A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City

Product Information

We are always hungry for stories from behind the ever-swinging door that separates the calm of a restaurant from the hot temperatures and hot tempers of the kitchen. The waiter inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low you're fighting your colleagues for tips. I'd advise readers to enjoy it somewhere warm and comfortable, and on no account to try it before a gastronomic weekend. But it doesn't matter because you're in Paris, the centre of the universe, and there's nowhere else you'd rather be in the world. Pick up a copy of A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City by Edward Chisholm and get ready to fast-track yourself to Paris and straight into a dumpster dive where you come away with plenty of internal treasure.

You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. Behind the allure of luxury, behind the romance and charm, Edward Chisholm can see Paris for what she truly is during his time as a waiter.Despite having little knowledge of the French language or experience as a server, he managed to fake his way into a position as a runner in an upscale restaurant, where he was labeled L’Anglais.

This is a memoir that may well be destined for the screen, so do yourself a favour: read the book first.The author delves into the difficulties and uncertainties that he and his co-workers faced getting paid or taking time off, and he shares his experiences with squalid living conditions and even homelessness. Chisholm gets to be responsible for the ‘parade of plates, glasses and bottles’, and learns the gravity-defying skill of carrying huge silver platters, balanced aloft on the upturned palm.

It is a strongly held belief in Paris that ‘French vineyards only send the bottles that are corked to England’, because we’d not notice.This is a brilliant insider recollection, thundering forward in small snippets of characters revealing every hidden corner of the Le Bistro, which incredibly parallels the world of Paris itself. A portrait of Paris is painted by a waiter in this candid memoir that forces you to take off your rose-colored glasses to see the complicated truth of the city.

If food and crockery topple over out of sight, with a sound ‘like a cliff collapsing into the sea’, the waiters quickly scoop up the duck breasts and haricots from the floor, plonk them on fresh plates, ‘and the table is none the wiser’. Replete with a defined social hierarchy cemented neatly in place by the physical layout of the restaurant. But it doesn’t matter because you’re in Paris, the centre of the universe, and there’s nowhere else you’d rather be in the world.

Chisholm] brings the restaurant world to life as he relates the stress, pressure, and anxiety felt by all the workers. sometimes he misses his own points a little bit and on several occasions i wished i could remind him that he had very actively chosen to do the down-and-out schtick — but ultimately if nobody ever made ‘poor’ decisions or created unnecessary drama for themselves it would be a boring life and there’d be much less to read !