Serious Eats
Served: It’s Good to Be Back
I blog by day and wait tables in a New York City restaurant by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy!
I was in Israel. Then, I was sick. Now, I’m home and healthy and heading back to my restaurant.
Being away from work for a long time makes me vaguely nervous. What if there is a deluge of new wines on our list, none of which I have tasted? Someone, with my luck a sommelier, will ask me about the new red from Rhone and I will have to artfully bullshit. Which I hate to do. Or I'll have to ask someone who does know and risk receiving a roll of the eye that means “you shouldn’t have to ask!”
But there were just two new wines, both of which I got a chance to taste within the first few hours of service: a silky Barbera d'Asti and plush, cedary Carmenere. There was a new dish: homey beef and bean chili with a cheddar biscuit baked on top. The chef put one up for me to try. And try it I did. Right on.
Bon Voyage
But all was not the same. J. had taken off to Australia for three months. She’s there now working with a cheesemaker. Her husband is nearby, helping out on a vineyard.
It was J. I could count on to deliver an impromptu emergency Madeira refresher course, always sans judgment. J. would magically appear at the best of times: she’d jump in to clear a table that had somehow managed to accumulate multiple armfuls of plates, untwist my twisted bra strap, fix the spazzing computer, cut more bread just as we were about to disastrously run out. An hour into service, I missed her already.
Nostalgia
It was I, sort of, who trained J. Almost two years ago, she decided to quit her job at a well-loved fine dining restaurant to fill the esteemed role of assistant fromager at my place.
But for me to train J. was sort of a joke. I had been waiting tables all of two weeks, and J. was a fine dining pro. So I explained the table numbers and showed her where the candles and linens were kept. And she taught me how to properly carry a bottle (or three) of wine through the dining room, and other invaluable tricks of the trade.
Soon, J. and I became friends. She brought the story of her life in pictures to the restaurant: there she was in her former ballerina life, catapulting gorgeously across the stage, there was her family in California in their snow-topped home, and there was J.’s wedding in Mexico, J. in a swishy dress with the ocean behind her. She brought in Madlibs, when it was slow, which we played by inserting exclusively dirty words into the blanks. It’s scary how long it took for that to get old.
J. brought her grandmother’s homemade cashew brittle in the colorful tin that her granma had FedExed. She brought pita chips and salsa to snack on, or still-hot bread and hummus from a Middle-Eastern restaurant nearby, or prosciutto and cantaloupe, or crunchy chocolate chip cookies.
J. was friends with the bartender at the dive bar next-door. So when we finished work so late that the bar was officially closed, he’d let us slip in anyway. We’d stay way after closing time, drinking gin and tonics and gossiping and telling jokes that nobody else would find the least bit funny.
Friends and Family
Despite J.’s absence, coming back to work feels like coming home. Regulars come by with hugs and stories. Seeing them is like seeing the oldest of friends: it might have been years since your last rendezvous, but you pick up right where you’ve left off, as if just a week or two has passed.
The guy who owns a restaurant across the street is still drinking his favorite white and forcing political debate on a poor woman at the bar who is trying unsuccessfully to read her book. He kisses me hello and we catch up. He wants to hear all about Israel. I tell him about my trip, and the woman looks immediately relieved.
There is a lovely lady who works nearby in the television biz, a neighbor and his cheerful childhood friend, a classmate of mine who works in the cheese business, A.'s former coworker who manages the bar at a fancy restaurant downtown, and a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in a very long time. I duck around the bar to give him a hug. “It’s been too long!” we both coo. I order him a duck confit salad and we get to talking. It feels as if no time has passed.
And soon, J. will be home from her adventures. We will pick up right where we left off.