Life Of A Restaurant: Tales and Recipes from La Colombe D'Or

Its the ultimate fantasy for the food-obsessed: opening a restaurant that embodies all the qualities you look for when you dine out a restaurant that completely immerses you in great food and fine wines a restaurant frequented by fascinating patrons who think of your place as their home away from home. In Life of a Restaurant Helen Studley reveals how far afield of reality that fantasy is. Seventeen years ago Helen and her husband George opened La Colombe dOr a Provencal restaurant on a remote block of Manhattans East 26th Street. In this utterly engaging volume Helen reveals what owning a restaurant is really like: the thrill of a great review (and the near impossibility of serving the crowd that suddenly materializes) and the devastation of a bad one; the challenge of ordering storing and paying for all that food; the exquisite choreography of lunch and dinner service; negotiating with patrons who insist on smoking in the nonsmoking section; dealing with garbage removal fire regulations and laundry bills; riding out a recession; and what to do when the chef youre firing tries to take her pates with her. Yes there are heartaches in the restaurant business. But there also are rewards. The hard work has paid off: La Colombe dOr is one of New Yorks most popular and acclaimed restaurants and the Studleys lives have been immeasurably enriched by the things theyve learned the people theyve met and of course by the food theyve produced. Life of a Restaurant is the story of two gourmet entrepreneurs who succeeded in making their dream a reality. Packaged in a volume that is as charming as the restaurant itself and supplemented by more than sixty of La Colombe dOrs most celebrated Provencal recipes Life of a Restaurant is an armchair restaurateur that takes the reader on a wonderful and delicious journey.