I seem to have inadvertently accrued a rather extensive resume in ... food. I've harvested vegetables commercially as a laborer in the fields all over America. I've plucked fruit from the tress and filled thousands of bushels for sale and consumption by my fellow Americans. I worked as a farm laborer, a fruit picker, a sorter and a grader, a dishwasher, a cook, a sous chief, a gourmet chef, a kitchen manager, a restaurant manager, a restaurant owner and small business operator and a restaurant and small business entrepreneur. Tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of Americans have spent time in some area of the food service industry at one point or another in their lives ... for better or worse, for richer or poorer. Like most of the books and stories I write, this book is about people. This book is about dishwashers, waitresses, bartenders and maids, broiler cooks, porters, managers, assistant managers, owners, secretaries, fry cooks, sous chefs, real chefs and wannabe chefs. It's about supervisors, general managers, cashiers, and owners. It's about blacks, whites and Hispanics. It is about successes and failures. It is about the steady and dependable, the fly-by-nights and runaways, the compassionate and the heartless, the upright and the criminal. I doubt if "Monkey Dishes and Cocktail Fawks" will be the last word on this subject but it definitely provides a new word and an insider's perspective - a perspective that ranges from the bottom to the top. I hope you all enjoy it. It has been an honest effort on my part and it has been a long time in the thinking and planning.