Maître d’ Diaries

How do you get the help and support you crave to grow in your profession, and as a person? Have you ever wished you had a mentor? Or two or three? Listen to our chat with Paz Altamirano for some great tips and inspo on how to find and activate MENTORSHIP in your life.  You’ll hear about:  ~ How Paz got on the track of finding mentors in her maître d’ work ~ The importance of being humble and able...

Is it possible to age into rather than out of the business? As we gain experience and perhaps take on leadership roles within our restaurant groups, is the concept of work life balance even viable for chefs and restaurant managers?  Our guest Arnold Rossman is an industry legend and a veritable posterboy for longevity in restaurant operations. Arnold has over forty five years of experience in all...

It’s no secret that some of the best front of the house players started out as English majors and thespians. Which comes first, a penchant for performance and storytelling, or the need for a paying gig?  For sure the dining room can be a stage. The curtain rises when the door opens, and no matter how we feel or what might have happened that day, the show must go on. And like putting on a play, pit...

People get into the hospitality business from all different angles, and it's not uncommon for someone to start as a host or a bus boy to make a little extra cash and end up on a totally different career path than they expected. Our guest Alexandra Tierno Payard Morris started with a B.S. in marketing and advertising from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and fairly early on moved from adv...

When you work in restaurants you join an extended community of colleagues, ex-colleagues, and people your colleagues used to work with. These folks all over the world are connections and networks just waiting to happen. EMANUEL MOOSBRUGGER is one of those friends I never worked with but was destined to meet.  Emanuel grew up in Austria and represents the fifth generation of his family running the...

How do you become a better restaurant manager? THAT’S AN ISSUE!  Have we lost the art of the clear? THAT’S another ISSUE, along with many others we discuss in this episode of the Maître d’ Diaries Podcast with guests ALISON ARTH & KIMBERLY BELLE. Between cultural reckonings and shifts in workforce expectations, leadership roles in hospitality have become more challenging than ever. Being an ef...

Welcome to another WE’RE BOOKED episode of the podcast with scholar and professor PAUL FREEDMAN. Paul Freedman is the author of Ten Restaurants That Changed America , an essential historic tome for passionate restaurant fans as well as people fascinated by business success stories and the evolution of American society. Listen in as we discuss topics such as status and prestige access, the ways in...

Ever wonder how someone might go from being a psych major to clearing tables, to being a Michelin-star bartender? Join us for our chat with JENNA NORFLEET, head bartender at Francie in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Jenna’s front of the house career path epitomizes how sometimes the restaurant job you have to support yourself as a student ends up being more fun–and more accessible–than the field you were...

Welcome to our first DESTINATION HOSPITALITY episode with our guest ANDREA ZANA, the general manager of the Hotel Il San Pietro in Positano on the Amalfi Coast of Italy.  Listen in to hear what it’s like to be part of the operational family that runs one of the world’s greatest resort hotels, how Tom Cruise helped inspire Andrea to get into hospitality, why Andrea loves interacting with tourists,...

This episode we welcome Ahris Kim , the Director of Operations for NA:EUN Hospitality, the multi-award-winning group behind Atoboy, Atomix, and NARO in New York. Ahris, born in Seoul, Korea, and chats about the opportunity to combine her career passions and her heritage, the impact of the awards and accolades, her start in luxury hotels, working for Daniel Boulud, the importance of self care, and...

With passion, partnership, and maybe a soupçon of beginners’ ingenuousness Ronan Duchêne Le May and his wife chef Alexia Duchêne opened Le Chêne, a très chic, très Parisien restaurant on Carmine Street in the West Village in less than six months. Incroyable! Listen in to our chat with Ronan to hear about how his love of restaurants drew him from his family winemaking world in Bordeaux to Paris, ho...

We are kicking off Season 4 with the iconic Daryl Coke , who runs the beloved wine programs at NYC’s Ernesto’s and Bartolo’s, and a deep dive into Spanish and Basque restaurants and wines.  Daryl has been in New York for the past 16 years working at some of the city’s most beloved cult restaurants including The Beatrice Inn, The Fat Radish, Mission Chinese, Contra and Wildair. She also gives us th...

Maître d' Diaries is back! Season 4 brings you more NYC front of the house folks, like Daryl Coke of Ernesto's and Bartolo, Ronan Le Chêne of Le Chêne, Ahris Kim of NA:EUN Hospitality, and Jenna Norfleet of Francie, along with the return of “That’s An Issue,” “We’re Booked,” and a new episode theme, “Destination Hospitality.”  Listen in here for a taste of what’s to come.  And check out ou...

Back in the year 2000 the Cherry Lane Theater hosted the premier of Becky Mode's side-splitting, lightening-paced one man show, "Fully Committed", and restaurant reservationists in basements and broom closets all around town felt seen. And maybe not a little bit exposed. An updated version of the show moved to Broadway in 2016 starring the great Jesse Tyler Ferguson who won a Drama D...

We are so happy to welcome New York Restaurant World Legend, Melba Wilson, to Maître d’ Diaries. Restaurants are all about creating community. The community that is fostered in dining rooms, across tables, in bars and lounges, AND the community we build INSIDE the restaurants where we work.  One of the best things about the hospitality business is how it gives us the chance to work with and get to...

You meet the best people working in restaurants! Case in point, this episode’s guest, Tatiana Mejia, maître d’ at Michelin-starred Francie in Brooklyn, and a dear friend.   Folks come to restaurant work via all different paths, many of us finding the right balance of physical activity, mental engagement, social interaction, and reliable income in a place we didn’t originally imagine ourselves belo...

Ever wonder what it was like booking out a restaurant ON PAPER, before the dawn of online reservation platforms?  At Maître d’ Diaries one of our raisons d’être is building a bridge between restaurant industry old guard and the vibrant, essential Next Generation populating the new post-pandemic workforce. One way we do this is by gathering and sharing stories from the trenches (or the floor, if yo...

You meet some of the best people in the restaurant business. Folks like our guest Olivia Salomon, a server at Le Veau d’Or in New York City, who find joy and satisfaction taking care of other people and helping create memorable experiences for them.  Whether it’s a warm welcome at the door or a server with a wonderful tableside manner, someone who is called to the work and does it with care can re...

Tom Piscitello is a New York maître d’ legend! He ran the door at some of the city’s best Italian restaurants, including Coco Pazzo, Babbo, Beppe, A Voce, and Ci Siamo.  Tom joined us from his terrazzo in Sicily, where he and his husband now live the semi-retired life of private hospitality, making beautiful memories for their guests at a 3-bedroom luxury lighthouse with a view of Mt. Etna, hostin...

Welcome to our 3rd “We’re Booked” episode. Our guest is author, cookbook collaborator, and podcast host, Andrew Friedman. Andrew has made a career chronicling the life and work of some of our best chefs, and is currently collaborating on a memoir with Daniel Boulud, to be published by Grand Central Publishing in 2027. Andrew is the author of Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll: How Food Lovers, Free...

Fasten your seat belts for a spirit-driven ride through NYC modern cocktail culture with the beloved, legendary, Sarah Morrissey who worked on the front lines of the cocktail revolution in New York from almost the beginning.  Recorded one Saturday over bagels pre-service at Le Veau d’Or, where Sarah’s the AGM and Bar Manager, if you don’t already have the pleasure of knowing Sarah, you’ll feel lik...

A “We Can Transfer That” episode happens at least once a season on Maître d’ Diaries. These episodes are designed to highlight the many transferable skills one can hone working the door and floor of a restaurant. It's sort of a "how did you get from there to here" interview that showcases the incredibly satisfying and multi-faceted careers that sometimes get their start when someone becomes a serv...

Maître d’ Diaries is a front of the house industry podcast designed to build community with other dining room professionals, foster pride in the art of hospitality, share stories from the front lines, facilitate conversation among OG restaurant folks and the Next Gen, and address the very real challenges that are facing the industry we love. We are delighted to introduce you to Sabrina Marte, an u...

Join us this episode as we step away from the welcome and into the wine cellar for our chat with Raj Vaidya, whose career trajectory has taken him from a bagel shop in New Jersey all the way to being Chef Daniel Boulud’s International Wine Director, and now collaborating with Daniel Johnnes, as the Director of Operations for Pressoir, the organization behind wine festivals La Paulée, La Fête du Ch...

Paris Pryor has been hearing about Maître d’ Diaries since long before we launched. In fact, her passion for the business and for hearing stories about restaurants past and present helped inspire our inception. Erica and Paris met while opening the Michelin-starred Francie in Williamsburg, Brooklyn during the pandemic and became fast friends. (Although some have asked if they are really mother and...