Ken Burgin talks with Adam Reiner, who says the mission of his website Restaurant Manifesto is about ‘helping people dine more successfully by decoding the secret language of restaurants from an insider’s perspective. Certainly, I have a lot of life lessons from my work in restaurants that I’m happy to discuss with the listeners, but I’d prefer the conversation center more around the themes of how people can become better diners. So many blogs today spend so much energy ranting and raving about how awful restaurant guests are, but precious few come from a place of love or, God forbid, offer the guest any advice on how to use this information more constructively.’

Adam has worked in New York restaurants for almost 20 years. He was a member of the team at Mario Batali’s iconic Italian restaurant, Babbo, for nearly ten years and he currently works for Major Food Group as a captain at Carbone in Greenwich Village. He spent the majority of 2015 living in Hong Kong, where he was hired to be the New York Liaison and Brand Ambassador to the Carbone restaurant there. ‘It was an amazing experience to witness service dynamics in a foreign country, to interact with guests overseas and to train people on how to understand our New York swagger and style of service.’

Adam launched The Restaurant Manifesto in early 2014 (under the pen name Peter Camarero, to avoid conflict of interest) and since then has tried hard to be a more compassionate voice for helping people’s dining experiences. ‘Restaurants are complex organisms and too many restaurant patrons, even ones who fashion themselves experts, have overly simplistic ideas about how the organism functions. Gaining more literacy about the ecosystem, in his opinion, helps people cultivate better relationships with staff and, ultimately, results in better service.’ Follow Adam on his website and his pithy Twitter feed.