Matthew Batt will join The Printed Garden for a reading and signing of his new book, The Last Supper Club: A Waiter's Requiem, on Thursday, November 2 at 7:00 p.m. (Mountain). 

This event is free and open to the public. 

The story of how Matthew Batt, a forty-something professor on sabbatical, found himself returning to a job waiting tables. And loving it. In this rare and vivid memoir, he details the challenge and satisfaction of meeting the demands of a fine dining restaurant’s frenzied kitchen and equally expectant crowd. Told with sharp humor, humility, and a keen sense of what matters, The Last Supper Club is an ode to working in restaurants, the relationships that get you to the night’s close, and finding yourself through—or perhaps because of—the chaos of it all.

"Deliciously funny, vividly peopled, wise, and big-hearted, The Last Supper Club is a book you will devour in one sitting and wish you could go back for seconds. The memoir takes a behind-the-scenes look at the adrenaline-fueled world of restaurant life, reverently revealing all the care and thought that goes into a meal before the plate is ever lowered before you. If Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter had a love child, it would be this superb book!"—Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me

"This book should come with a trigger warning for those of us who’ve ever waited tables. Matthew Batt describes restaurant work with such ferocious, sweat-inducing clarity that I feel like I’m right back there, in the weeds. Like any great dish, The Last Supper Club has so many layers and flavors: it’s a waiter’s memoir, it’s a vital history of a remarkable restaurant, it’s an incisive meditation on the nature of work, and it’s a heartfelt story of someone who went searching for a paycheck but found something else entirely—family, and purpose, and joy."—Nathan Hill, author of The Nix and Wellness

"In his gloriously food-obsessed and mournful memoir The Last Supper Club, Matthew Batt channels the thrill of a seamless service, the tension of having no place to hide failure, and the implicit critique of academic jobs that require a second income. His ode to the chaos and thrill of the restaurant business is a hilarious, elegiac look at the all-too-brief gratification of being exactly where you want to be."—Michelle Wildgen, author of Wine People

"Matthew Batt gets the details of high-end restaurant life exactly right in this personal story of becoming a server: the balance between home life and work life; the pressure inherent in the business; the symbiotic but fraught relationship between front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house. I love restaurant stories, and this one I didn’t want to put down. It’s a keeper."—Michael Ruhlman, author of The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection