Becoming a Restaurateur

Patric Kuh
Becoming a Restaurateur (Masters at Work)
(Simon & Schuster, May 2019)

Award-winning journalist and food writer Patric Kuh explores the restaurant industry—based on the experiences of Lien Ta and Jonathan Whitener’s Here’s Looking at You restaurant in Los Angeles—and reveals essential details for anyone considering a path to this risky profession.

Everyone knows that opening a restaurant is a risky business, a venture with an astounding rate of failure. Patric Kuh’s Becoming a Restaurateur takes readers behind the scenes of one of America’s trendiest new restaurants, revealing how Lien Ta and chef Jonathan Whitener of LA’s Here’s Looking at You managed to beat the odds. With valuable information about what daily life for a professional is like, this is an entertaining, practical guide to what makes a master restaurateur, from writing the business plan to opening night and beyond.

Patric Kuh, who started his career cooking in restaurants, is the author of The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, a history of the American restaurant business which won the James Beard Foundation’s award for writing on food. He was Los Angeles Magazine’s restaurant critic from 2000-2017, and the recipient of both the James Beard Award for best restaurant critic in America and the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award in 2011. Kuh has been published in Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and Saveur.