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Title: Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills ServerAuthor: Paul Hartford
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 258
Date read: March 2018
A down-and-out musician chops off his hair to become a server at the top of the Hollywood food chain, discovering a cloistered world of money, fame, bad behavior and intrigue.
Waiter to the Rich and Shameless is not just a peek into the secretive inner workings of a legendary 5-star restaurant; it is not just a celebrity tell-all or a scathing corporate analysis. It is a top-tier waiter's personal coming-of-age story, an intimate look into the complicated challenges of serving in the country's most elite, Hollywood-centric dining room while fighting to maintain a sense of self and purpose.
Of the many millions of food service workers around the globe, only a tiny number ever ascend to a top-level position at a world-renowned restaurant catering to iconic celebrities, moguls and politicians. As one of those select few, Paul ("Pauli") Hartford is the first waiter to open the door into a cloistered, coveted world of money, fame, bad behavior and intrigue. He peels back the veneer of civility and culture at the nation's most preeminent celebrity hangout, the Cricket Room, in Beverly Hills, California. He exposes the epic human foibles of its elite clientele, the dining room's corrupt corporate culture, its clandestine culinary practices, and the heartbreaking struggles of its beleaguered waitstaff.
This keenly-observed story also traverses Pauli's ten-year evolution from a jaded, party-hungry rock musician who moonlights as a bartender, into a snobbish and pretentious waiter, and finally into a polished and sophisticated server who takes his job so seriously that it drives him to the brink of illness. Pauli finds himself at first seduced by his famous guests' glamour and self-indulgence, then accustomed to it, and finally appalled by it.
Fun read which obviously included a T½ON of name-dropping. It got a bit tabloid'ish at times as Pauli exposed his customers, but with a title like that, I knew that before going into the book. And fortunately he spent just as much page-time on "exposing" people who treated the waiters (and each other) well as on those who didn't.
There were fewer details on his actually workings and doings as a waiter than I had expected, and more details about his partying with Jens (and wedding/honeymoon - but honestly, I enjoyed those), which made for a weird slant and made me wonder if he'd fully decided what kind of book he wanted to write, before he set out on writing it. But at the end of the day it was an entertaining read... although not a likely reread.
