"I think what most shocked me when I started waiting tables was how much the owners exploit the illegals. I still don't believe it sometimes."

--Waitress in Gramercy Park

Every restaurant has its own little culture. And despite the stuff that I've seen on Food Network, it's not the chefs that are running things, but it's usually the waiters. The kitchen just does their best to keep up with the front of the house.

Of course this can change from restaurant to restaurant, but most people tell me the same story. Waiters are running the show.

Here's Mark explaining how it works in his place, an Italian restaurant a few blocks south of NYU.

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We have no manager here. Everyone is a manager. The owner gets good people. He really knows people, for the most part. Sometimes he makes really bad decisions on hiring people, but for the most part. He gets good people working for him and they're loyal and they take care of the place. But things are getting bad now.

In the kitchen most people are Spanish, Dominican or something. That's the way they do it. But the runners. It just so happens that a couple of Bengali people started working here and they're such nice people. And they would always have friends. So we have a Bengali thing going. The owner likes them and they're nice people. And that's how that happened.

There has to be a hierarchy in the restaurant. That's how it's got to be. It's not going to work if the busboys can't accept their place as a busboy. The waiter has to get more money than the busboy, more money than the runner.

Everything depends on what going on in the front of the house. Then the tickets go to the back. And then it depends on if they can handle it. When people walk in and the waiter goes to take the drink order, tells the specials. So everything goes by the front of the house. And the back has to keep up with it.

It's crazy in the kitchen. I don't know if you watch those food shows on television, they take you into these kitchens...but really everybody's going crazy. They're all freaking out. They're losing it. They're in the weeds. But somehow or another they make it work. I think it's the same story in every restaurant. It's just a difficult business.

But then I heard that in some places they keep a good pace because they don't want it to get too crazy because the service can't be good. One guy at Tavern on the Green, because I worked at Tavern on the Green for awhile, he said the managers don't let it get that busy. They keep a pace because they have a lot of managers. They'll just stop seating people.

Tavern on the Green was very impersonal. I worked as a banquet waiter. I was just in the banquets department. I was just basically carrying food on a tray, picking plates up, carrying food on a tray. But you get your celebrities. That's kind of fun. Yea', celebrities.

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