A Second Helping

Tom Schaudel

Description

After a fifty-year restaurant career, Tom Schaudel shares some of the most ridiculous occurrences witnessed in his establishments, to the amusement of some and embarrassment of others.
A Second Helping: Whining and Dining on Long Island picks up where
Tom Schaudel’s first book, Playing With Fire, left off as a playful romp
through the crazy world of restaurants, dining rooms, and professional
kitchens. Filled with short stories of neurotic customers, stressed out
servers, crazed cooks, and the undeniably unhinged, his unique and
humorous observations will have you wondering how the expression,
“The customer is always right,” ever came to be.
Looking back through a fifty-year restaurant career, Tom has assembled a
cast of characters that would be the envy of fiction writers everywhere. In
this book, you will meet an f-bombing octogenarian, a D-level celebrity
asking for separate checks at her wedding, an aspiring counterfeiter
with a seriously flawed gift certificate, the nine-year-old antichrist,
and a woman who flushed a six-carat diamond ring down a toilet bowl.
This latest collection is guaranteed to make you stay up late and laugh
out loud and is a must read for anyone who has ever eaten in a restaurant,
worked in a restaurant, asked to use the restroom in a restaurant or, God
forbid, dreamed of owning a restaurant.

Sujets

• Restaurants
• Chefs
• Humor
• Eating
• Restaurant

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 13 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663233882
• Langue: English

Extrait

Also by Tom Schaudel
Playing with Fire: Whining and Dining on the Gold Coast
A SECOND HELPING
Whining and Dining on Long Island
Tom Schaudel


A SECOND HELPING WHINING AND DINING ON LONG ISLAND
 
Copyright © 2022 Tom Schaudel.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4011-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-3388-2 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022909555
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 08/04/2022
CONTENTS
Testimonials
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Warning!
Author’s Note
Introduction
Customers
Quiet, Please
Happy Hour
“Harry, Keep the Change”
I Do … Don’t I?
Reach Out and Touch Someone
Paying One’s Dues … or Is That Don’ts???
I Have a Complaint … Actually, Make That a Protest
Shaken Waitress Syndrome
Half-Assed
Pantomime
Married … and Filing for Separation
Turn-about Is Fair Play
Fogging or Blogging
Art Dealer or Art Carney
There’s No Need for Argument, There’s No Argument at All (Van Morrison, “Domino”)
Di-rectile Dysfunction
Burning Mad
And the Winners Are …
Reservation Jihad
Spare the Rod
Levittown, NY 11756
Comb-Over Here
Basic Truths
The Whole World Is Going to Pot
A Learning Experience
Do Me a Favor … Right Now
Lawyers
What Goes around Comes Around
The Ball’s in Your Court
Success Is 10 Percent Inspiration and 90 Percent Perspiration
Legally Insane
Restaurant Week
Salmon Grilling
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Give the Baby a Bottle
Balls, Courage, or Audacity?
The Politically Incorrect Politics of Food
Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Fraud
Sing Sing
Rare Fish
Sticking to Plan A
A Pip off the Old Block
Getting What One Paid For
Bordering on the Absurd
Opening Salvo
I Did It My Way
Every Pig Has Its Day
Our Wedding Night
Tenacity
Mixed(-up) Marriage
Happy Birthday
A Mad Dash for Lobsters
Hey T., Phone Home
Wine-Know
Golf Balls Rated R
There’s More Than One Way to Skim a Cow
Employees
Bait and Switch
Typhoon Loon
Testing, One, Two, Three
Comprehensive Exam
Screwy Stewie the Screw
The Best-Laid Plans
All Bets Are Off
Shakespearean?
Antonio’s Lunch Date
Guys and Dolls
The Booboo
Laughing in the Face of Death
Sidney Feldstein, RIP
Pull-It Surprise
Super Turd
Bachelor #1
Louis Ellis III
One for the Road
 
About the Author
TESTIMONIALS
I’ve had the pleasure of reading A Second Helping and offer the following comments:
Tom Schaudel, Long Island’s true celebrity chef, has done it again. Not satisfied with exposing his worst customers in his bestselling Playing with Fire: Whining And Dining on the Gold Coast , he has gone back for A Second Helping , one of the funniest and wittiest books I’ve read in years.
You should buy and read this book because you may see yourself in these stories, you may see your family or friends on these pages, and you will never again be an a-hole in a restaurant. The late Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential was an eye-opener; Schaudel’s A Second Helping is a gut-buster.
—Nelson DeMille, best-selling author
Tom is a master storyteller. It seems there will never be a shortage of the witless, and Tom is there to capture it all!
—Jim Douglass, DJ, 103.1 MAX-FM
Tom Schaudel is a good friend, an accomplished chef, an all-around great guy, and a stand-up comic. His stories about the restaurant industry are so engaging and hilarious because you know they are true. You can’t make this stuff up!
—Kareem Massoud, winemaker, Paumanok Vineyards
Tom continues to set high standards on the Long Island culinary scene. With his many years of experience, we can always count on him for advice. It’s amazing that he still has the passion, drive, and energy. And of course, we can depend on him for one of his many restaurant stories for a laugh. Tom, a good friend of many years in the kitchen and on the golf course, still contributes. Long Island can’t wait to see what’s next.
—Bill Holden, chef and owner, Market Bistro
Having grown up with Tom in our small town of Carle Place, Long Island, and being one of the few who followed his path into the outrageous world of restaurants, I have been entertained by Tom and his idiosyncratic approach over the years. Tom has always been able to keep his fascination for food and wine with a thirst to keep it real, playful, and upbeat. His ability to tell it like it is defies the customer is always right theory. Tom Schaudel is a hoot. No one can argue his logic when it comes to the rationale of his abstract sense of sanity in those get-real moments. Cheers to Tom for bringing his anecdotes to the world!
—Michael Vai, restaurateur, Fire+Wine, VAI’s, EVO and ASH
Tom, recognizing your potential, I gave you an opportunity to prove yourself years ago, and you certainly have outdone yourself. Renowned chef, creator of unique dishes, fantastic storyteller, and now master of the written word. Your rendition of today’s Long Island dining public is superb.
—Dr. Emilie Sair, English professor, high school principal, retired
Tom Schaudel is a true Renaissance man in every way: a highly acclaimed, passionate, award-winning chef; successful restaurateur and businessman; talented musician, singer, and performer; writer; TV and radio personality; philanthropist; avid golfer; kung fu expert; political satirist—and I’ve just scratched the surface. He’s funny to the point of pain, and he’s a really nice guy. Tom’s hilarious stories of customers driving him and the waitstaff crazy first started more than twenty years ago in my Great Restaurants of Long Island magazine. The series was called Tom’s Top Ten, but it was number one in popularity, and readers looked forward to it every year. I’m thrilled it has now grown into a second book and I can’t wait to read it.
—Morris Sendor, publisher and owner, Great Restaurants of Long Island magazine
Besides being renowned for his excellent culinary skills and acclaimed restaurants, Tom Schaudel is also a gifted writer and this book, A Second Helping , is a glorious sequel to his first book, Playing with Fire .
Virtually every sentence in this book is funny to me. He has the insightful ability to creatively capture the foibles of the human condition and show them in a way that outlines their nonsensical absurdities while also showcasing them in a way that makes the insanity of the participants obvious and humorous. This can perhaps be called satirical wisdom. Most participants and situations are relatively harmless, but there are certainly some doozies.
This satirical wisdom is food for the soul for all those who find themselves agonizingly tolerating the sense of entitlement, ignorance, and inflexibility of others.
In an odd way, the stories in this book, and the way they are depicted, seem to scratch an itch that is rarely reached by anything else. It’s all in the delivery. You hear of those books that once you start reading them, you won’t be able to put them down. Well, you’ll want to carve out some time to sit down with this gem because it is an absolutely rewarding read.
—Steve Vai, guitar virtuoso, Sony recording artist
For Harley and Hawke.
Grandkids are your reward for not killing your children.
FOREWORD
Here’s the thing about eating out: You don’t get to haggle. Like it or not, when you order a dish, you’re agreeing to pay the price listed on the menu. But surprise, surprise: When the check arrives, some people like to raise a stink. They feel entitled to all kinds of extras: extra attention, food and drinks, discounts, gift cards … world domination.
If you’ve already read Tom Schaudel’s first book, Playing with Fire: Whining and Dining on the Gold Coast , you’ll know precisely what I’m talking about. Well, Tom is back, and his latest collection of anecdotes, A Second Helping: Whining and Dining on Long Island , introduces a new cast of characters with new complaints and new shenanigans.
You might wonder, as I once did, why do Tom’s restaurants seem to attract all of Long Island’s schemers, operators, manipulators, complainers, and crackpots? I mean, this kind of stuff must be going on everywhere, right? I’m pretty sure it is. But whereas other restaurateurs may write it off, Tom writes it up.
One reason Tom may have so many stories is because he’s been involved with so many restaurants—places with names like Tease, Lemongrass, Coolfish, Passionfish, Starfish, and Kingfish. Although Tom was briefly involved in a roadhouse debacle called Eli’s (which you’ll read about in the upcoming pages) , most of his restaurants have been high-en