I was a busboy at a Wisconsin resort one summer. Every day I worked two shifts in the dining room, serving breakfast/lunch and then dinner. My tasks were supposed to be keeping the guests satisfied with coffee, water and other liquids, as well as clearing the dishes off the tables and transporting them to the kitchen. I also worked with two waiters to make sure that the food was delivered to the proper tables. Nearly 60 years later, I can still recall the kitchen, the staff and how the food was prepared. As a person very low in the chain of command, I was not totally immersed in the operation. But I did see enough to decide that the restaurant business was not for me.

"YOUR TABLE IS READY is a boisterous memoir.... [T]his is an informative and entertaining book for anyone interested in the restaurant business."

Now, decades later, YOUR TABLE IS READY by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, a veteran of 35 years in the New York City restaurant industry, has filled in many more details about how it all operates. I never had the opportunity to serve Tennessee Williams, Dustin Hoffman or any other celebrity. Nor did I ever find myself recruited by the Trump family to run one of their hotel restaurants. I also never needed to navigate the theater rush or worry about how restaurant critics would view my work. All of these experiences fill the pages of this book with vivid, detailed, bawdy and sometimes disturbing recollections of the New York dining culture from Cecchi-Azzolina’s decades of work as a server, maître d’ and manager.

Before we visit a restaurant, quite a bit has occurred behind the scenes. Getting it open is on everyone from owners and contractors to managers and servers. They are all involved in some fashion before any customers and food are in the establishment. And often the opening is frustrated by delays in receiving parts and equipment and workers’ inability to finish something before they can move on to the next step in completing the restaurant. There is constant frustration, and the kitchen has yet to even think about preparing a meal.

Once the doors are open to guests, management’s goal is for the operation to be run with military precision. But just as in war, when the battle plan goes awry after the first shots are fired, the serving strategy sometimes goes out the window the moment the first customers arrive. Reservations become confused, regulars come without reserving a table, and staff members get sick or sometimes show up to work drunk.

Cecchi-Azzolina’s New York career began in the 1980s when the industry had a drug problem and before fine dining became an obsession. He provides readers with fascinating details about how restaurants are really run and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff. It is a tough and demanding enterprise for everyone involved.

YOUR TABLE IS READY is a boisterous memoir. Cecchi-Azzolina came to New York to become an actor. His dramatic flair may lead him to embellish his stories just a bit in an effort to spice them up for readers. Regardless, this is an informative and entertaining book for anyone interested in the restaurant business.