well, we depended on them. Most importantly, we all had 'family meal' together every night, just like President Bush recommended to all families so that their children would have good values and grow up to be gun-toting, pro-life, pro-death, gas-guzzling, warmongering, monolingual, homophobic, wiretapped, Bible-thumping, genetically engineered, stem-cell harboring, abstinent creationists. Oops, I think I just lost all of my red state readers. To make up for it, I'll let you lose my ballot.” — 2 people liked it

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