Not only did I feel like I was on a vacation at this sumptuous inn, but the complex characters plus distinct back stories pulled me in. I liked watching their dramas unfold, building to a page turning emotional climax.

A little background: Renée and Jean-Paul De La Rue face the daunting decision to close their beloved inn Vis Ta Vie for good. Meanwhile their 8 guests are facing their own struggles. Three couples are in crisis: Hollywood celebs, Leo and Penny, are spending their silver anniversary together while on the cusp of divorce.

Lucy, a practical minded therapist, and Henry, an astronomer with his head in the stars, are on the rocks. And former lawyer, now stay at home mother, Sienna, and dynamic sports agent, Adam, look perfect, but looks can be deceiving.  Add finally, self-absorbed single mother Cassidy and her sulky 15-year-old daughter, Rosalie are barely speaking.

Below are some edited highlights from my conversation with Rochelle. You can listen to the full episode here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Elena: Rochelle, before we get into your book, can you tell us how you went from being a secret writer into a somewhat prolific one with eight books out there.

Rochelle: Well, first, thank you, Elena, for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. I was laughing when you were listing all the characters, because I’m like, Oh my God, how did I write all these characters and keep up with it?

I was always a writer, a secretive journal writer back in the day. I was also a huge reader. I used to steal my mother’s Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steele. I was reading those books when I was  about 10 years old.  I like to say that they raised me in a way. They were my salvation. They were healing for me. My parents were divorced at the time, so there were some lonely times.

And I felt such refuge in books. At the same time, I was the journal writer, and I never had the courage or the self-confidence to put any type of writing out in the world.

My career path went an entirely different way. I was in the music business in South Beach in Miami and the company was bought and moved to New York City. I had just had twin boys. I’d always worked since the age of 14 and I felt I was at this career crossroads.  I always felt that I had a story to tell.  I literally sat down, wrote 110, 000 words of What We Leave Behind and that was the start of a career. It was a lark that turned into something bigger than I had expected.

Elena: Wow. Did you have that story percolating for a while?

Rochelle: There’s a lot of fiction and non-fiction in my first novel. A lot of it is my own self-discovery and the way I dealt with my parents’ divorce, the way I dealt with the men in my life and what I learned from years of work on myself.  I had a message that I really wanted to share with the world, and I felt like I could help other young women navigate through loss, insecurity and abandonment.

And I just basically fictionalized all these deep feelings into a story, and I made it entertaining

Elena: Of these eight books you’ve written, is there a common theme or thread to all of them?

Rochelle: There’s always some type of loss and resiliency, some emotional depth. There’s always a grey area. I like to explore the grey area.  I’m not a very black and white person. I see things in the shades of grey. I like to portray stories where we can see all sides and be able to show a little bit more compassion for the people around us.

Elena: I read that the working title of this book was The Inn, and you described it as The Big Chill meets Nine Perfect Strangers. Can you elaborate on that?

Rochelle: It’s so funny because as the iterations of this book have developed, now I like to say my elevator pitch is, One Week in Summer, Eight Lives Forever Changed. Think White Lotus Meets Virgin River.

Elena: How did you choose to set the novel in North Carolina?

Rochelle: I live in South Florida, and we spent our summers in the mountains of North Carolina, starting at the age of four, when my single mom was head of Girls Hill, a sleepaway camp in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

And I lived for these summers in the mountains, the smell, the scenery. I’m a nature girl at heart. So fast forward, I got married, we had kids, we would take our kids to the mountains of North Carolina. We have a place that we go to in the summers in Beach Mountain.

And nearby there’s this inn called the Inn at Little Pond Farm. And the inn in my novel is based entirely on the inn at Little Pond Farm.

They had a communal table, which only seated ten people, and you could end up talking to complete strangers while the gourmet chef would cook a five-course meal for you.

What’s so incredible are the seeds that are planted at this table when you’re with strangers. I was fascinated by the interactions between the strangers and what you could learn, what you could find out about people, the people who didn’t like each other. I decided that I needed to write a story about the dynamics of this table. I felt like the table was just such a great starting point for a story.

Elena: One of your character’s loves astronomy? Is that something you’re interested in?

Rochelle: Not at all.  I did some research on that. Carl Sagan says we all come from stars and from stardust. I felt like the table was a metaphor for the sun.

And the characters were the stars orbiting the sun. They gravitated around this piece, and it connected them or it exploded around them. I viewed the whole star piece as just a metaphor for these relationships.

Elena: I’m wondering if there were certain characters that appeared to you from the very beginning.

Rochelle: This idea has been percolating for a while. So, when I sat down to finally write it, I knew these were my characters. I knew I wanted to do a mother daughter dynamic. I knew I wanted couples who were best friends from college, reliving their youth at the inn.  I knew I wanted some celebrity to shake things up. And I knew I wanted to have the Renee and Paul, the owners.

I stapled six giant poster boards together and cut out pictures of celebrities from People Magazine. I’m very visual and I need to just see somebody to describe a face, the curvature of their chin. I had index cards for each day and each character had their arc and their goal for a specific scene. I had to see it visually.

Elena: Were these characters modelled after movie stars? Did you have a picture of a movie star for Leo?

Rochelle: The characters that I pulled out of People magazine three or four years ago are different than who I would have envisioned today. Leo was Rob Lowe. And I had Blake Lively as Sienna, but now seeing all her troubles, I think people might not be thrilled to see Blake Lively.

Elena:, Did you have a particular fondness for any of the characters?

Rochelle: People ask who’s your favourite character. Which is your favourite book? That’s like asking who’s your favourite child. But I loved writing Rosalie. There’s something about writing young girls. Something really pivotal must have happened to me at the age of 15.  I’m stuck in this youthful 15-year-old girl’s body and voice.

I also loved writing, Penny and Leo.

Elena:? Is there a particular scene that you really loved writing?

Rochelle: I loved the unpeeling of the onion at the table. I loved the last scene of the book. I loved Sienna and Lucy in the wine cellar. The scenes that are the most emotionally charged, I loved so much.

Elena: At one point in the story, Penny, who has been married for 25 years to the Hollywood celebrity Leo, gives some advice to a younger couple who are having marital problems. She says, if there’s one thing you should focus on, it’s not whether you love this person, because the answer is yes. The real question is, can you live without this person? And if you can’t live without them, then do everything in your power to fix it. I thought that was a very wise piece of advice.

Rochelle: Sometimes I wonder where (these nuggets) came from. It’s been a while since I wrote that book. You know, you get so deep into your characters, and I felt that that was something that Penny would have said, given her history with Leo.

Elena: Yeah,

Rochelle: Like you really get into character.

Elena: Might you ever write a sequel? I thought there were certain characters we’re invested in and we’re not sure what’s going to happen to them.

Rochelle: Never say never. None of my books are part of a series, they’re all standalones. This one definitely lends itself to that more.  I turned in my ninth book two Fridays ago. All I can say is it’s an epic love story

Elena: Oh, wow. You write a book in a year?

Rochelle: I’ve been writing a book a year, but I’m going to slow down.

Elena: You clearly have tons of ideas. Do you write them down as they come to you?

Rochelle: Yes. I have a file folder called book ideas. And I actually have synopses for books ten and eleven.

Elena: Amazing.  I know that you recommend books for the local NBC affiliate and for some magazines. What books are you recommending?

Rochelle: Nicola Kraus has a new book coming out The Best We Could Hope For.  And I’m excited about Jackie Friedland’s Counting Backwards That’s on my night table There’s obviously, the Queen, Annabelle Monaghan, I can’t wait until her new book It’s a Love Story comes out. I read it and it’s of course amazing.

Elena: She’s great. I’m interviewing her in May. I think that’s it for my questions. Thank you, and good luck with all your writing.

Rochelle: Thank you, Elena. I appreciate it. It was a pleasure talking to you.

February, 2025

The post Key Takeaways from My Conversation with Rochelle Weinstein, Author of We Are Made of Stars appeared first on Elena Bowes.

 I spoke with Anastasia Rubis, who goes by Stacy, the author of Oriana, a wonderful moving novel about the trailblazing Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci. Oriana was an international superstar, arguably the best journalist in the world in the 1960s and 70s. She was a woman in a man’s world, which makes her accomplishments that much more impressive.

The post Highlights from My Chat with Anastasia Rubis, author of Oriana appeared first on Elena Bowes.

If you’ve ever wondered what working in a restaurant is really like, Michael’s memoir, Your Table is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D’  give you a very good idea.  His book is the front of  house equivalent to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential…. Your Table is Ready describes the heady 1980’s, think of Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, Greed is Good Days, before social media, before the Me Too movement when money, booze, cocaine, and sex flowed like tap water, Michael, a natural storyteller,  had a front row seat at both the good and the bad times in the city. He lost a lot of friends during the AIDS crisis, and 20 years later he lost beloved clients in 9-11. This is not a book for the faint of heart. A paragraph from his excellent introduction below:

A well-run dining room is an art, a ballet, a confluence of pieces that come together to bring a guest a meal. Our guests come not just for sustenance, but to celebrate. Birthdays, anniversaries, a wedding, a death, a date. Friends getting together, the pursuit of sex, love. It’s all happening on any given night.

And on any given night, most of my working life has been spent in this environment. I am just a piece in the show. For many years, restaurants enabled me artistically, socially, and sexually. I’ve met the loves of my life in restaurants, my greatest friends have worked alongside me, and many are still my friends, even though the name above the door has changed numerous times for us. I’ve had trysts, got naked, fucked, laughed, drank, drugged, puked, and shared the gamut of our human existence in restaurants. It’s now time to share these experiences, the people, the food, the insanity of the places so many of us take for granted.

While Michael’s book gives a no holds barred look at what really went on in top NYC restaurants, his memoir is also a coming-of-age story from a New York City native who grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn where the jobs available were in sanitation, the police force or the mob. Michael fled those chosen career paths for the glittering lights of Manhattan.

 I met Michael recently at his own chic and delicious restaurant, Cecchi’s, in the West Village, which I highly recommend. In fact, I went back a second time, and hope to visit many more times. He knows exactly what makes a restaurant successful.  Below are a few highlights from our conversation. You can listen – and subscribe-  to the entire episode here on Elena Meets the Author or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Elena: Michael, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here.

Thank you, Elena. It’s great to be here.

Elena: You have so many choice stories in your book and the Brooklyn mobster accents that you do on the Audible version are impressive. It makes sense that you also had a career in acting. Let’s start off by talking about the genesis of your book. What made you decide to write it?

 I had an acting career for many years. In fact, restaurants supported my theater habit. As an actor, you’re a storyteller. And when I was at restaurants and working, I told stories. I told stories about life. The wacky things that happened to me, to restaurants, to other guests.

People have come in and people always said, well, you should write this down. So, 30 odd years later, I decided to write it down.  I was the maître d’ and manager  at Le Coucou. So, once the last table is seated, and there are a couple of nights a week I had to close the restaurant, I really had nothing to do.

So, I’m standing there, and I figured, let me start writing. And I did. I went in the back and started typing away. And I got about 70 pages in and one of my guests, a known food writer, was walking out one day and I said, you know, I think I’m writing a book. Can I send it to you? And, let me know what you think.

And he said, yeah, sure, of course. So, I did, and he sent it back a few days later with notes. And he said, you need to do this, this, and this. So I responded to the notes, and we had a back and forth for about three or four weeks.

I probably wrote another hundred pages. Then he said, okay, that’s it. Stop bothering me. You’re a writer. Go finish your book. At that time, my young daughter was born. And I was working full time, I had a newborn, and I stopped writing.

And about a year and a half later, COVID happens.  I lost my job. My wife, our daughter and I, and some family members went up to a farm in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. And we’re up there, and while I’m up there, a former host of mine sends me an email from someone out in L.A. whose offering writing scholarships to any restaurant worker that’s a writer and happens to be unemployed. How’s that for a niche? So, I applied, for this writing scholarship, I got it, and it was a ten-week workshop where you had to commit to two hours in the morning and two hours at night.

We met remotely two or three nights a week, we’d have these talks with other writers who were in the program. Probably about eight of us were doing it. I finish the ten-week program, and at the end of it, you get an evaluation. And I’m now at this farm in the middle of nowhere, the only, reception I got on my phone was in the middle of a cow field.

So, I take a chair, and I trudge out to the middle of a cow field, I sit down. Phone rings, I get the evaluation, and it was very good. So, I hang up the phone, and I’m thinking, now what? The cows are looking at me, we’re in the middle of COVID, and my phone rings. And it’s a former customer of mine, calling to check in.

How are you? What’s going on? What are you doing? And I say, you know, I’m well, broke, haven’t worked in a long time, but I  just finished a book. He said, What’s the book? I said, It’s a front of house kitchen confidential. He goes, Oh, that sounds interesting. I say, Well, if you happen to know any literary agents, let me know.

He says, you know, I know a few. let me see what I can do for you. I hang up the phone. The next day I get an email from a literary agent saying I heard I should read your book. I send him the book. He writes back to me two weeks later. I love it. Stand by. Two weeks after that, he signed me. And then about a month later, we got a publishing deal. And the book came out. Well, it takes about a year. About a year later, the book came out.

Elena: What a story. You make it sound so easy.

 Honestly, I don’t tell this to writers, because I’m afraid they’ll kill me, because it’s so hard, but I guess people will hear this now. But it was (easy).

Elena: Let’s discuss your childhood in Bensonhurst  and how serving at your uncle’s poker games and being an altar boy gave you a sense that maybe the restaurant business could be for you.

When I started to write the book, I started thinking, how did I get into this business, how did I get to be a waiter?  I just started thinking, and I kind of always did it. I was an altar boy.  And when you’re an altar boy, you serve Mass. And what’s serving Mass? You assist the priest. You get the wine and the host, and you bring it out. And you get the linens, which are the tablecloths to cover the altar. And you polish the gold. You know? And you set up the cruets with the wine and the water and, you’re there and you’re serving. I thought, well, wow, my restaurant career really started in church.

I come from this very Italian Sicilian background neighbourhood and a lot of poker playing, booze drinking guys. On the weekends,  my mother played poker, and these guys would come over for poker games. They would come sit in the living room, and they’d be smoking cigarettes, and they’d be drinking, and I thought, I’d like to hang out with those guys.

It was kind of cool. I must have been six or seven years old, and I would change the ashtrays. If they needed a drink, I’d run in the kitchen, get them a drink, and there I was serving drinks and cleaning ashtrays, which, until no smoking happened in restaurants, is what you did. And so, I thought, that really was the genesis of it.

And I loved it. It was fun. It got me to be around all these really cool, though, albeit crazy people.

Elena: And in the altar boy job, there was a little bit of skimming money off the plate?

The neighbourhood  I grew up in, you had three paths in life, generally. You were sanitation, police, or mob. And the ethos of the time, whether you were sanitation, police, or the mob, was get what you can. Take what you can get because no one’s going to give it to you.

This is the mentality. It was very tribal, and that’s what I grew up in. And so after mass, we’d sell the Catholic newspaper called The Tablet. it was ten cents a copy, and there we were, these cute altar boys, ten cents a copy, collecting the money, and then the money would come in, and we’d go back in the rectory, and we would take five dollars off the top to buy a nickel bag of pot.

And then we’d go sneak some wine, before the priest coud get it, because the bottle was already open. Actually we’d get six dollars, because five dollars was for the pot, and then we’d go get high behind the church, and then with the last dollar, we’d go to the luncheonette on the corner and get coffee and toast, because we were hungry.

Elena: Jumping ahead now to when you started out as a waiter in NYC, you talk about going to an interview with famed restaurateur Danny Meyer and he asks you what’s more important, the food or the service? At the time you didn’t know. But you learned quickly. Which is more important?

 Service. You go to a restaurant for a meal, right? But you really don’t. You go to a restaurant for an experience. You go to celebrate a birthday, an anniversary, on a date, to find a date. You’re hungry, yes, but you go because you want to be around people.

And that’s the experience. And the most successful restaurants, at least the ones that I know, when you walk in that door, your shoulders drop. And if it’s done right, you’re in a whole other mindset, You sit down, someone brings you a drink and you get your food, and if that goes seamlessly, it’s wonderful.

And if things are great, and you love your server, and they come over and explain things, and your steak comes out, it’s well done, you’ll forgive a well-done steak.

But if your server’s a jerk, or the person at the door ignores you, or the bartender’s not looking at you for ten minutes, things start off on a bad foot. And even if the food’s delicious, will you really want to go back? If they forgot your appetizers, or they forgot your partner’s drink, or it was a birthday, and they forgot the candle. You’re probably not going to go back.

But if you get the service part right, and your food’s pretty good, you’re on your way to something successful.

You write about how the staff prepared for  restaurant critics and food inspectors. Tell us about that.

 Both strike fear into the hearts of mortal men. Are you talking about Pete Wells?

Elena: yes

So Pete Wells, who is now retired, was the food critic for the New York Times. And for many years, the food critic for the New York Times was the most powerful person in the city because he could make or break a restaurant. That’s changed drastically since those days. But you want to get a good review. You want to spot Pete Wells. And Pete would come incognito, or use pseudonyms. One of the things that he would do is there would be a party of four and three guests would show up, asked to be seated, and then he would just come in like 20 minutes later and just sneak in and go find the table. But we really wanted to spot him. We were waiting for people. Look, you wait for the reviewers, right? And Stephen Starr , owner of Le Coucou, is a master restaurateur, but also he’s been doing this for many years.

He hired people who’d be at the door who recognized every critic and food writer that ever walked through that door. We did not miss one person. Because you want to be ready. You don’t want the restaurant critic to come in and suddenly everyone’s having a bad night, and your worst server is at that station, and everything goes downhill. So, you want to be prepared for the best. There was a woman who worked the door, and pretty much knew all the aliases Pete Wells used, and some of the phone numbers, and, we were able to know when he was coming.

Elena: Didn’t you also leave a table empty for the critic?

 The day Le Coucou opened, we left the best table in the restaurant unseated, So, when a food writer or restaurant critic did come in, they got the best table in the restaurant. And that best table in the restaurant was always helmed by the best captain and the best server. And behind the desk there we had a fresh menu with a fresh wine list that was perfect. So, when they went down to the table, everything was perfect.

And this is a very busy restaurant, right? Packed, packed. People waited a year for a reservation. People would be walking in and waiting for a table. Why can’t I sit there? Why can’t I sit at that table? Why is no one sitting at the table?

And I would just say, I’m so sorry, it’s spoken for. And people would scream at you. Why, I’m waiting half an hour for a table. Why is that table open? It’s because it’s spoken for. I’m so sorry.

Elena: You have to be so diplomatic. Food and health inspectors, that was another nightmare…

 Oh my God,  the worst. Look, it’s New York City, most of these spaces are old. We have a health code now that when Bloomberg was mayor, it became a letter grade. You had A, B, C, or D in your window, depending on the state of cleanliness of your restaurant.

No one wants anything but an A. If you see a D on a restaurant window, you’re not walking in unless you’re starving. And there’s nothing else open. So, you really want that A. It’s a point system. You’re allowed 13 points of violations.

And once you go past 13, that’s when the B begins. And then more points to C or D. Getting 13 points in a restaurant is pretty easy. When the restaurant inspector comes in everything stops because generally, in the kitchen especially, nothing is legal. You got a bunch of orders coming in and there’s three pieces of fish sitting waiting to go into a pan and you’ve got three burgers on the side there that you’re going to put on the grill and  that meat and fish is sitting out. They’re not in the refrigerator because you have to temper them. Once you temper them, it becomes an illegal temperature. So, the inspector comes in, puts his thermometer in there, and you fail. And a piece of meat that fails temperature is, I forget how many points, it’s a lot of points. And if there’s two pieces of meat out, you’ve blown your 13 points.

So, when the DOH (Department of Health) comes in, we have a code word. And many restaurants have a word for whatever it is. Tsunami was one of the ones we used in a restaurant. And the host comes in, and the DOH person shows their badge. Thank you very much. And some places have buzzers at the front door that alerts the kitchen.

Some say, okay, give me one second, turn, and the host will run back and tell everyone, tsunami, tsunami, tsunami. And you race through the restaurant to make sure everybody on the floor knows, the bar knows, the kitchen knows, that there’s a health inspector in the restaurant.

Now, some inspectors will stop there at reception and put their paperwork together, and some will just walk straight through and go into the kitchen. So as they’re coming, when you hear Tsunami, the first thing kitchen staff do in the kitchen with those burgers and fish, they throw them out. In the refrigerator, all your dairy products, anything in the refrigerator, the doors are opening and closing, you can’t keep them at the required temperature so all that gets thrown out. Your bar garnishes, those are never at the right temperature. They all get thrown out. You throw everything out. So, all those people waiting for their orders, their food is now in the garbage, and we’re not going to cook a thing until that inspector leaves, because once that fish is up there, if the inspector’s thermometer comes out, we’re in trouble.

And restaurants in New York, there are mice. There are roaches. Every single, brand-new restaurant has mice and roaches. And if there’s one little speck of mouse poop on the floor, no matter how clean you are, how many exterminators you have, that’s a violation. So, when they come through the door, it’s a disaster.

 What was my thinking? I was in quarantine. I wrote a book, the book got published and I was done. I wasn’t going to come back and work for anybody. I tried to open something before, but everything was too expensive. It just didn’t make any sense. The rents were too high, and you couldn’t make ends meet.

My older daughter said, what are you going to do now, Dad? And I said, nothing. And she says, no, you have to open Cecchi’s. And I said, oh, Jesus Christ. And so, I thought about it and slept on it.

And a lot of restaurants had gone out of business during Covid, and no one knew what was going to happen. So, there were a lot of deals to be had. I thought, okay, I’m going to do it. And I found a spot that I fell in love with at a very good price because of the pandemic.

I saw that in covid when people sat outside in 20-degree (Fahrenheit) weather because they wanted to support restaurants, they wanted to see other people, I saw that people will come back to restaurants. I didn’t know to what extent. I knew the fact that I’ve done this for a long time, I’m not an unknown entity that people would probably come to the restaurant. So, I felt pretty good about it. I didn’t know we would do as well as we’re doing now. And that’s a whole other story. But we’re doing very well.

But it’s a risk. It’s an absolute risk. It’s hard.  And a lot of people go into the business, not knowing what they’re doing. I’m here every day. I was here every day for 7 months, 7 days a week. You’re talking 15, 18-hour days. Because I wanted this to be right.

You’ve definitely cracked it. It was bold to open, but I’m so glad you did because your restaurant is great. The design, the lighting, the food, my martini- everything was great. It’s like theatre.

It is theatre. You open the door and the show’s on.

January, 2025

The post Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D’ – Q&A with Author Michael Cecchi-Azzolina appeared first on Elena Bowes.

 So, imagine my delight when I passed my local bookstore and saw a book in the window called Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman. My doorman knows a lot more about me than I know about him. I loved this coming-of-age story from an academically gifted Latino 22-year-old who lands a much-desired job as a doorman at a high-end Park Avenue building.

Debut author Stephen Bruno recounts all the do’s and don’ts of the job while also observing the escapades that go on behind the scenes, both upstairs and downstairs. Bruno, who is of Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican decent, got a profile in  The New York Times and The New Yorker . The New Yorker title, What Does Your Doorman Say About You got me thinking. Hopefully, only nice things. I strive to be like Mrs. Bloom in Bruno’s novel, but know I have a long way to go before I’d be that good a person.  Below is our edited and abbreviated Q&A. You can listen to the full Q&A here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Elena: Hi Stephen, I loved your book, Building Material. You’re a talented writer with a knack for metaphors and an ear for dialogue. It’s a real hero’s journey told with a great sense of humor.

Stephen: Thank you so much.

You were twenty-two when you got the job. Can you tell us initially about where you grew up, your family, and why getting this job was a particularly lucky break for you?

 I was raised in the Bronx. I guess you might call us poor. My father worked very hard to put food on the table, but it wasn’t like steak every night. I was the oldest and went to private school until the sixth grade. And then when my family got bigger (Stephan has 6 younger siblings), my parents pulled us out of private and put us all into public school. My brother Johnny and I were put in a program for gifted students, a magnet school. I was nerdy but I also played a lot of sports and went to church three days a week. We were raised ultra-Orthodox Christian. My father had a shelf full of classics, like Of Mice and Men, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn so we always had something to read. I am super grateful for that life because I had sports, academics and literature. I had it all.

But when I got to high school I became a hit with the girls. I hadn’t been a hit before. My parents went crazy, and I rebelled. It cost me my academics. I then went to a Christian college to appease my parents, but I treated college like it was a resort. I was no longer in the Bronx, or under the supervision of my parents. I stopped going to church. I was like an animal unleashed. I became the head of an underground fraternity. I got on the radar of the school officials, and they expelled me on a technicality. I couldn’t face myself or my parents. I moved to Minnesota and worked in a Buffalo Wild Wings. I constantly smelled of teriyaki sauce and ballooned up to 265 pounds.

My mother just wanted to get me back to the Bronx. She thought he’ll get a job, be able to pay rent. She thought the trajectory of my life will start going up, even if it’s not skyrocketing like before.

My younger brother Jason worked as a doorman. My mother begged him to put in a good word for me. I knew nothing about this.

It’s not easy to get a doorman job. There’s no application. There’s no ad in the paper. You’ve got to know somebody. And my mother knew my brother. She was essentially my agent.

Can you tell us nondoorman people about the job.

Don’t get too close and don’t do too much. Sometimes residents when they’re coming home, they don’t need to have a conversation with you. They don’t want to talk about the Yankees. Just say hello, grab the bag and help them upstairs because they just want to get to their front door.

I live in a four-story walk-up. All I’m doing when I get out of the train station and am walking the four blocks to my home is thinking about the front entrance of my building. I don’t want to be stopped by a doorman who wants to talk about the Yankees.

You have to pick up your cues from the resident. Let them initiate conversation.

It’s a service job. Whatever is going on in your life, you leave at the front door. You have to say hello with a smile. It’s not in the union handbook, but you work where others live.

How did the idea of the memoir come about? And were you taking notes while you were a doorman. You have such good stories.

 I had already worked as a doorman for eleven years when I decided to write the memoir in 2015. I had taken no notes.

I had wanted to go back to college to finish my degree. While I was at John Jay College, one of my professors told me I was a terrific writer and should get a masters. I had missed every deadline for the Writing MFA, and I didn’t want to leave NYC. But Hunter College was still open. I applied and got in.

You did both degrees while working as a doorman and wrote your book during the quiet night shift. How was the MFA program at Hunter?

The first year was the worst year I’ve ever experienced in my academic life. I didn’t want to go back. Everything in our culture is racist so no one takes it seriously when it actually is racist. My classmates, all women didn’t talk to me. They treated me like an ape. One girl just stared at me unblinking when I spoke like I was a monster, and she couldn’t believe I could speak. I was just being myself. I’m an authentic human being. The way I’m speaking to you is the way I speak to the person down the street. I was the only man, the only Hispanic, the only New Yorker in the class. When we’d workshop our work, the women would write beautiful all over the margins of the other women’s work in my class. But never on my work.

When I told my teacher, she said Fuck Beauty. Just write, just do what you do. She taught me a core lesson in writing. Write the way you speak. I think one of the reasons my classmates didn’t like me was because I sounded different. I sounded like a New Yorker.

That’s when I realized I have a singular voice. You have a lot of writers living in New York City, but rarely are they actually from the city. And rarer still is the Latin native New Yorker. So when I realized I had that market cornered, I relaxed. Just do what you do on the page, Stephan. Have fun. And that’s what I decided to do my second year.

Well, you really do have a strong voice on the page and on Audible. You mention that part of your job is to leave your personal life out of it. But things were so bleak for you that first year at Hunter, that you had a hard time being happy at work. Can you tell us how a resident saved you?

Yeah, that year was an absolute struggle. Everyday kind of melted into the next one.  Mrs. Bloom (not the resident’s real name) noticed it. We had been having a dialogue for years when I was at John Jay and everything was going well. I was a rockstar, bringing great news to her everyday. Like, Mrs. Bloom, you won’t believe this, the professor is putting me up for an award. I won the contest, Mrs. Bloom, I beat all those law students. But at Hunter, I wasn’t saying any of those things. It was crushing me not to be able to deliver good news to her. She was like a surrogate mother to me. I was really dark and morose.

Then one day, Mrs. Bloom asked me to come over for dinner the following week. Mr. and Mrs. Bloom set me up with sandwiches and Amstel Lights and turned on the TV to a documentary about the American writer August Wilson. He was a light-skinned black man. I saw myself in him. He’s walking around smoking cigarettes talking about life in Pittsburgh. He’s an artist but he doesn’t treat himself like anything more than a Pittsburgh working class guy. There was something about seeing him smoking that made me think he was very comfortable in his own skin. He didn’t give a damn what anyone thought about him. It inspired me. That documentary made me think, just be yourself, who gives a shit what others think.

And it was wonderful and beautiful on (the Bloom’s part). It just changed the trajectory of my MFA.

They sound like fantastic people, just the kind of people you needed in your life. You tell us in the book that the three topics of conversation for all doormen are women, baseball and Puerto Rico.  Were you able to weave into those conversations that you were working on a memoir?

I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone in the building until the 11^th hour. I didn’t tell people in my neighborhood or even my life that I was working on a book or had a book deal. I feel like everybody’s working on a book. At the job we’re just doormen.

 What has been the residents’ response?

They all read the New York Times so ninety percent of them heard about the book from that article. They’re all really proud of me. They say, ‘great article. I’m going to buy your book’

What has been your parent’s reaction?

My mother is very proud. She flew up from Florida for my publishing date and went to a reading.

My father isn’t talking to me at the moment because he read the book jacket. I didn’t write that descriptive text. My editor called him an oppressively religious man wreaking havoc on my life. And I was like, ‘hey, can we cut that down a little bit.’

The book isn’t about my father and me, it’s about me. My father was emotionally absent, and he was verbally abusive when I was growing up, but he worked really hard and provided for all nine of us.

 I hope he starts speaking to you.

 Me too. I love my dad. I want the best for him. I’m his son.

 Towards the end of the book, you write,  “You’re a doorman, a man who opens doors. You’re like a fish meant to stay the size of your tank.” Do you think you stayed the size of your tank?

 No. I have jumped out of my tank. My doorman job is a job and it’s a good one. Until I find a job where I am challenged, where I belong, like maybe being a professor, I’ll continue to do it. I’ll be a big fish in a small tank. I’m not complaining.

 And you’re teaching Salsa too?

 I am. I absolutely love it. It’s part of my culture. But writing is going to be my priority. I’ll do whatever it takes.

 Thank you and good luck Stephen.

December 2024

The post Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman – Q&A with Author Stephen Bruno appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Ruth was the restaurant critic for the LA Times, then moved to the NY Times where a bad review from Ruth could shutter a restaurant. From there she joined Gourmet Magazine as editor in chief for ten years until it closed in 2009. She has written 12 books, including several cookbooks, five memoirs and two novels. The Paris Novel is her second novel. And it will make you lust for 1980’s Paris.

In The Paris Novel, a young woman named Stella has had a difficult start to life in Manhattan due to her deeply narcissistic and sexy mother Celia and a predatory older man named Mortimer. To cope with her traumatic upbringing, Stella lives a very controlled, friendless, joyless existence. But all that changes when Celia dies unexpectedly and her will orders Stella to go to Paris for reasons undisclosed.

Read some highlights from my talk with Ruth below. They have been edited for brevity. You can listen to our full interview on my podcast Elena Meets the Author wherever you listen to podcasts. So, find it, subscribe to it. And thank you.

Hello Ruth, welcome. Your novel is an enchanting love letter to the world’s most romantic city where the simple, sensual pleasures of life – food, wine, fashion, art, and architecture abound. It’s also a novel with intriguing characters some made up like the loveable octogenarian Jules, others real, like the late writer James Baldwin and the famous Michelin star chef Marc Meneau. When did you first fall in love with Paris?

My parents took me to Paris for the first time when I was 10. And I have loved it ever since.

Your mother was not a talented cook. In your memoir Tender at the Bone, you wrote that she was a bit dangerous in the kitchen. As a child you had to warn guests not to eat the casserole. Can you tell us where your love of food came from?

My first taste memory is in my highchair. My mother put something in my mouth, and it tasted vile. I spit it out. And then my mother takes a bite, and a puzzled look came over her face. What’s wrong with you, she asked. I knew in that moment that my mother and I did not taste the same things and that she was dangerous. From that moment I took a tiny first taste of everything to see if it was going to kill me. The first story in Tender is the Bone is called Queen of Mold. It’s about how she hosted an engagement party for my brother and put 26 guests in the hospital for food poisoning. I quickly learned to push her out of the kitchen. It was not a game. It was survival.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

There’s a chapter in my memoir Save Me the Plums where I go into a vintage clothing store in Paris and try on this dress, which transforms me completely. I became a fabulous creature who I never imagined I could be. I desperately wanted that dress. The sales lady said, This is your dress. How much is it? I asked. And when she said 6,000, I didn’t buy it. After the memoir was done, my editor said, I love that little black dress chapter so much. Could you imagine a novel where the character does buy the dress? And the moment she said that the book pretty much came to me fully formed.

I read that you chose to set the novel in the early 1980’s because you had firsthand knowledge of the restaurant scene then.  Can you tell us about that?

(In the early 1980’s) I was dirt poor, living in a commune in Berkeley, writing about restaurants. In 1984 the LA Times asked me to be their restaurant critic. It was the first time I was not freelance. I get to the LA Times and ask my boss, what is my expense account limit? And he said, we’ll let you know when you’ve gone over it. I had never been to a three-star restaurant in France. And so, I thought, ok, if I have an unlimited expense account, I’m going to Paris and eat in three-star restaurants. It’s ridiculous to be a restaurant critic for a major newspaper and never having eaten in a great French restaurant. All the meals in the novel are meals I actually ate in 1984.

What’s your favorite home cooked meal?

This time of year, summer, pasta with fresh tomato sauce. Just the smell of the sauce cooking is total comfort to me. When you’re a restaurant critic, your tastes get simpler and simpler. A roast chicken is perfect to me, a perfectly poached egg, heaven.

I’m lucky. I live in the Hudson Valley. I’m surrounded by farmers. Most of my food is locally grown and I eat with the seasons.

I think that’s what the American food revolution was really about. Julia Child came and told us that technique would make you into a great cook. You could go to the supermarket and make a great meal. Alice Waters said, no you cannot make great food without great products. It’s not about technique. It’s about getting really good fresh food. And that had a huge impact on me. In my childhood you could not buy a great tomato or a great strawberry.

Thank you so much Ruth.

August 2024

The post Q&A with Ruth Reichl – The Paris Novel appeared first on Elena Bowes.