Turning the Tables: The Insider's Guide to Eating Out

By Steven A. Shaw

Book Overview

Award-winning food critic Steven A. Shaw (a.k.a. The Fat Guy) can get a last-minute dinner reservation at the most popular hot spot in town. He knows how that flawless piece of fish reached your plate. He can read between the lines of a restaurant review, and he knows the secrets of why some restaurants succeed and others fail. Now he shares his insider's expertise with food lovers everywhere.

But Turning the Tables is much more than an invaluable how-to guide to eating out. Written with style and humor, it's an in-depth exploration of the restaurant world -- a celebration of the incredibly intricate workings of professional kitchens and dining rooms. It is a delectable feast from a uniquely down-to-earth gourmet who has crisscrossed North America in search of culinary knowledge at every level of the food chain -- from five-star temples of haute cuisine to barbecue joints and hot dog stands -- and who has never been afraid to get his hands greasy on the other side of the swinging kitchen door.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060891408
• ISBN13: 9780060891404
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A delicious read

Wonderfully written, witty and packed with practical information, this little book gave me a big dose of reading pleasure. Some of the negative reviews here seem irony-impaired to me. If you love restaurants--from smallest bistros to grandest gourmet temples-- I think you'll love Shaw's insights and advice.

Not only what goes on behind the scenes, but how consumers can make the most of it

Plenty of books discuss how to start a restaurant, or how to invest in one - but too few go behind the swinging doors to explore how famous restaurants run behind the scenes. Enter Turning The Tables: Restaurants From The Inside Out, which takes eaters behind the scenes into top restaurant kitchens. Author Steven Shaw is not a restaurant critic; he loves food and stands in awe of the restaurant industry: his survey reveals not only what goes on behind the scenes, but how consumers can make the most of it by getting the best treatment and understanding critic reviews.

A Five-Star Restaurant Book

Steven Shaw's Turning the Tables is superb--beautifully written, immensely informative, and often very funny. Particularly interesting to me are his profiles of people in the restaurant business. They are remarkable human beings, and Shaw's appreciations of them make his book all the more special. This is THE book to read for anyone who wants to know what's what about the restaurant business and how to make the most of fine dining, whether it is haute cuisine one wants or haute hot dogs.

A Guide to Eating in a Restaurant

This is the manual on being a restaurant customer. That is it includes: getting a reservation at an impossible place. (I did just exactly what he said at a place that was telling me no and it worked.) the rights and obligations of becoming a VIP at a restaurant absolutely positively convincing me that I never want to work in a restaurant - they work hard. Mr. Shaw is hooked on restaurants. He goes to them a lot. He writes about them. He has even worked at some to see how they do things. He has gone up-stream so to speak to talk with suppliers to restaurants including farmers and fish brokers. He has researched how the major restaurant ratings companies compile their research into the books they publish and how these ratings might be inaccurate because of their approach. This is not a cookbook. It is not a travelogue. It is instead a nice little story of visiting restaurants around the United States (but mostly around New York City). It's a good guide to eating out.

THE BEST GUIDE TO DINING OUT THERE IS!

This is the complete insider's guide to how to eat out, especially in big cities. Forget Zagat's, Citysearch and DailyCandy; they can tell you WHERE to go, but they can't tell you HOW TO GET IN, or all of the juicy details about what goes on behind the scenes. You'll feel like a pro after you've read this, and you'll have the confidence to stroll up to any hostess (even at Per Se or French Laundry) and ask very gently for a table, sans reservation. I tried it at Perry Street in the West Village as soon as I read this, and Shaw's tips WORK!