Service, with a Smile

Memoirist Phoebe Damrosch adores food. As a creative writing graduate student living in New York’s up-and-coming Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Damrosch completed a stint as a café waitress before training and working as a back server at the famed Per Se. Through a restaurant launch, tragic fire, and grand reopening, Damrosch endured lectures on local agriculture, haircuts, dancing lessons and wearing ties to learn the trade that would later inspire Service Included: Four Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter.

Damrosch’s passions for eating and writing converged on the floor of Per Se, where she eventually became the only female captain. The first-time author is neither chef nor critic, yet she cultivated a polished expertise in culinary culture that shines through Service Included. Damrosch skillfully details her studied interactions with New York’s elite, foodies, critics, chefs and captains in a witty and fast-paced social review of food and service culture.

Service Included is a class critique enacted through culinary culture. Though the media seems to have freed fine food from the grips of the culturati, Damrosch’s observation of culinary culture is steeped in social politics. Her memoir unravels a food culture layered with power, mystery, affection, intuition and soul. If Service Included seems at first the wide-eyed induction of a culinary virgin to fine food, it quickly evolves into a circus of pleasures and absurdities experienced on the dining room floor.

Service Included spends equal time observing the lives of others and revealing Damrosch’s personal journey in and beyond Per Se. She offers anecdotes from her experiences — the female executive dining to impress, the elderly couple whose marriage runs on cocktails, the socialite who loses control, a late-night race to taste the city’s finest marrow — and recounts it all with deep respect. It is clear that Damrosch is most intrigued by human connections around food and, although Service Included attempts at some social criticism, the author’s ultimate triumph is a simple love story. Damrosch’s brief reviews of sexism in the industry and related themes pale in comparison to her flowering romance with food, serving, restaurants and André, Per Se’s sommelier.

Service Included chronicles the turning of one writer’s infatuations into deep love. Damrosch tackles her personal vulnerabilities honestly and with the same intensity she uses to appraise others. She fearlessly admits to many shortcomings, which is both the gem in her personal journey and the heart of her story. Yet, Damrosch is no wallflower and Service Included is filled with the same sharp intuition and skill she honed as a captain at Per Se. She knows all about New York’s elite, yet reserves the bulk of Service Included for her realistic and approachable love story shown through the lens of food. While Damrosch could easily digress into trite gossip, she doesn’t; it is her self-effacing humor that makes Service Included sublime.

A minimal interest in food culture and social criticism may help readers enjoy Service Included, but Damrosch’s honesty has universal appeal. Service Included is a fresh perspective on social politics. More narrowly, the memoir frees service from the margins, arguing that servers are tasked with extraordinary challenges and often earn wonderful rewards. Damrosch makes culinary culture approachable and proves it extends far beyond class and training. She paints food as central to the human experience and demonstrates how it can inspire a truly remarkable love.

Off the Floor

An Interview with waiter and writer Phoebe Damrosch

Service Included covers a lot of ground — from the service industry to high-end clients, life in New York, gender and race issues and, of course, food and wine — in a narrative that invokes drama, romance and humor. What kind of book is it?

Well, it’s a love story, first with food, wine, restaurants, service and a man, in that order. Most of the criticism I’ve gotten is that it’s not a snarky tell-all, but that’s not what I wanted to write. It’s really interesting that people say they wanted more dirt and gossip. I wanted to write about what I loved about the job and I don’t think most people write about that in terms of service.

Why did you choose to write a memoir for your first published work?

I wanted to write a novel that would be a thinly veiled autobiography. If I had wanted to write about the restaurant industry in general, it would have worked as a novel. But I was interested in what made Per Se particularly special, and it would have been very hard to disguise Per Se because there’s nothing else like it.

You worked in a Thomas Keller restaurant, which you frequently mention was an experience like no other. Usually when we read restaurant stories, we read about chefs and critics, not waiters. Why did you want to write about serving?

Service is usually kind of shameful, irritating — to the people doing it, the people being served and the chefs in the kitchen — and I wanted to write about what can be possible. I’m much more interested in a book when people are passionate about something or when they have something they truly want to tell and not when they’re getting into the grit.

Your clients included a kind of menagerie of socialites, Upper East Siders, celebrities, executives, critics, etc. Your memoir is built around your observations of them as well as a lot of self-analysis. Your experience serving New York Times critic Frank Bruno for the first time, for example, made a great story. How did you choose which experiences to include?

I definitely wanted the book to read like fiction — to be a quick read and have a lot of stories in it, good dialogue and fun details. That is the kind of book that I like to read. I operated on the “write the book you want to read” principle the whole time.

I think when you look back at times in your life, there are certain stories that just pop out and you think, “that’s so representative of this theme or this point in my life.” But a big part of writing this book was knowing what details to withhold. Some of the things that made the restaurant magical and created the mystique, I didn’t want to reveal because I love going into a restaurant and being surprised by things. I wanted to keep some of that alive in the book.

You obviously had to spend a lot of time figuring people out. You talk about the social performance of trying to read clients, getting to know their desires and anticipate their needs. Why did this interest you so much?

I loved the interactions I had with guests and how I was required to be different people to each of the people that I was serving. I also really love food and I love that learning curve of a menu changing every day and constantly needing to keep up with ingredients and techniques and what was kind of hot and new in the food world. Here you have something that’s so luxurious and also it’s one of the more basic human needs; eating. To see how those cultural dynamics interact in a $12 million restaurant is interesting.

You delve further into some of those cultural dynamics. For example, at one point you expose a gender gap in the restaurant industry, but then you don’t go into great detail. Why didn’t you write more about that?

It’s a really big topic in the industry as a whole, though a little bit less of a topic at Per Se. There were several women in leadership roles. Actually, I think what is bigger is the issue of minorities in the industry. We have a lot of minorities bussing tables and working on the line and in the kitchen, but not very many of them serving you wine. I wanted to take a look at that, but I couldn’t really talk about that from my own experience, so I picked the gender version.

You fell in love with your co-worker, André, who was Per Se’s sommelier. In the beginning there was some tension around an ex-girlfriend and your own issues with trust, but your love certainly deepens over the course of the book. Did that contribute to your happiness at Per Se?

Every time you’re falling in love, everything around you is suffused with a glow and I am sure that helped. I am sure that I was happier there than I would have been if I hadn’t been in love.

Toward the end of the story you spend a lot of time eating in diners, which is quite a departure from Per Se. What was it about diners and why did you frame the end of your story that way?

I wanted to convey that feeling of emerging and reentering the regular world where people eat at diners and where I had other relationships outside the restaurant. I had been so steeped in the culture of Per Se for so long; I was detaching I was re-entering the real world, in a way.

You had a successful career at Per Se, even becoming the restaurant’s first female captain. You spent a lot of time and energy becoming an expert in the field — you could skillfully describe the cows that produced the restaurant’s cheese. Why walk away at the top of your game?

I’m one of these people that always needs to know what the next thing is going to be, and so I really ended up looking around the restaurant and thinking, “I really don’t want to be a manager, and I don’t want to be a sommelier, and I don’t want to own a restaurant and I don’t really see where I’m going here.”

I was in graduate school for writing at Sarah Lawrence, where this book first started to take shape. I loved food culture, but I didn’t want to review. I could see myself writing about food and restaurants, though. I was taking notes about my experiences at Per Se, and pieces of a memoir started to take shape. As I realized I really needed to write, I knew I needed to leave.

You didn’t just jump into serving. You had to take dancing lessons. You had to memorize foreign words and learn about local agriculture. You had to wear a tie. You had to keep your hair cut the same as when you were hired. You had to put up with quirky people. Wasn’t that stifling?

As much as they encouraged us to be our own people at the table, I definitely felt a little bit caged. However, intellectually it was a really mind-opening experience and it was a really interesting subculture.

You seem pretty level-headed in your story. Were you ever really freaked out and intimidated by it all?

Yes, I was constantly trying to be perfect while waiting on people who are really at the top of their game — politicians, actors and the people that you’ve seen on TV and really high-end chefs. To be as authentic as possible was something I strove for in person and through my writing. All I could do was be myself and tell my story, just like all I could do at the table was be myself and try to get them what they ordered. I was inspired to do my best at both.

What did you learn from reflecting back on your experience for the memoir?

I think I learned that Service Included was really a universal story, because everyone feels like an outsider in multiple situations in their life. I was able to have a kind of wide-eyed wonder and shape the story as I discovered more. It’s a really helpful tool to write a book and start out as a beginner along with the reader.

Is that why readers are going to relate to your story?

Writing the memoir also enabled me to comment on the absurdity of the whole Per Se experience — that it is kind of absurd for clients to sit there for three hours, pay $250 for a meal, and to talk about the names of the cows that make the butter. It’s an interesting balance between appreciation and absurdity.

When thinking about my time there, I also always think about that John Lennon quote that I put in the beginning of the book: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” I really never planned to get into working in restaurants. That was a really interesting aspect of the overall story to me, about how I really got detoured and then interested in the detour and then ended up coming back to where I was supposed to be in the beginning, which was writing. And I think that happens to everyone.

There seems to be a growing pop culture interest in culinary culture — through reality television, through celebrity culture — did that affect the book?

It was much easier to publish this book now than it would have been 15 years ago. I think I’m indebted to Anthony Bourdain, Top Chef and the Food Network as a whole, for sure. It is definitely a growing genre and there’s room for more narrative in it. Not very many people have written about service in the way that I wanted to write about it.

Do you think appreciating Service Included requires a love for the culinary arts?

If you’re the kind of person that disdains fine dining and the whole fetishization of food, then probably this isn’t so much for you. But I also think the love story makes it more universal and not such a food-nerdy book.

What do you love about your memoir?

I love that I got to write about exactly what I’m interested in, which ranges from what I love best about New York City to what I love best about André, and food, and characters, and things that I find interesting in my daily life. It’s a good representation of what’s going on in my brain, and it’s nice to share that.

Anything that you would have changed?

I still have mixed feelings about the title. The subtitle, I think, makes it seem like it’s going to be “gossipier” than it is. But you live and learn.

Assuming you are not going back to serving, what will you write next?

Well, I spent some time in the subculture of restaurants and I’ll spend some time in different cultures next. I’ll keep watching and writing about what is interesting to me. Usually that ends up being through a lens of food, though, because that’s what I think about all the time.

Do you see this story on screen?

Oh, that would be great, that’s how one makes money in this business (laughs). I’ve had a bunch of meetings; I’m waiting to see. All of that is a very separate industry, like selling the foreign rights which is completely different. I am taking it one country and one studio at a time.

What kind of movie would Service Included be?

I’d love a movie to celebrate food, wine and service without being too reverent about the food and too sensational about the love story. Amelie with an appetite. As for casting, wouldn’t it be fun to cast only actors who had worked in restaurants before their big break? Just to bring it all full circle?