EP 061
March 7, 2023
Michael Cecchi-Azzolina on collecting a lifetime’s worth of New York City restaurant tales
Show Notes:
From La Rousse to Le Coucou, Michael Cecchi-Azzolina—Maitre d’ extraordinaire—has a birds eye view on some of New York City’s most historic, glamorous restaurants. After more than 35 years in the restaurant world, he’s sharing his behind the scenes tales in his delicious new memoir YOUR TABLE IS READY (Dec. 2022, pub: St. Martin's Press). This week, Michael tells Angie all about his early memories of the restaurant business, living through the AIDS epidemic, the singular magic of gathering around a dinner table, and his next exciting chapter: opening an NYC spot of his own. Plus, he shares his go-to comfort dish to cook at home.
YOUR TABLE IS READY is available via Bookshop.org
Your Table Is Ready
by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
$27.89
BUY NOWA front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d'hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants.
From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen--or just to gawk--at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.
Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we'd never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O'Keefe's casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally's Minetta Tavern to Nolita's Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.
A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d'hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants.
From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen--or just to gawk--at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.
Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we'd never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O'Keefe's casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally's Minetta Tavern to Nolita's Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.