Are all food critics corrupt? What"s the trick for getting a table tonight in America"s and Europe"s most fashionable restaurants? How can we feast while half the world starves? Find out in Kitchen Con. "Waiter and customer have a lot in common. Each lingers under the delusion that lunch is on the way, neither has more than a passing interest in the other, and both are at the mercy of an ill-tempered thug with a white toque," writes Trevor White in this hilarious account of life as a restaurant critic. Kitchen Con is his passionate, intelligent expose of the restaurant business, from the world"s first restaurant after the French Revolution to today"s most fashionable tables in London, Paris, and New York. With style and humor, White lifts the lid off the culinary cartel-owners, chefs, and critics-that cons diners around the globe. A scathing attack on gourmet dogma, his defiantly populist critique of restaurant culture redefines the dining room as a place in which people should be satisfied rather than frozen and awe-struck. No one-not even the author himself-is spared in this riveting account of life at the heart of the restaurant racket.