A Second Helping

About the Book

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.

About the Author

After working in restaurants since the age of fifteen, graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1973, and training under accomplished chefs, Tom Schaudel opened his first restaurant in 1983. Since then he has been the driving force behind several acclaimed Long Island restaurants. He also has his own line of wines, made on Long Island, under the Tom Schaudel “Reserve” label, sold at his restaurants and at the winery.