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The must-read New York Times bestseller that's redefining hospitality and inspiring readers in every industry. - Featured in FX's The Bear and Showtime's Billions - JP Morgan NextList Pick
Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world.
How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room—and memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality. Guidara’s team surprised a family who had never seen snow with a magical sledding trip to Central Park after their dinner; they filled a private dining room with sand, complete with mai-tais and beach chairs, to console a couple with a cancelled vacation. And his hospitality extended beyond those dining at the restaurant to his own team, who learned to deliver praise and criticism with intention; why the answer to some of the most pernicious business dilemmas is to give more—not less; and the magic that can happen when a busser starts thinking like an owner.
Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. Featuring sparkling stories of his journey through restaurants, with the industry’s most famous players like Daniel Boulud and Danny Meyer, Guidara urges us all to find the magic in what we do—for ourselves, the people we work with, and the people we serve.
The must-read New York Times bestseller that's redefining hospitality and inspiring readers in every industry. - Featured in FX's The Bear and Showtime's Billions - JP Morgan NextList Pick
Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world.
How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room—and memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality. Guidara’s team surprised a family who had never seen snow with a magical sledding trip to Central Park after their dinner; they filled a private dining room with sand, complete with mai-tais and beach chairs, to console a couple with a cancelled vacation. And his hospitality extended beyond those dining at the restaurant to his own team, who learned to deliver praise and criticism with intention; why the answer to some of the most pernicious business dilemmas is to give more—not less; and the magic that can happen when a busser starts thinking like an owner.
Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. Featuring sparkling stories of his journey through restaurants, with the industry’s most famous players like Daniel Boulud and Danny Meyer, Guidara urges us all to find the magic in what we do—for ourselves, the people we work with, and the people we serve.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the cover
Chapter 1
Welcome to the Hospitality Economy
At home, we were on top of the world.
Our restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, had recently received four stars from The New York Times, and a couple of James Beard Awards, too. But when my chef-partner Daniel Humm and I arrived at the cocktail reception the night before the awards for the 2010 World's 50 Best Restaurants, we understood: this was a whole different ball game.
Imagine every famous chef and restaurateur you've ever heard of milling around, drinking champagne and catching up with friends-and not one of them was talking to us. I'd never felt so much like a freshman at a new high school trying to figure out where to sit in the cafeteria, not even when I was a freshman.
It was a huge honor to be invited. The 50 Best awards had begun in 2002, but they'd become immediately meaningful in the industry. First of all, they were decided by a jury of a thousand well-regarded experts from around the world. And nobody had ever considered before how the best restaurants on the planet ranked against one another. By doing so, the awards gave these restaurants a push to become even better when they might have been content to rest on their laurels.
The awards ceremony itself was held at London's Guildhall, so regal and imposing it might as well have been a palace. As Daniel and I sat down, more than a little intimidated, we foolishly tried to gauge where we were going to land on the list based on where we were sitting relative to chefs like Heston Blumenthal of England's Fat Duck, or Thomas Keller of Per Se, both of whom had been in the top ten the year before.
I guessed forty. Daniel, always more optimistic, guessed number thirty-five.
The lights went down, the music played. The emcee for the night was a handsome, debonair Brit. And while I'm sure there were all the usual formalities and introductions and "thank you for comings" before the bomb dropped, in my memory there was little preamble before the man said, "To kick it off, coming in at number fifty, a new entry from New York City: Eleven Madison Park!"
That knocked the wind right out of us. We slumped over and stared at our feet.
Unfortunately, what we couldn't have possibly known (because it was our first year at this event, and because we were the very first restaurant called) is that when they call your name, they're also projecting your image onto a gigantic screen at the front of the auditorium, so that everyone can see you celebrating your win.
Except we weren't celebrating. We were at the very bottom of the list! Mortified to see our dejected faces on the thirty-foot-tall screen, I elbowed Daniel, and the two of us mustered a smile and a wave, but it was too little, too late: an auditorium filled with the most celebrated chefs and restaurateurs in the world-our heroes-had already borne witness to our devastation. The night was over for us before it had even begun.
At the reception afterward, we ran into Massimo Bottura, the Italian chef of Osteria Francescana, a Michelin three-star based in Modena-and number six on the list (not that we were counting). He saw us, started laughing, and couldn't stop: "You guys looked pretty happy up there!"
Fair enough, but Daniel and I weren't laughing. It was an honor to be recognized as one of the fifty best restaurants in the world; we knew that. Still-in that room, we had come in last place.
We left the party early and headed back to our hotel, where we grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the bar and sat, ready to drown our sorrows, on the steps outside.
We spent the next couple of hours moving through the five stages of grief. We'd...
Reviews-
September 15, 2022 A noted restaurateur and manager shares his experiences. Guidara, co-owner of the world-renowned New York restaurant Eleven Madison Park, makes his nonfiction debut with an enthusiastic guide for leaders. Drawing on 25 years in restaurant work, including corporate and management positions, the author asserts that hospitality is crucial to the success of any business. In a restaurant, hospitality means "genuinely engaging with the person you're serving, so you can make an authentic connection." That engagement results from a culture of caring that emanates from everyone involved. A restaurant manager must ask a host of important questions: "How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging? How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves? How do you make them feel welcome?" The author distinguishes between being "restaurant-smart"--doing what's best for the guests--and "corporate-smart"--i.e., "running a tight ship." When those two goals created tension, Guidara found that trust was essential to forging a productive team. "A leader's responsibility," he writes, "is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be." A leader is also responsible for giving praise, choosing how and when to deliver criticism, and encouraging participation from all team members. Ultimately, a leader must know when to take the helm. "If you try to be all things to all people," writes the author, "it's proof that you don't have a point of view--and if you want to make an impact, you need to have a point of view." Most of Guidara's anecdotes come from his eventful years as manager of Eleven Madison Park, which was chosen as the world's best restaurant in 2017. That success, he insists, came from daring to enact "unreasonable hospitality"--going beyond flawless service and memorable cuisine to shower each guest with personal attention. Sage advice about leadership.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 1, 2022
In his first solo book, Guidara (Eleven Madison Park: The Cookbook) focuses on the evolution of his fine dining hospitality philosophy. It starts with lessons he learned as a student at Cornell and moves through his career as general manager of Eleven Madison Park, voted World's Best Restaurant in 2017. This is a fast-paced, memoir/managerial treatise, with chapters headed by pithy phrases encapsulating nuggets of managerial wisdom. At the heart is the idea of unreasonable hospitality, an over-the-top customer service solution to the problem of how to become the best, most memorable restaurant. This involves providing personalized experiences, while ensuring that employees are well cared for and empowered. Guidara focuses on dining room dynamics, building a team capable of innovation and excellence, and directing resources. Given broader discussions about harassment and toxic climates often found in the restaurant industry, it is somewhat surprising to see these issues only hinted at in a few brisk anecdotes. The author stays firmly in the realm of the positive, even when describing the various setbacks and personnel issues that arose as he and his restaurant made their way to the top. VERDICT Recommended for those interested in managerial success, the restaurant industry, or inspirational memoirs.--Rebecca Brody
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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