Waiter Rant

WAITER RANT

The author of the newly published Waiter Rant asserts that approximately “ 20 percent of restaurant customers are socially maladjusted psychopaths”, and his book presents many an anecdote to back this theory up.

One might assume that a book based on the crustiest table crumbs from a waiter’s put-upon life experiences (as documented since 2004 on the popular blog of the same name), could be just a little one-sided, and one would be right. However, just as Anthony Bourdain describes the book as the “front of house version of Kitchen Confidential”, not all of a server’s complaints are shots at the customer -- a lot of it reflects dismally on the service profession and the restaurant industry as well.

Take, for example, the topic explored in “Valentine’s Day is the biggest scam going...”, or tattle tales of one waiter who played floor hockey in the kitchen with a hamburger patty before placing it a bun and taking it out to the dining room. Moira Hodgson, a regular restaurant columnist for the Observer, offers other eyebrow-raising excerpts in a review printed today in the Wall Street Journal.

So is what we have it this book just a collection of bitter grumblings from an unappreciated system underdog, or is it more? Formerly only know to his blog audience as “The Waiter” and identified only as such on the book’s jacket, the author was recently out-ed by the New York Post as one Steve Dublanica, a 40-year-old career waiter working at the Lanterna Tuscan Bistro in Nyak, N.Y., who via the magic portal of the Internet discovered a more lucrative outlet for his acerbic wit as a writer, and quickly learned how to take advantage of it.

Well, we guess we can say it’s happened before. Let’s wait and see how this spins out on the Food Network.