Not too big for his britches, per se

DJ Egg, a fan of food and letters, tipped me off to this blog post by a 16 year old kid who dined alone at New York's vaunted Per Se restaurant. While the $300 price tag is a bit too rich for my blood, apparently this punk was able to swing it on some scratch he saved from a summer job. For the rest of you neo-Depressionites without the means to swing a meal there, I highly recommend dipping into Phoebe Damrosch's SERVICE INCLUDED--a memoir about her time as a server at Per Se. While books by top chefs abound, Damrosch's effort is a rare and enlightening look at what the front of the house looks like at a fine dining destination.