Off the Menu Staff Meals from America's Top Restaurants

For every dinner service, there is a staff meal. Family-style celebrations prepared by the chefs for their crew, the meals are never on the menu, but are designed to show their appreciation, provide energy for the evening, and more importantly, please even the pickiest palate. Marissa Guggiana, author of Primal Cuts, the definitive guide to America's best butchers, here turns her attention to the best-kept secrets of the restaurant world: what the staff eats for dinner! Marissa has once again traveled the country, this time to bring you behind-the-scenes profiles of the country's top restaurants, and explore the tradition of the staff meal. Each night, sous chefs, line cooks, waiters, busboys, dishwashers, and managers all gather to eat, socialize, and plan before opening for business. Ranging from small plates to eight-course extravaganzas, an inspired use of leftovers or entirely new offerings, the concept is simple: a well-fed staff is a happy one. The best chefs in the best restaurants take their limitations - affordability, ingredients, and time - and transcend them to create true comfort food for their compatriots. Marissa has taken the most remarkable, soulful, and mouthwatering of these dishes, from mac and cheese to coq au vin, and translated them for the home chef. Inside Staff Mealsyou will find more than 100 recipes from 50 of the nation's top restaurants. Each entry includes profiles of the chefs, behind-the-scenes trips to the kitchens, and tips, tricks, and techniques from the cream of the culinary crop. Pull back the curtain on the staff meal, and find new, exciting ways to feed your family from the best in the business.

MARISSA GUGGIANA is the author of Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers, which profiles fifty of the most innovative whole-animal butchers and chefs in America and shares their most impressive recipes. In 2011, she co-founded The Butcher's Guild, a national organization promoting and supporting artisanal butchery. Marissa is an editor and contributor to Meatpaper magazine and a board member of Ag Innovations Network. She lives in Berkeley, California.