Cellar Rat

My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly

By: Hannah Selinger

Narrated by: Hannah Selinger

What happens when a career you love doesn’t love you back?

As Hannah Selinger will tell you, to be a good restaurant employee is to be invisible. At the height of her career as a server and then sommelier at some of New York’s most famed dining institutions, Selinger was the hand that folded your napkin while you were in the bathroom, the employee silently slipping into the night through a side door after serving meals worth more than her rent.

During her tenure, Selinger rubbed shoulders with David Chang, Bobby Flay, Johnny Iuzzini, and countless other food celebrities of the early 2000’s. Her position allowed her access to a life she never expected; the lavish parties, the tasting courses, the wildly expensive wines—the rare world we see romanticized in countless movies and television shows. But the thing about being invisible is that people forget you’re there, and most act differently when they think no one is looking.

In Cellar Rat, Selinger chronicles her rise and fall in the restaurant business, beginning with the gritty hometown pub where she fell in love with the industry and ending with her final post serving celebrities at the Hamptons classic Nick & Toni’s. In between, listeners will join Selinger on her emotional journey as she learns the joys of fine fine dining, the allure and danger of power, and what it takes to walk away from a career you love when it no longer serves you.

©2025 Hannah Selinger (P)2025 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

“A brutally honest, courageous, and powerful personal look into the dark side of the restaurant world. Hannah shows us how the imbalance of power rests on a manipulative system that willfully neglects the people it employs and makes you question if the industry truly can and wants to change for the better.”—Nik Sharma, Author of Veg-Table and The Flavor Equation

“With unflinching candor and clear-eyed wisdom, Hannah Selinger compresses the thrill, toxicity, and terror of working in restaurants into a remarkably open-hearted memoir. Cellar Rat should be essential reading for anyone who cares about this industry and the people who keep it running."—Mayukh Sen, author of Taste Makers

“If you're going to write about the reality of working in restaurants in a way that's anywhere near accurate, you need two things: The courage to burn bridges and keen social observation skills and the ability to translate those into engaging prose. Hannah Selinger has both, as she demonstrates with finesse, humor, and sensitivity in Cellar Rat. I admire her commitment to truth-telling as much as I do her appreciation for the seemingly trivial but ultimately revealing details that are necessary for capturing the glamor, decadence, volatility, and abusiveness that define the dining industry.”—Charlotte Druckman, author of Women on Food