Sunday Book Review: Service Included by Phoebe Damrosch

Service Included
by Phoebe Damrosch
William Morrow
October 2007
$24.95, 240 pp.
ISBN: 978-0-06-122814-8

Reviewed by guest blogger Kate Soto

“Food porn” gets thrown around a lot these days. People use the term when talking about Whole Foods’ mounds of glistening and overpriced vegetables. They use it when poring over doughy empanadas in Gourmet magazine or when glued to the TV as Anthony Bourdain eats eyeballs in India. Like regular old porn, food porn is a glossier, dramatic, and somehow more absurd version of its referent. It fetishizes the act of eating—a process that, like sex, tends to have a much less glamorous life when out of the limelight.

In her first memoir, Williamsburg hipster foodie Phoebe Damrosch serves up a behind-the-scenes look at someone famous for fetishizing food—celeb chef Thomas Keller. Known for his “law of diminishing returns,” he’s a believer in small portions geared specifically for palate titillation, to keep diners “begging for one more bite.” He also believes in the “the abundance of extravagance,” highlighting luxurious ingredients like foie gras and truffles in exciting arrangements. The food is for indulgence—certainly not sustenance.

Damrosch tells the story of getting hired and intensively trained to staff the grand opening of Per Se, the illustrious New York sister restaurant to California’s chichi French Laundry. It begins as a fish-out-of-water tale, as Damrosch describes trying to navigate the big leagues of fine dining with nothing more than a Brooklyn café and a few short stints at Midtown restaurants on her resume. But she very quickly bought into the Per Se world, becoming a food aficionado (slash snob) and advocate of Keller’s philosophy. She says: “It occurred to me at the end of our first day of training that if I were a skeptic, I might find this whole thing a little cultish. There were philosophies, laws, uniforms, elaborate rituals, an unspoken code of honor and integrity, and, most important, a powerful leader. But I am not a skeptic; I drank the Kool-Aid.”

And the menu strategy indeed does seem remarkably intriguing: Guests are served a playful series of individually tailored small courses that excite the palate with innovative combinations and puns on tradition. Meals are meant to last for hours, be expensive, and ideally be left to the whimsy of the chef. Some of their specialties include a savory take on the ice cream cone with salmon tartar, a homemade “pop tart,” and truffles luxuriously adorning wherever possible. This is a world in which there is a cultish respect for food, and a $3,000 bottle of wine is considered a reasonable choice to achieve the right pairing.

Damrosch chats about eccentric personalities, and Chef Keller plays a somewhat larger-than-life role. In gossipy prose, she explains the ins and outs of training, the politics that transpire in the back of the house, and the philosophy behind the food itself. It is indeed an insider’s tale, and having that perspective on a culture obsessed with extreme food and service is fascinating. She emphasizes the lengths to which the restaurant would go to train its staff, including the hiring of an eighteenth-century dance specialist to teach them how to walk, stand, and bow.

What did not work for me were the forays into her love life. True, her affair involved a fellow Per Se staff member, but it really became a different book—with her as the focus. Damrosch didn’t need to cross so deeply into personal memoir territory, as the restaurant material was interesting enough to carry the book. When the writing gets fluid, the reader can almost experience Per Se for him/herself. (And it’s likely the closest I’ll come to experiencing the often astronomically priced cuisine—she alludes to tabs reaching $20,000.) Non-sequitur “tip” boxes woven throughout were less funny than obnoxious, and didn’t tie into the subjects of their chapters. While meant to be a jab/tutorial to uncouth diners, they really read as snobby. Certainly snobbery is an element present in the fine-dining world, and Damrosch does not prove an exception to the rule.

The success of the book is the gossipy backstage pass to food porn land. The food is all about unadulterated, expensive pleasure (which can’t be duplicated at home) and serving the food is all about anticipating guests’ desires. Pleasure, desire…is it any wonder that food and sex so commonly share adjectives? Food porn is an unattainable model, “but perhaps that is the allure,” Damrosch admits, after attempting to cook some of the Chef Keller’s recipes. Damrosch strips Per Se down to its skivvies and shows the real-world drama behind the other-worldy extravagance.

Kate Soto currently lives in Chicago, where she writes, cooks, and watches the Food Network religiously.

Comments

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