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I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk

45: Raj Vaidya

I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk

Levi Dalton

Sonoma, Levi Dalton, Australia, Napa Valley, Austria, Author, Piemonte, Tuscany, Winemaker, Germany, Loire Valley, Food, Portugal, Hobbies, Champagne, Spain, White Wine, Bordeaux, Red Wine, Vineyard, Journalist, Personal Journals, Arts, Leisure, Society & Culture, Feedpodcast, Restaurant, Grape, Burgundy, Terroir, Interview, Sicilia, Conversation, Sommelier, Wine, Wine Business

4.81K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2012

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

At the time of this interview, Raj Vaidya was the Head Sommelier of Restaurant Daniel, located in New York City.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Oh, Rajvadia of Restaurant Danielle joins us today to talk a little bit about a day in the life of a four-star Solmiya.

0:31.0

Great to be here, Livy.

0:33.0

Hey Raj, how you been, man?

0:35.0

Very well, very well.

0:36.0

I have electricity, I'm getting thirsty, and life's good.

0:39.0

How many hours have you had electricity at this point?

0:41.0

Since 4 in the morning, so I've got a good,

0:43.7

you know suburban restaurant shift in.

0:47.5

Did you see an impact on the upper east side

0:49.2

in terms of restaurant Daniel

0:50.9

with the power outage downtown?

0:53.5

We did have some folks who don't make it up too often

0:57.1

who decamped hotels up here in the such

1:00.0

who popped into the bar, but it wasn't a huge impact impact in fact we naturally we were quiet in the

1:04.7

middle of the week we lost a lot of reservations people who were coming in from out of

1:08.1

town and the such right people had other thoughts on their mind indeed and it was hard to get food to serve them as well, of course. But back to normal now.

1:17.0

What is a normal day at a restaurant Daniel for you? Well, I have sort of two jobs, the way I look at it at least depending on what's going on at the restaurant at that moment

1:27.4

But essentially I think of my day as being split into one I spend in my office dealing with purchasing, sourcing wine, dealing with guests in so far as figuring out what they want to drink if they're coming in for a big party,

1:44.4

handling private dining decisions when it comes to wine, talking to and ordering from distributors,

1:52.0

and keeping my pulse on the market and making sure that I know what

1:56.4

wines are out there, what wines cost and what I can sell them for.

2:00.3

So that's really kind of the difference between like the chef somey the head guy, the administrative side and the floor

...

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