Cellar Rat

“A brutally honest, courageous, and powerful personal look into the dark side of the restaurant world. Hannah shows us how the imbalance of power rests on a manipulative system that willfully neglects the people it employs and makes you question if the industry truly can and wants to change for the better.”

“With unflinching candor and clear-eyed wisdom, Hannah Selinger compresses the thrill, toxicity, and terror of working in restaurants into a remarkably open-hearted memoir. Cellar Rat should be essential reading for anyone who cares about this industry and the people who keep it running."

“If you're going to write about the reality of working in restaurants in a way that's anywhere near accurate, you need two things: The courage to burn bridges and keen social observation skills and the ability to translate those into engaging prose. Hannah Selinger has both, as she demonstrates with finesse, humor, and sensitivity in Cellar Rat. I admire her commitment to truth-telling as much as I do her appreciation for the seemingly trivial but ultimately revealing details that are necessary for capturing the glamor, decadence, volatility, and abusiveness that define the dining industry.”

"In Cellar Rat, Hannah Selinger chronicles a time when chefs were thought to be rock stars and dining out was a show—but she tells the truth of living strange hours, dealing with misogyny, and encountering rage in an industry that never loves its workers back. Yet beauty is woven throughout, in prose that mimics the propulsive energy of a busy shift."