Every day in New York City, restaurant doors open and waitstaff prepare the space for the starved and parched. Aprons tied, hair pulled back, and hands washed, hundreds of thousands of servers clock in. They warm themselves up to take orders, course dishes, and flash smiles at patrons throughout every borough, satisfying the appetites of locals and tourists alike, and in turn, keeping one of the global food capitals alive and sizzling.

After a shift of inevitable mayhem, you’d expect those workers to take themselves home and tuck themselves in to rest.

Maybe the average person does.

The artists among them, however, swap their aprons for smocks and get to work.

New York’s service industry and art world flourish in symbiotic existence. Their employees are some of the most ambitious and creative of the island’s inhabitants. Whether waiting tables in Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens, or Staten Island, an artist in an apron understands the connection between the food they serve and the art they create.
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New York’s painters, actors, and musicians of the future are taking down how you’d like your steak cooked and the type of milked nut you want in your coffee. They are engaging with you, a complete stranger, from aperitif to after-dinner drink, all to stay in the city of creativity and chance. They sustain the city’s hunger to feed their own dreams. These are their stories.

This is Waiting Magazine.
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