Notes from Underground Settling Scores in the Restaurant Industry by Howard Chuyyoung read by Ramesh Metani Chassan morache. The pursuit of good wine often requires the ability to pronounce magic passwords to gain entrance to enchanted caves, and a lot of them are in French, which never sounds the way it looks to English speakers. That was the challenge facing Hannah Selinger on a first day of somelier training at a New York City restaurant. The self described arrogant know it all who always came equipped with categorically correct sets of facts pronounced every consonant in the name of the French region famous for its Chardonnay grapes and expensive white burgundies. Her designated mentor was in stitches, weeping with hilarity. For the record, it's more like Chassan then an almost imperceptible nieu morache. For Celinger, however, it was a human that led to expertise, not just in the locale, but in the customer pleasing upsell that contributes to the spell wine casts over fine dining. You like butttery? How about her know at all instincts helped her accrue knowledge and appreciation. Given an assignment, she came back to work the next day ready to astound when she writes about the hedonism of this intellectual pursuit, It's exciting and almost intoxicating. Sellinger is the titular creature of a memoir, Cellar Rat, My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly, Little Brown and Company, March twenty five. The sobriquet Isn't slanderous its industry slang for the employee responsible for tracking the inventory in a restaurant's wine cellar, a role she occupied for a year and a half before being promoted to sommelier. Selinger literally learned the trade from the underground up Her books Pens to Wine were timely for me. I read Cellar Rat a mid a month's long and continuing spell away from alcohol, self imposed after an all too celebratory period from November through the first half of January. The excess left me feeling sodden and gross. My doctor looked at me and tisked meantime departing. US Surgeon General Vivague Multi suggested that wine bottles carry warning labels for risk of cancer, noting that alcohol is the third most common preventable cause of the disease after smoking and obesity. All of that helped set me on the road to temporary sobriety. Temporary because I love wine, though not drinking, I've kept to my routines, visiting my favorite wine bars during the weekends to chat and catch up with friends who worked there. Why should these small businesses be deprived of my custom? As they say here in London, watching wine being served to happy customers is also good discipline for my resolve. But it's been hard. I sigh whenever the baristas utter particularly alluring words champagne, borjolais, gammet, grenache, pino noir, the occasional reference to von Romane another scary pronunciation. Place names excite me. The slopes of Etna, the Rhone Valley, Sager Manuel. Technical terms become magical, biodynamic, mallow, lacto, fermentation, dosage. I feel no temptation. However, with bino grigio, I remain a snob. If I'd thought to get used to teetotaling, Selinger became a supplemental antidote to temperance when she writes about imagining the vineyards, the gravel, the taste of wine running through stone. I'm reminded about how wine is liquid memory of time and place. As much as I appreciate the new non alcoholic alternatives to wine, including the appropriately named lantidote, which is concocted at the juice of gas may grapes and herbs, these don't have the electricity of fermented fruit of the vine. It is a beautiful paradox that rot should so vivify our enjoyment of food and of life itself. When I begin to drink again, I will value the time apart from wine. As one veteran British comedian used to say, how can I miss you if you won't go away? Sellinger is also illuminating about the business of selling wine. The next time a server is seducing you to have just one more glass of a particular bottle, remember what folks in the business call a case break. That's a deal where distributors throw in a case or cases of a specific wine if the restaurant buys a large quantity. That means the glass you decide to have is pure profit for the establishment. Premium brand hard liquor, on the other hand, is much more expensive for restaurants to procure managers try to keep a tight rain on the stock. It was a reason Sellinger ended up being fired from a job. Doing arithmetic while enjoying a heady meal is annoying, but sell a Rat's account of restaurant accounting will hopefully make me think twice when I'm tempted to have one more glass than I ought. I'm all for helping out of business, but I don't want to be the patsy you can count on to boost your bottom line. As much as I enjoyed sections at the beginning of the book, Salinger then proceeds with her real intentions, and this is where the narrative becomes a mess of motives. As promised in the subtitle, Seller Rat goes after the terrible toxic situation in the hospitality industry. The author portrays herself as a survivor of the abusive drug suffused dysfunction that is curtained off from expensive dining rooms. She careers from a Massachusetts bar where she suffers a broken nose, to a succession of fancy eateies in Manhattan, almost all involving bad dating decisions and run ins with what passes for professional management. She's come back from all this to settle scores. This book is in many ways an extended yet attenuated espri descalier literally spirit up the stairs, the acid and witty retort you don't think of until you've left the party, and it's too late to make a difference in the confrontation that stung you. While some of her targets may deserve come uppens, a lot of the attacks and sell a rat seem petty no matter how much she tries to rationalize them. There are gratuitors, slurs and add hominum insults, sound and fury signifying I'm not sure what. There are enough real people named in the book, and yet Selinger tries to cover herself with a note at the beginning this is a work of creative non fiction. While the events are true, they may not be factual. It all gives the impression of being the socially scorned high school valedictorian who never got to hang with the cool kid and then starts a whisper campaign against them. All of this diluted vitriol is splashed in chapters that end with recipes. I know that's a formula pushed on food writers by book editors, but sellinger defends their inclusion as another mode of creative expression. They add nothing to her narrative and make the book seem even less coherent. Revenge is a dish best served cold, not with directions to buy a truffle slicer from William's Sonoma

Notes from Underground Settling Scores in the Restaurant Industry by Howard Chuyyoung read by Ramesh Metani Chassan morache. The pursuit of good wine often requires the ability to pronounce magic passwords to gain entrance to enchanted caves, and a lot of them are in French, which never sounds the way it looks to English speakers. That was the challenge facing Hannah Selinger on a first day of somelier training at a New York City restaurant. The self described arrogant know it all who always came equipped with categorically correct sets of facts pronounced every consonant in the name of the French region famous for its Chardonnay grapes and expensive white burgundies. Her designated mentor was in stitches, weeping with hilarity. For the record, it's more like Chassan then an almost imperceptible nieu morache. For Celinger, however, it was a human that led to expertise, not just in the locale, but in the customer pleasing upsell that contributes to the spell wine casts over fine dining. You like butttery? How about her know at all instincts helped her accrue knowledge and appreciation. Given an assignment, she came back to work the next day ready to astound when she writes about the hedonism of this intellectual pursuit, It's exciting and almost intoxicating. Sellinger is the titular creature of a memoir, Cellar Rat, My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly, Little Brown and Company, March twenty five. The sobriquet Isn't slanderous its industry slang for the employee responsible for tracking the inventory in a restaurant's wine cellar, a role she occupied for a year and a half before being promoted to sommelier. Selinger literally learned the trade from the underground up Her books Pens to Wine were timely for me. I read Cellar Rat a mid a month's long and continuing spell away from alcohol, self imposed after an all too celebratory period from November through the first half of January. The excess left me feeling sodden and gross. My doctor looked at me and tisked meantime departing. US Surgeon General Vivague Multi suggested that wine bottles carry warning labels for risk of cancer, noting that alcohol is the third most common preventable cause of the disease after smoking and obesity. All of that helped set me on the road to temporary sobriety. Temporary because I love wine, though not drinking, I've kept to my routines, visiting my favorite wine bars during the weekends to chat and catch up with friends who worked there. Why should these small businesses be deprived of my custom? As they say here in London, watching wine being served to happy customers is also good discipline for my resolve. But it's been hard. I sigh whenever the baristas utter particularly alluring words champagne, borjolais, gammet, grenache, pino noir, the occasional reference to von Romane another scary pronunciation. Place names excite me. The slopes of Etna, the Rhone Valley, Sager Manuel. Technical terms become magical, biodynamic, mallow, lacto, fermentation, dosage. I feel no temptation. However, with bino grigio, I remain a snob. If I'd thought to get used to teetotaling, Selinger became a supplemental antidote to temperance when she writes about imagining the vineyards, the gravel, the taste of wine running through stone. I'm reminded about how wine is liquid memory of time and place. As much as I appreciate the new non alcoholic alternatives to wine, including the appropriately named lantidote, which is concocted at the juice of gas may grapes and herbs, these don't have the electricity of fermented fruit of the vine. It is a beautiful paradox that rot should so vivify our enjoyment of food and of life itself. When I begin to drink again, I will value the time apart from wine. As one veteran British comedian used to say, how can I miss you if you won't go away? Sellinger is also illuminating about the business of selling wine. The next time a server is seducing you to have just one more glass of a particular bottle, remember what folks in the business call a case break. That's a deal where distributors throw in a case or cases of a specific wine if the restaurant buys a large quantity. That means the glass you decide to have is pure profit for the establishment. Premium brand hard liquor, on the other hand, is much more expensive for restaurants to procure managers try to keep a tight rain on the stock. It was a reason Sellinger ended up being fired from a job. Doing arithmetic while enjoying a heady meal is annoying, but sell a Rat's account of restaurant accounting will hopefully make me think twice when I'm tempted to have one more glass than I ought. I'm all for helping out of business, but I don't want to be the patsy you can count on to boost your bottom line. As much as I enjoyed sections at the beginning of the book, Salinger then proceeds with her real intentions, and this is where the narrative becomes a mess of motives. As promised in the subtitle, Seller Rat goes after the terrible toxic situation in the hospitality industry. The author portrays herself as a survivor of the abusive drug suffused dysfunction that is curtained off from expensive dining rooms. She careers from a Massachusetts bar where she suffers a broken nose, to a succession of fancy eateies in Manhattan, almost all involving bad dating decisions and run ins with what passes for professional management. She's come back from all this to settle scores. This book is in many ways an extended yet attenuated espri descalier literally spirit up the stairs, the acid and witty retort you don't think of until you've left the party, and it's too late to make a difference in the confrontation that stung you. While some of her targets may deserve come uppens, a lot of the attacks and sell a rat seem petty no matter how much she tries to rationalize them. There are gratuitors, slurs and add hominum insults, sound and fury signifying I'm not sure what. There are enough real people named in the book, and yet Selinger tries to cover herself with a note at the beginning this is a work of creative non fiction. While the events are true, they may not be factual. It all gives the impression of being the socially scorned high school valedictorian who never got to hang with the cool kid and then starts a whisper campaign against them. All of this diluted vitriol is splashed in chapters that end with recipes. I know that's a formula pushed on food writers by book editors, but sellinger defends their inclusion as another mode of creative expression. They add nothing to her narrative and make the book seem even less coherent. Revenge is a dish best served cold, not with directions to buy a truffle slicer from William's Sonoma