Service Included

The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

American Public Media

Food, Arts

4.3 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2009

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week it's a peek into the life of a waiter at one of the world's most demanding restaurants. It's a profession and high craft, and not for the faint of heart. Our guest is Phoebe Damrosch, former waiter at Chef Thomas Keller's acclaimed Per Se in New York City. Phoebe tells all in her book Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter.

The Sterns are at Grove Café in Ames, Iowa, where they're forking up pancakes true to their name-huge, pan-size disks of thick and fluffy deliciousness.

Cheesemonger Steve Jenkins is back with a look at the cheeses of the Pyrenees. Improvisational cook Sally Schneider talks the theory and practice of meat loaf and shares her recipe for Lamb Meat Loaf with Cumin, Coriander and Fennel.

Pierre Laszlo, Professor Emeritus of chemistry at the University of Liege in Belgium, tells the story of what happened when a group trying out Utopia in California wrote a letter to the USDA. Professor Laszlo wants us to try his recipe for Tarte au Citron from his latest book, Citrus: A History.

Streit Matzo, the last family-owned matzo factory in the country is moving from its long-time home on New York's Lower East Side. Fourth-generation family member Aaron Gross explains why.

Broadcast dates for this episode:

February 16, 2008 (originally aired)
February 21, 2009 (rebroadcast)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Our common nature is a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me, Ana Gonzalez, through this complicated country.
0:08.1	We go into caves, onto boats, and up mountain trails to meet people, hear their stories, their poetry, and of course, play some music, all to reconnect to nature and get closer to the things we're missing.
0:24.5	Listen to Our Common Nature from WNYC, wherever you get podcasts.
0:36.6	Hi, it's Lynn Rosetta, and you're listening to The Splendid Table, the show for people who love to eat.
0:43.0	Our program is produced by American Public Media and supported by RumenBord, handcrafted furniture for your home at RumenBord.com.
0:52.3	Well, today it's a profession we snub. In our democracy, waiting tables
0:57.1	is a fill-in job, never a real job. Well, it's pretty real when it's honed to high craft,
1:03.4	as in working for chef Thomas Keller. Our guest, former Keller waiter Phoebe Demroche,
1:09.6	tells the story in her book. It's called Service Included,
1:13.6	four-star secrets of an eavesdropping waiter. Cheesemonger Steve Jenkins talks the cheeses of the
1:19.8	Pyrenees, the must-haves, and the must-not-go-near. Sally Schneider steps us through riffing on the
1:25.9	meatloaf, the tricks to improvising your own.
1:29.0	Then it's a sideways look at the orange.
1:31.4	What happened when a group trying out Utopia in California wrote a letter to the USDA?
1:37.9	And as always, in the second half of the show, we're going to be opening the lines for your calls.
1:42.1	You can get to us at 800, 537-52-52.
1:47.2	So let's get this number rolling with Jane and Michael Stern.
1:51.2	They write the road food column in Gourmet magazine.
2:00.0	Lynn, you know, Michael made some notes about the Grove Cafe in Ames, Iowa.
2:06.8	And when I read it the first time, it said, when you order a pancake at the Grove Cafe,
2:12.8	the world will take on a new meaning.
2:15.5	And I thought, boy, did he hit it right. Then I looked at it again, and it said, the word will take on a new meaning. And I thought, boy, did he hit it right.
	...

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