‘Bitchy Waiter’ Darron Cardosa Talks Tipping, Washing Gravy off a Steak, and Why He Chased a Customer Down the Street

Tinfoil Swans Podcast

On this episode

Since 2008, actor and writer Darron Cardosa has been setting the internet ablaze with his pioneering blog “The Bitchy Waiter” — which he has since spun into a rollicking book and stage show of the same name. Darron is also one of Food & Wine’s most prolific and popular writers, and in this inspiring and emotional conversation, he shares his feelings about weird customer requests, being a voice for the service industry, his upcoming movie We’re So Dead, and why it’s so rude to leave a penny tip.

Meet our guest

Darron Cardosa is a food service professional with over 30 years of restaurant experience. He has waited tables in diners, pubs, chain restaurants, neighborhood bistros, clubs, and had a short stint in a celebrity-owned restaurant before he was fired for blogging about his experience.

Over the last 15 years, he has written more than 1,500 articles and blog posts, each and every one about the food service industry. He has written for Food & Wine, Plate, The Washington Post, and others. Darron has been seen on NBC’s the Today show and CBS Sunday Morning discussing the service industry. His book, The Bitchy Waiter, was published in 2016, and his years as a professional actor eventually led to the creation of his one-man show, The Bitchy Waiter Show, which tours around the country.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is the executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine’s Signal Award-winning podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2024 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing With Recipes and a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir, and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Highlights from the episode

On the first time he played waiter

“I was probably in high school, taking care of my younger brothers and I was asked, you know, by my parents to watch my brothers and make lunch. I thought one day it would just be fun to play restaurant. So I made a menu with my calligraphy set and it had macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly and Steak-umms and Kool-Aid and water and milk. Desserts were Chips Ahoy and Jell-O. I called them in and I gave them their menus and I had my mom’s apron on, and they were like, ‘What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘We’re playing restaurant. I’m your waiter.’ They were not into it. I was 16, 15, maybe 14. They were much younger than me. They were like, “No.” So they just told me what they wanted and they ran off to play Atari. I was just so disappointed. I threw away the menu, and I made lunch for them, and I cleaned it up. As I say in my show, it was the first time that I ever served food to a couple of (bleep) who didn’t leave me a tip.”

On the role of restaurants

“I think [restaurant work] just has progressively gotten more and more meaningful to me. During Covid is when it really started to click even further for me, because it was all taken away from us. (I’m going to cry. Am I going to seriously cry?) We couldn’t go to restaurants, and you just started to realize how important that is. It wasn’t just eating in a restaurant, it was going to your restaurants with your friends or your family or seeing people and how important a restaurant is to your life. Once it was taken away for those months in 2020, you realize, ‘Wow, I really, really miss that.’ Every year it just gets a little bit more important to me. I don’t know what it’ll be like 10 years from now. I can’t imagine respecting the industry any more than I do now, but I think I will.”

On service

“I remember going to a restaurant and I must have been 5 or 6 and we were at this little restaurant, and my youngest brother was crying. I remember the waitress offering to hold my brother so that my mom could eat. I remember sitting in this restaurant watching this waitress carry my brother around and patting him on the back so he would stop crying and just thinking like, like, that’s — I was just baffled by it. Who is this lady that’s holding my brother and why is my mom okay with it? Now I think back like, what an amazing waitress that was who did that for my mom.

Did that somehow just instill in me the need to serve? I don’t know, but I remember that vividly and nobody else in my family remembers it. Sometimes you hope that you can be that kind to other people as a server. To make that kind of memory for someone would just be amazing.”

On being a voice for the industry

“I get a lot of messages. I get a lot of DMs every day, and I read every single one of them. I reply to almost every single one of them. I’m always looking for something that I can create content about. Often somebody sends me something and says, ‘This happened at my restaurant, and I don’t know who else to tell because I don’t think customers are understanding this is how it works, or this is how it affects me.’ When I see that, I’m like, perfect, I can write a story about this. I can do a video, I can put it in my show. I can put it into a Food & Wine article. When I put that out there and I get messages from people who feel validated by what I put out there — I guess this is what I do for the rest of my life, cause I can’t stop doing it. I feel an obligation and I love it. It makes me feel really happy and fortunate to be that person.”

On having to put on a brave face

“When you are a server and you are the face of the restaurant and your salary is dependent on how your customers perceive you, they want to see someone who is happy to be at their job and not only doing a good job but looking like they’re enjoying doing it. Even if you’re in a bad mood, and you’re waiting tables, you can’t show that because your tips will show that. I’ve always thought it’s unfair because if you are a bank teller, and you are in a bad mood, and you chose not to smile or not to be chit chatty to your customers who are coming up to the window, you’re going to get paid the same as you would, whether you are super friendly or not. As a server, that’s not the case. You’re not going to make the tips that you would make if you let your personality show how you’re truly feeling. It can get hard, and I can think of many times that I would be so upset with a customer or they would say something so hurtful that you would just have to swallow it and then finish up service and go outside or go into the walk-in and scream or cry.”

On taking pride in the job

“I want people to be proud of the job that they do. For a lot of people, especially of a certain age who are waiting tables, it’s looked on as ‘this is all you can do’ or ‘I guess nothing else worked out, so this is where you ended up.’ That’s not the case for plenty of people who are waiting tables past college. I always want people who are working in restaurants to be proud of it. People love restaurants and I wish customers would appreciate the people who work in them just as much as they appreciated the restaurant experience itself.”

On wanting

“I do want it all. I really do pick up pennies and wish on them. I picked up one this morning when I came back from my run, was right in front of my apartment, and I picked it up and I said out loud, ‘I wish this podcast was so great today.’ I love writing and I love being Bitchy Waiter, but really my passion is still to be on a stage and to make people laugh. That’s what I still want, is to be able to audition for a commercial or be in a TV show or just be a working actor. I still don’t believe that it’s too late. I’m 57 and a lot of people just give up on those dreams. I might not try as hard as I used to, but I still try and I still want. I want a Tony Award. I want a show. I want my own podcast. I want people to say please and thank you. And I want kindness. I’m never going to stop dreaming or hoping. You can always want more. It doesn’t mean that you’re selfish. It just means that you know what you want and you want to be happy as everyone deserves to be.”

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

This season, you’ll hear from icons and innovators like Daniel Boulud, Rodney Scott, Asma Khan, Emeril and E.J. Lagasse, Claudia Fleming, Dave Beran and Will Poulter, Dan Giusti, Priya Krishna, Lee Anne Wong, Cody Rigsby, Kevin Gillespie, Pete Wells, David Chang, Raphael Brion, Christine D’Ercole, Channing Frye, Nick Cho, Ti Martin, Kylie Kwong, Pati Jinich, Yotam Ottolenghi, Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton George, Tom Holland, Darron Cardosa, Bobby Flay, Joel McHale, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what’s on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that’ll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.