today

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Cellar Rat

Most people who do others dirty don’t bank on their victims landing a book deal. But that’s how it played out for Hannah Selinger. Cellar Rat, her first book, recounts in vivid detail a period in her twenties when she worked in several storied New York restaurants as a sommelier. Restaurant work is the filling in a sandwich—a period between completing an MFA in writing from Columbia University and eventually pursuing a career as a writer. 

The story has the cadence of a well-orchestrated Friday night dinner service. Selinger writes with candor and humor about events most people want to forget and has the backbone to put name tags on everyone present. Some details will rattle even well-seasoned restaurant employees. Her commitment to self-interrogation messes with the view that this is revenge-porn. 

Selinger demonstrates how her experience of childhood domestic abuse laid the groundwork for her attraction to restaurant culture. A business where there is no shortage of entitled men is alluring. As a young woman, the imprint of early abuse by her stepfather leaves her with weak boundaries, an inability to see red flags, and an attraction to predators. The pressures she writes about in the chapter, Theft, are heartbreaking. It’s hard not to burst into flames reading Fourplay and Chef Fucker. She uses a wide-angle lens to bring the enablers into focus. Among the many loathsome characters, this threesome is remarkable: 

“I imagined Tosi, Chang, Salmon, a rat pack of outright and internalized misogyny, gossiping about my dalliance with Johnny, aching to make some ill-timed joke at my expense. If the point was to cut me down so that I would know my place in the managerial hierarchy, the trick had worked.”

Cellar Rat is a forthright and progressive examination of addiction and restaurant culture. There are bottoms Selinger has to crawl out of. It’s a messy and emotional journey. “I began to understand that restaurant work might be hurting me,” she writes. 

Terrible events are eventually transformed by humility into instructive lessons. Selinger wakes up to all the ways restaurant culture denies women their appetites and agency. You will cheer when she retrieves what the Momofuku team tries to erase of her. You might wish she was putting the last nail in the coffin of celebrity chef culture, but as she writes, “Restaurants remain broken.”

In the end, Selinger grows up, takes the necessary steps to realize her dreams, and lays claim to her story. 

If you have the means, buy it for yourself in a local bookstore. A writer still gets dollars if you take it out of the library. It’s a book to put in the hands of young servers and cooks. 

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Good peppers are often on the discount rack. Friday night, I roasted them with anchovies, garlic, rosemary, capers, olive oil, and seasoning as prep for Sunday night pasta. Then, I made a messy and delicious trout, crispy rice, watercress, carrot, and pickled beet salad with a ginger-sesame dressing. It was fresh and tasted like double happiness. 
 
A friend sent me a Beast Pizza gift certificate for my birthday—that was Saturday dinner sorted.
 
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I had trouble settling on music, but these two songs fit the sentiment of this week. On Your Side came to me on Saturday from someone I follow on Bluesky. It’s lovely. 

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1973

2019