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Served: One Year Down

Posted by Hannah Howard, July 8, 2008 at 8:30 AM

I blog by day and wait tables by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy!

Our restaurant's one year anniversary fell on a busy Saturday night in May. When the crowd dwindled, we popped something special and sparkly and commenced reminiscing.

We remembered the Gamay we sold last summer, which, with a splash of pomegranate soda, made for a refreshing cocktail. And the Mini Evolution, a Hungarian red which the owner yanked off the list to "give the other wines a chance." We waxed nostalgic about the blue bread, a killer flatbread with cider-poached apples, bacon, and Rogue Creamery blue cheese; and the St. Marcellin fondue we made right in the cheese's little ceramic pot.

Cooking Up Trouble

Over a one-year run, we had employed a flock of cooks with an accompanying long list of stories. My favorite (story, not cook) involved a gaunt man with orphan Annie-esque locks and copious scars. After service, we sat and chatted at the bar while he nibbled a giant sandwich.

It was our first night working together and our first conversation besides "behind you!" and "can you please make me a little dish of chipotle aioli?" I asked him what he had been up to before he started cooking at our place a few nights ago.

"It's a long story," he said.

I sensed I had stumbled onto touchy terrain. "You don't have to tell me."

"Listen," he put down his sandwich and shifted his attention to my eyes. He looked serious. "You can't tell anyone." I will keep my promise, of course, but he delivered a dark and rambling narrative about his shady past. Let's just say it involved odd services bought and sold via Craigslist and multiple brushes with the law. "My girlfriend is real glad I'm here now," he said.

A few days later he failed to show up for work. He called with a tale of a fight with his girlfriend, but the belated gesture was in vain. We had opened for the night a few hours ago. He had left us cookless, panicked, and screwed. Restaurant business 101: If you are physically able to extract yourself from bed and you want to keep your job, you better get your ass to work. And so the redhead was history.

A Cornucopia of Characters

Try as we might, none of us could remember the name of our first line cook. We all remembered the prep guy who would offer to prepare elaborate breakfasts for the owner, but repeatedly neglect to put the dairy shipments away in the walk-in. And the server who threw her arms skyward and squealed "We love you!" when a celebrity came to eat at the bar. "Um, you can't do that," she had to be told.

Nobody forgot the sweet but crazed former dishwasher, since he pops up occasionally to say hi and ask for a hundred-dollar loan. We know he's young, although his exact age is a mystery. Seventeen, 20, and 26, he has reported at various times. He likes to share his life story in Spanglish. Even through the language barrier, I can tell each account is both satisfyingly wild and vastly dissimilar to his previous stories.

B., the owner, recalled the first table P. waited on, about a month after we opened. It was a seven top. They requested an elaborate sequence of cheese courses, with wine pairings. P. conducted it masterfully. Their meal proceeded without a hitch.

"Sorry," B. said to me. "I don't remember your first table. Nor do I remember anything that happened during that week." (Hence the forgotten cook.)

The Start of an Era

We had planned to open, albeit softly, at 5 p.m. At 6, we were still pulling wine glasses out of boxes and arranging tables frantically. B. didn't stop setting bottles on just-assembled shelves to deliver a brief pep talk: "If people come in, we'll explain that this is a soft opening and that we are still practicing. If no one comes in, we'll just play restaurant with each other." At 8, we triumphantly lit candles and flung open the doors.

I had been a hostess, scooped gelato, interned in a kitchen, and assisted an affineur (that's an ager of cheese). Until that night, I was a table-waiting virgin.

People came in that night, way more than we would have guessed if we had a spare millisecond to think. And they kept coming. For some reason, many patiently withstood laggard service, long waits for food, a cash-only policy, and the occasional 86-ing of half the menu. They stuck with us. They came back for more and brought their friends. They loved us.

"What was your training like here?" someone once inquired. It lasted about five minutes. A., a seasoned front-of-the-house master, had played a huge part in creating the place. When we first opened, A. conceived and made the desserts. Today, the single piece of art that hangs on the wall is his, and sometimes it seems as if everyone has come not for wine or cheese or dinner, but to talk with A. Last May, I stood sheepishly at his side as he waited on the first ever table to grace our restaurant, giving me a play by play: "OK, I'm going to refill their water. OK, they've had their food for a while now, I'm going to ask how everything's going."

The next table was mine. The next night, I had my own section.

I, like B., don't remember much of that week.

We ironed out many of our kinks. (We're still plenty kinky!) We acquired a credit card machine and a computer system. I learned how to wait tables. I learned a lot of things: to open bottles of wine gracefully, to know when not to attempt to carry just one more plate, to work until the wee hours of the night and not fade into a groggy stupor. I learned when to smile and nod and when to call people on their bullshit. Most of all, I learned that confidence goes a long, long way.

There's No Place Like Home

But more than the myriad lessons I've accumulated about restaurant business and restaurant life, I've found a rare place where I feel at home.

After an awkward and exhausting kind-of date this week, I convinced my companion to visit my restaurant for a glass of wine. He downed it and peaced out. Fine. I walked him to the train and walked myself right back to finish my own glass of wine, still almost full, waiting patiently for my return.

"Not a great date?" D. inquired, but the answer was obvious.

I sang (er, screeched) along to "Brown Eyed Girl," which A. insists I like "because you think it's about you, you egotist."

Some of the regulars who I love were there, as were my friends who I work with. It was way late on a beautiful summer night—the garbage trucks were coming out, chairs were being stacked on tables.

I thought: Bad date and bad night be damned. I've come a long way in a year, we all have. I have this place and these people to come home to. I can't think of anything better to show for a year of hard work.

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