Maître d’ Diaries

Welcome to our chat with Tizzy Beck, maître d’/manager at the Waverly Inn in the West Village. Tizzy is one of those people you meet and say, where have you been all my life? She’s a personality powerhouse, a native New Yorker and a born host. She's been featured in the New York Times for helping to kick off a New York style burger trend in Milan. Clearly she’s quite a badass. Listen in as we...

Dante and Erica look back at 2024 and the holiday season in NYC. We talk about our aspirations for 2025, the physical challenges of doing a job that has us on our feet most of the day, what it’s like to do a restaurant brand refresh in a popular 15 year old restaurant, and what it means to have a purge party. Listen in for Dante’s reaction to the news that Maître d’ Diaries has a YouTube channel,...

Maître d’s have a lot of great stories, and sometimes we get to meet really interesting people while just doing our jobs.  In honor of ELECTION WEEK we’re offering up a wholly positive, but still dishy behind-the-scenes story of what happened when President and Mrs. Obama came to dinner at Maialino in New York City.  Listen in to hear how Roger Raines graced telling a private party that they could...

Welcome to the 2nd “We’re Booked” episode of Maître  d’ Diaries, a front of the house restaurant industry podcast. On our “We’re Booked” episodes we chat with authors who write about restaurants and restaurant life, and the specialty book sellers who collect and curate the books we long to own and read.  This episode we welcome food writer, author, and entrepreneur Leslie Brenner.  Leslie has won...

Thanks for joining us at Maître d’ Diaries, and welcome to our first “That’s an Issue!” episode.  At Maître d’ Diaries we spend a lot of time thinking about the management of dining room operations and how we could do it better. While we are well past Covid–knock on wood–our industry is still very much in a culture correcting moment. It seems like every six months there is a new Major Issue.  To t...

“We Can Transfer That.” If you’ve spent much time in restaurants, you’ve no doubt heard or used the phrase “We can transfer that,” which refers to transferring a drink tab from the bar to a table. Do you ever look at people with really cool restaurant-adjacent jobs they seem to have crafted to perfectly suit them and wonder how they got there?  Many of us feel that the world would be a kinder, mor...

Get ready for a serious OG Alert.  You’re about to spend some time with restaurant legend Barry Wine of the famed Quilted Giraffe.  American cuisine and fine dining–along with the concept of signature dishes going viral–can be traced to the Quilted Giraffe, which opened almost 50 years ago in 1975.  The Quilted Giraffe epitomized the excess and extravagance of the 80’s in New York City. It’s been...

Get ready for a guest and a restaurant that are unapologetically analog. Building community among our FOH colleagues is the primary reason we started Maitre d’ Diaries, so it’s fitting that wine & spirit OG and self-proclaimed connection artist, Ryan Looper, launched us on the trail to meet the bewitchingly romantic restaurateur, Tina Vaughn, co-owner of Eulalie, in Tribeca.  Tina and her husb...

Cherif Mbodji’s passion for hospitality is deeply rooted in his upbringing in Senegal. When he came to America in 2000 to attend the University of Michigan, he had no way of knowing that homesickness for the liveliness and generosity of his big family in Senegal would lead him to a career in hospitality.  When Cherif stumbled into Rain, a Thai restaurant on the Upper East Side, he got a summer job...

Meeting a kindred spirit like Andrea Needell is exactly why we started this podcast.  Andrea is the bar director and general manager of Clay, an American farm to table restaurant located in the space once occupied by the historic Perks Jazz Club in Harlem.  Clay is a neighborhood restaurant that people travel for, known for its wine and beverage program as well as its tasty local ingredient driven...

This summer we were lucky to catch up with Luis Terreros while he was on a break between his position as opening AGM of Cafe Carmellini and taking on the new role of General Manager at Chef Michael White’s soon to open, much anticipated restaurant, Santi.  Luis hails from Cuenca, Ecuador, and has been working in New York City fine dining for the past 24 years. During that time he’s worked with som...

Tomorrow, September 5, 2024, New York City public school students head back to the classroom, so what better date to drop our episode with the multi-talented Traceena Lynch? Traceena is a senior at Food & Finance High School in NYC, and thanks to the professional training programs run by the non-profit Food Education Fund, she already has a ton of experience in the hospitality and culinary fie...

These days restaurant gatekeepers come in all shapes, sizes, and sartorial styles, but our guest Jorge Escudero is cut from the fine cloth of what many of us might consider a classic maître d.  Jorge has welcomed guests at iconic establishments over the years, including The Beatrice Inn, The 21 Club, and Sérêvène in Miami Beach. Now he’s at the door of chef Angie Mar’s deeply personal, glamorous,...

Welcome to our energized interview with Caprice Benedetti, a woman of a certain age who’s in the middle of her first foray into hospitality. At an incredibly high level. We started Maître d’ Diaries because we wanted to build community, connect with more FOH folks, and bridge the OG / Next Gen gap in the industry. It’s no secret that being part of the Dinex Diaspora ourselves, many of the folks we...

It’s the Grand Opening of Maître d’ Diaries, Season Two, and we are kicking off the season with the man, the legend, the Brad Pitt of Cheese, John Winterman.  Long before the restaurant Ever in The Bear there was Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, where a pre-Silver Fox John Winterman cut his fine dining teeth. John’s illustrious career path took him to San Francisco to work with great Gary Danko, New...

Welcome to Season Two of Maître d’ Diaries!  We are a Front of the House Industry podcast that takes you behind the podium, between the tables, and inside the heads of the people who run your favorite restaurants.   Take a listen to our trailer for a taste of what’s to come in Season Two, including interviews with:  ~ Barry Wine of the legendary Quilted Giraffe ~ Andrea Needell of Clay in Harlem ~...

Four years ago in the great unknown landscape of 2020 Aaron and Victoria Bludorn, Cherif Mbodji, and their team–many imported colleagues from New York City and the Dinex (Daniel Boulud) Diaspora–opened the much celebrated Bludorn restaurant in Houston, Texas.   A little less than four years and two more restaurants later, on July 8th, 2024, Hurricane Beryl hit the Houston area and many homes and b...

Welcome to the final episode of Season One of Maître d’ Diaries. Like most restaurants, the podcast has taken much longer to get up and running than we could have imagined, with lots of starts and stops, largely out of our control. To wrap up Season One we figured it would be a good time for you to get to know us better.  Dante and Erica are old friends who met at the Four Seasons Hotel Boston in...

Aloha and welcome to our first Pop-Up episode of Maitre d’ Diaries the Podcast, where we record interviews from our visits to colleagues in restaurants around the country and the world. On Dante’s most recent visit home he had lunch at Fete in Honolulu with his dear friend and sustainability proponent, Natalie Aczon, after which we had the pleasure to interview the co-owner of Fete, James Beard Aw...

Aspen Maye, Food & Beverage Manager at the Arlo Hotel in Williamsburg, is relatively new to the hospitality business, but she’s a quick study and has already put a lot of thought into how to run a door, make people feel welcome, and add some silliness into training her front of the house team. Listen in as we learn about the 10 to 5 rule, what a Sasha Bar is, and why Aspen thinks everyone shou...

We are so honored to welcome Drew Nieporent to MaÎtre d’ Diaries!  Drew is one of America's great restaurateurs. He has been an integral player in the NYC food world landscape for decades, supporting the community, making connections, and always bringing the good time and warm welcome. Drew has played a significant role in shaping the dining scene in this country into one of our premier cultur...

Maître d's may be the gatekeepers, but here at Maître d' Diaries we will frequently step away from the door and talk to front of the house hospitality professionals who play all different roles in executing the service in restaurant operations. Join us this episode for our chat with Maddy Maldonado, the beverage director of Jose Andres' Mercado Little Spain at Hudson Yards on the West...

Welcome to the first episode of We're Booked! where each season we will chat with people who write books about restaurants! Where better to kick off this deliciously decadent series than at the venerable Kitchen Arts & Letters, the world renowned bookstore opened in 1983 by the legendary Nach Waxman? For almost four decades Waxman was a veritable biblio-maître d' whose by-hand sales an...

It's been quite a year for Chef David Viana and Managing Director Neilly Robinson, partners in New Jersey's Heirloom Kitchen, Heirloom at the St. Laurent Social Club, and the systemically innovative, vibrantly delicious, Lita. Last summer we visited David and Neilly six weeks after Lita, their Modern Iberian Restaurant in Aberdeen Township, NJ, opened. Since then, Esquire Magazine and the...

One fine August afternoon Dante & Erica met up at Cafe Spaghetti and had the fortuitous pleasure of running into chef/owner Sal Lamboglia, who gave us a preview of their new venture, Swoony's. Of course we pulled out the microphone to record the impromptu visit! Listen in to hear about Sal and Dante's meeting at Andrew Carmellini's A Voce and the inspiration behind the newly opened...