hospitality
From Comedy to Cuisine
Whether at Balthazar or Raymond’s, Erin Wendt knows that the show must go on
WRITTEN BY REBECCA KING PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARKO GEORGIEV
READY TO SERVE YOU
Erin Wendt credits
respecting customers as key
to a restaurant’s success.
E
rin Wendt has spent
her career putting out
proverbial fires in the
fast-paced world of
dining.
But a career
in culinary wasn’t always her
ambition. Wendt, who comes
from a New Orleans family who
has owned restaurants for decades,
wanted to be an actor and comedian.
“It was that thing where you want
to do anything you can besides what
your family is doing,” she cracks.
Little did she know she would wind
up working for years at the famous
New York brasserie Balthazar before
becoming the operations manager at
26
HOLIDAY 2018 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE
Raymond’s, which has locations in
Montclair and Ridgewood, a year ago.
A young Wendt packed up and
moved from the Big Easy to the Big
Apple, driven by visions of bohemian
cafes, industrial lofts and successful
Saturday Night Live auditions.
“I was a little shocked when it
didn’t work out,” she says.
A “daily improv”
Something else did work out,
though, and it would require the same
improvisational and acting skills she
would have needed on the SNL stage.
Two weeks into living in New York,
she got a job at Balthazar, Keith
McNally’s beloved Soho
restaurant. She cut her teeth working
in the bakery, then as a manager, then
as the general manager, then finally as
the operations manager. “It’s a huge,
huge family at Balthazar,” she remem-
bers. “Keith instills a lot of loyalty in
people.”
Her theatrical experience didn’t
go to waste, either. Sometimes while
waitressing, she’d pretend to be from
a different country — accent and all
— just to see if she could get away
with it. And very often, she’d have
to act calm, cool and collected when
pressure was mounting. She names
a particularly stressful work shift —
the night of the northeast blackout
of 2003 — when she had to keep