A Second Helping

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.