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continued writing even afterward. Tropepe candidly says, “All my restaurant clients closed, the catering for events I was contracted to do was canceled, everything and everyone was just suddenly gone and it has been the only time in 20 years of cooking that I was nervous for my career - and I still am. Even though COVID-19 is not a part of the daily news cycle, COVID-19 is not over, it is something we will need to adjust and live with, but as far as the state of New York City and the restaurant industry the damage is here, its clear and there is no way to know when the industry will bounce back,” Tropepe concludes. So far four out of those nine books he wrote have been published with great success. In 2021, Tropepe’s book SLAUGHTERED: How In Consistent Lockdowns Collapsed The Hospitality Industry During COVID-19 remains the only literary work dedicated to the restaurant industry as it relates to the pandemic. In 2022, his literary work on hospitality law and a groundbreaking look into restaurant inspections titled ROASTED, CHOPPED & BEATED: When Cities Declare War On The Restaurants That Feed Them was released, and 2023 his first full- color cookbook was published titled ROOTS: Unlocking The Potential & Discovering The Delicious In All Natural Ingredients was released with much anticipation that led him to take the international culinary stage for the first time with much success. Now in 2024, Tropepe offers us The Other Five Senses: Understanding The Art of Hospitality. In this seven-chapter, four-hundred-page book, Tropepe has mastered the art of writing by crafting the book to appeal to two audiences. First, Tropepe targets the people who are in the restaurant business or who want to be and the second audience is the dining public. The other five senses Tropepe writes about are critical to culinary career

development, but also to allow the dining public to understand all it takes to provide them with the culinary experience they are expecting. This goes far beyond the idea of knowing wet and dry cooking methods and the proper way to hold a chef's knife. Tropepe discusses the sense of culinary identity, the sense of focus and discipline, and a sense of hospitality to name just a few chapters. Tropepe allows aspiring culinary professionals to dig deeper into themselves. The hallmark of a great chef is not just knowing how to cook; it’s about bringing out the best in people so they develop from cook into chef and an excellent, more in-tune restaurant owner and operator so they can develop an insight and an awareness to reach higher professional levels of excellence. Chef Tropepe is one of those great American chefs and culinary minds because he goes far beyond cooking; he changes lives, shifts perspectives and his most modest of ways does not even recognize his impact.

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