Adam Reiner Author Event • The New Rules of Dining Out: An Insider's Guide to Enjoying Restaurants

Adam Reiner is a James Beard Award-winning food writer who spent more than two decades working in many of New York City’s most popular restaurants, including Carbone, The Grill, and Babbo. His feature writing appears in Eater, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and New York Magazine, among other top publications.

MacKenzie Chung Fegan became the San Francisco Chronicle’s Restaurant Critic in 2024. She is a former senior editor at Bon Appétit, and her writing on the intersection of food, drinks, culture, and politics has also appeared in GQ, Playboy, Vice, Paper and Wine Enthusiast. Her profile of chef Brandon Jew for Resy appears in the 2021 edition of “The Best American Food Writing.” In a previous life, she was a video director and producer; her documentaries have won Webby Awards and screened at museums including the Centre Pompidou. In previous previous lives, she worked for social justice organizations like the Ford Foundation and Human Rights Watch, hosted an arts and culture show on a Brooklyn cable channel, and lived on a dubiously buoyant tugboat in Alaska. The New Yorker once called her family’s San Francisco restaurant “the best Chinese restaurant in the world,” an accolade for which she can take no responsibility. 

The New Rules of Dining Out is the quintessential resource for anyone, from the casual diner to the ardent foodie, who wants to dine like a pro. Sharing colorful anecdotes from his 20-plus years of experience working in restaurants that range from the modest to the Michelin-starred, Adam Reiner gives readers the inside track on how to get what they want in any dining situation.

In discussing the cultural significance of dining out in America, Reiner traces the earliest iterations of the American restaurant to the nineteenth century. Through various scenarios from his own experiences as a tenured waiter, he sheds light on the behind-the-scenes inner workings of a busy restaurant. The book carefully dissects common interactions at the table with step-by-step advice on how to solicit recommendations from your server, how to tactfully send your food back, how to ask for help choosing wine without feeling intimidated, how to tip like a pro, and more.

The New Rules of Dining Out invites food lovers to think more deeply about the complex systems that go into forming any restaurant, and about how their language and demeanor affect the service they receive. Better communication builds trust between guests and staff, which in turn leads to more joyful and satisfying dining experiences. At a time when the restaurant industry faces myriad existential challenges, it’s more important than ever for diners to approach restaurants with compassion and enthusiasm. Reiner emphasizes the fact that hospitality is a two-way street that improves when customers become more invested in the success of their own meals.

The New Rules of Dining Out encourages diners to lean forward, instead of back―to become more active participants in their restaurant experiences. This first-of-its-kind “Diner’s Bible” will completely change how readers think about food, the art of dining, and their own role as restaurant guests.