Welcome in!!!
This is How to Act in a Restaurant!!
Dearests, this is my newest project and I am beyond excited! I would SO love to have you join me over at How to Act in a Restaurant so if you like the sound of what I’m serving up please head over there and subscribe!!!
Folks! I am absolutely thrilled you are here. When I tell you I’ve been working on this idea for going on 8 years now, I’m not lying. How to Act in a Restaurant was conceived in Los Angeles, late one night after dinner service. At the time, I was rounding 12 years in the industry. Gnarled, embittered, bitchy and particularly upset about a table who’d paid their bill half in cash and half on a card but only tipped on the card portion (see: half the tip), I was fed up and getting wine drunk with my equally fed up family of coworkers.
And so, we started a list of tips to help cure diners of their douche baggery. That list turned into a little book and that little book sat in a file on my computer for months until I printed it and started working on illustrations with my fabulously talented friend and coworker, Emilie Campbell (now of Le Veau d’or fame).
Then I decided to move home from LA to Atlanta, GA. Cue a multi-year pandemic and we jumped from 2019 to 2025 through some fucked up wormhole vortex of time and now here we are.
I’ve been writing on Substack for two years. My memoir Substack, Yeah, I’d Hang Out With Her, is where I post weekly essays about my life weaving nostalgia and wisdom with my current reflections. She’s cute and I love her but since I retired from serving almost six months ago, I’ve been itching to find a way to use my experience in the F&B1 industry to stay a part of it forever. May I never actually find a key to unlock the golden handcuffs.
Alas, the idea for this space finally drifted down into my brain at the beginning of January and I’ve been letting it simmer since. How to Act in a Restaurant will be an expanded version of the little list we created back in 2019. Not only tips for diners (because TRUST ME, y’all need help), but also for servers because true hospitality is becoming a lost art at a time when we desperately need to be taking care of each other.
To add extra flavor, I will also be posting restaurant reviews. Mainly Atlanta spots but with other cities sprinkled in too. As nasty mean ‘ole critiques have always hurt my feelings (blame my early 20s in NYC, reading scathing reviews of downtown theatre my friends were creating), I will only be posting glowing ones. I’ll be following one of my grandmother’s favorite laws: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
If this sounds fun to you, subscribe! There is a paid option, as I am always open to accepting tips but feel no pressure, the majority of my content will always be free. I plan to post Thursdays on a bi-weekly basis possibly moving into weekly as I feel out how freely the content flows. I’m beyond excited to begin something new and to share it with you!
Look forward to my first entry, Please. Sit Where You are Told, coming next Thursday.
Thanks for reading!!
My editor/father says I should tell you that F&B means Food and Beverage.
Yay! Something new to learn!