A Mad Men dinner in New York City

A memorable night at Cecchi's, where martinis flow, men wear suits, and the owner roams the floor.

Sep 11, 2024

Some months ago I read Your Table is Ready, a memoir by long-time New York restaurateur Michael Cecchi-Azzolina.

The book recounts decades of glamorous and sordid tales of sex, drugs, and hospitality across the city’s most in-demand restaurants.

There’s a certain nostalgia to the book. It’s a love letter to a vanished era of New York, filled with incisive details from the author’s time as a highly-sought Maître D' that are as revelatory as they are clever.

If Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential is the definitive back-of-house bible, Your Table is Ready does the same for front-of-house.

Cecchi-Azzolina writes:

“It never fails, the most awful human beings, the power hungry, those with the least personality, kindness, and humanity, are general managers in restaurants.”

And:

“The business is so fragile that, for many, it comes down to only fifty or so guests a week between you and Chapter 11.”

The book closes with the opening of Cecchi’s, his own restaurant, where he finally stakes his claim in the city he spent his life serving.

It’s a very New York book and a very good book. I enjoyed it so much I recommended it to a friend, a veteran New York Times editor, who found it riveting enough to pass it along to another Manhattan-based journalist.

This week, the three of us — who all read, loved, and discussed this book — made dinner reservations at Cecchi’s. Two of us brought copies of Your Table is Ready in preparation for a potential run-in with the author, who has a reputation for roaming the floor of his restaurant.

Located in the West Village, the restaurant takes you deep into the past. I felt like I’d wandered into the New York of Mad Men.

Every hand nestled a martini glass. Men wore suits, and women red lipstick. The bartender appeared to know each patron by their first name, which I suppose comes in handy when everyone asks for a martini.

Our party sat at a snug square table in the center of the room. We ordered drinks, appetizers, steaks, and fish. The conversation moved from our reporting projects to fiction writing to our favorite New York novelists.

Then the waitress brought more drinks. Stronger this time, as if poured with an ulterior motive. Our discussion snaked around pre-war architecture, ferry trips on the Hudson, and Gotham — a 2,000-page history of New York City that spans centuries.

I told my friends when we arrived that my dad had told me jokingly not to order mac and cheese in a restaurant of this caliber. He also read Your Table is Ready.

Sure enough, mac and cheese was the first appetizer to hit the table, followed by a plate of stuffed mushrooms.

Your Table is Ready Michael Cecchi-Azzolina

Later in the evening, I saw a gentleman in a slim suit with the three of his shirt buttons undone. He smiled as he put his hand on the shoulders of guests at the bar. He approached another table and shook hands with the people sitting down.

Is that Cecchi? I actually had no clue what this guy looked like. The man before me looked the part — he seemed to treat each individual he met as if they were an old friend rather than a new face. From his writing I knew Cecchi-Azzolina was someone who built his career on making regulars out of first-time guests.

He walked over to our table.

He did indeed introduce himself as Michael. He shook each of our hands. We told him we all read his book. He smiled and thanked us, speaking with a warmth, ease, and wit that reminded me we were conversing with a hospitality maestro and a career people-person.

After some pointed repartee, he told us he’d be back later.

At the end of the evening we asked for the check. We couldn’t possibly do dessert, we told the waitress. Too full. Minutes later, she brought over a cheesecake, chocolate cake, ice cream and a banana-cream something — all of it on the house.

Michael returned.

“Just have a sample,” he told us. “Don’t feel like you have to finish it all.”

He sat down with us and signed our books, writing personal notes and thanking us for visiting. As if to cement our journey from customers to regulars, Michael gave each of us his personal card.

“Reach out directly if you ever need a table.”

As much as people point to New York City’s crime rate, cost of living, rats and roaches, I’ve found this concrete jungle offers a magic, nostalgia, and opportunity nowhere else can match.

Life happens twice as fast here and experiences compound faster than anywhere I’ve been in the world — a short list that includes high-octane locales like Hong Kong, London, and Singapore.

When I first moved to New York from California in 2021 — joining Business Insider as an untested financial reporter — the ambition of the city hit me first. The people I met raised my understanding of what’s possible.

Chance encounters, like one with a celebrated restaurateur, serve as reminders that no one ends up in these boroughs by accident. Everyone seems to be working on something larger — building, creating, escaping, or pursuing. Few people do what they plan to do forever. There’s always a next chapter.

Michael Cecchi-Azzolina divided his years across so many restaurants until finally opening one of his own and publishing a memoir. By the looks of it, he’s just getting started.

Between launching an independent news startup and a media events business while writing my next book, I’d like to think I’m in good company.