It’s a rare Saturday when the calendar is unexpectedly empty, the weather is pleasant enough for an extended stay on the porch and I’ve dipped into an amusing bit of non-required reading.
The stars, or maybe just the spring air, aligned today and I spent the morning with “Turning Tables,” a just-published novel written by Heather and Rose MacDowell, identical twins and former waitresses who now live on opposite coasts and write by email and phone. That seems an unlikely formula for an absorbing read, and I expected to get a few pages into the book and move on to something more productive.
Maybe it was the behind-the-scenes glimpse of life at Roulette, a posh but fictional Upper East Side restaurant – a novelistic take that may be even more entertaining than “Kitchen Confidential,”Anthony Bourdain’s nonfiction account of many of the same kinds of shenanigans.
Maybe it was the sheer daring of the main character, a 28-year-old ex-marketer who signs on as a waitress in an effort to pay the bills after she is downsized from a corporate job.
And maybe it was simply the deft touch the MacDowell duo display in skewering the pretenses of trendy food (the chef even dabbles in flavored air) and the patrons who strive to be seen eating it. Publicity for the book says the MacDowells have waited tables at some of the best restaurants in New York, Nantucket and San Francisco, and their familiarity with restaurant life seems to prove it.
Anyone who has ever relied on a restaurant review to determine where to drop big bucks for fine dining will delight in the panic that ensues when Roulette’s owner gets a tip that the city’s most powerful reviewer is coming in the next night.
And anyone who has ever waited tables, or taken a job they would have previously considered below their station in life, will enjoy the transformation of Erin Edwards from an overwhelmed neophyte who has bluffed her way into a job far above her experience to a hard-won confidence in her abilities. That confidence ends up serving her well not just at Roulette, but also as she charts a new course in the rest of her life.
If you need a fun romp of a read, check it out.
“Turning Tables”
by Heather and Rose MacDowell
A Dial Press Hardcover, $24.
Sara
After my recent review of Judith Jones’ memoir, “The Tenth Muse,” Bailey Barash, a film maker in Atlanta, wrote to alert us to her brief (21 minutes) documentary on Edna Lewis, who died in 2006.
The film includes interviews with Judith Jones, who edited several of Edna Lewis’ books on Southern cooking, as well as a great deal about Miss Lewis and her approach to food.
The documentary is called “Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Pie,” It’s worth watching – and it’s easy to find on the internet:
It’s viewable at a Gourmet Magazine website:
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/01/Edna
and at a Georgia Public Broadcasting website:
http://www.cforty7.com/film/theater?film_test=16
Bailey’s website, http://bbarash.com/index.htm has more information about the film and the story of Miss Lewis.
Thanks for the tip, Bailey – and for recording this piece of culinary history.
--Sara
