Welcome to our 3rd “We’re Booked” episode. Our guest is author, cookbook collaborator, and podcast host, Andrew Friedman.

Andrew has made a career chronicling the life and work of some of our best chefs, and is currently collaborating on a memoir with Daniel Boulud, to be published by Grand Central Publishing in 2027.

Andrew is the author of Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll: How Food Lovers, Free Spirits, Misfits, and Wanderers Created a New American Profession. Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll (Ecco 2018) tells the story of the evolution of the American chef in the 1970s and 1980s, and is essential reading for anyone in love with restaurants and restaurant history. 

To write it, Andrew interviewed more than 200 industry figures including legends such as Wolfgang Puck, Jeremiah Tower, Alice Waters, Jonathan Waxman, and Ruth Reichl. 

We started this podcast to have a place to share stories and preserve the rich history of the exciting world of restaurants we’ve been blessed to be a part of. 

Listen in as we:

~ go back in time to the incipience of “California cuisine” and its impact on the development of a distinctive American cuisine

~ discuss the confluence of the Blue Ribbon after hours culture and the dawn of the food network in the early 90’s which ushered in the now seemingly perennial era of the celebrity chef

~ highlight the importance of FOH staff being able to call a play in real time

~ hear a real life example of the kind of hospitality behavior Andrew would like to see 86ed.