Generation Chef

by Karen Stabiner

  That night Jonah and Nate sat down again to plan Wells’s next—and almost surely final—meal. Everyone said he showed up a maximum of three times, and even though the first time had been a fluke, this had to be it. Jonah strove for the right balance, down to the smallest detail: The smoked octopus pintxo was a hit, but he’d recently served it balanced on a tiny spoon, which might scream “look at me” and might be more self-conscious than he wanted it to be. He’d perch it on a chip with aioli instead. Still great, but not so precious.

  Ideas tumbled out as he imagined the meal, each choice narrowing the options for the course that followed it. He’d revamp a classic Basque stew of tuna, peppers, tomatoes, and onions; make it lighter; substitute scallops; and turn the rest into a jammy sauce. Migas with a slow-poached egg, charred broccoli, and anchovies. Duck, but a different preparation than the one he’d served to Ed Levine. This time he’d do duck with turnips, carrots, and a carrot and duck jus.

  But it wasn’t a Spanish preparation, and he didn’t want to get too far offtrack. “Maybe turnips are a talking point,” he said, as much to himself as to Nate. “Maybe like grelos, a Basque green, usually served with smoked pork, so that’s like turnips with duck. We’ll make that point.” He resolved to tutor the servers before service, so that they could explain the connection.

  He didn’t have a dessert, but one would come to him.

  The only logistical issue was the octopus. If Wells started at the bar as he had on his first visit, he might order something, and it might be the charred octopus and potatoes that was always on the front-room menu, which would require two last-minute adjustments. First, Jonah would have to substitute a different pintxo on the menu del dia, to avoid serving him octopus a second time. Second, and probably more important, he had to figure out how to step over to the wood-burning oven, in full view of his most important customer, to prepare his single order of charred octopus. That was not a good move; Wells could reasonably wonder if the dish would be different, possibly not as good, when made by the cook who normally worked the wood oven. If Wells went to the bar and ordered octopus, Jonah would have to find an excuse to hang out at the oven after he made that single order, to look as though he often spent time there, and nothing unusual was going on.

  He and Nate tried to imagine every conceivable aspect of the meal, despite the late hour and the fact that Jonah had to be up early to do a cooking segment on the Today show, which until the Wells confirmation had been the biggest media event on the horizon. Now the proportions of the day had changed. After a little bit of sleep he’d make an egg dish on TV, hit the farmers market on his way to Huertas, and hope to find a dessert idea somewhere along the way.

  Before Jonah and Nate closed up, they allowed themselves to address a question they would share only with each other: Did a second visit to the dining room mean they were in the running for three stars? It was too much to hope for, for a casual place like Huertas, but they allowed themselves to fantasize, just for a moment. One star would be a disappointment, although they would never say that to the staff, and no stars would be a disaster, but Wells wouldn’t be coming back if his experience so far had been that bad. They tried to convince themselves that they were in very good shape for two, and hoped they wouldn’t be punished for the fleeting hubris that led them the consider the possibility of three.

  Two stars would make a big difference. Jonah had seen it at Maialino. “There’s a moment in the meal when the guest realizes, these are professionals, all the little things are being taken care of. That’s the moment when they let their guard down, relax, and have a good time.” Two stars from the Times would convey that more clearly than all the coverage they’d had so far.

  Whatever they got, it would be nice simply to have the process end. The restaurant vibrated with nerves these days, hours after everyone else had gone home.

  • • •

  Jonah had a childhood memory of walking with his dad up the long block from the grocery store to his family’s apartment, laden with bags, and it came back to him as he walked along the western leg of the Union Square farmers market on the morning of Wells’s visit. He usually shopped at a smaller market a couple of blocks from Huertas rather than drag a lot of bags three times as far or have to spring for a cab, but he wanted plenty of options, because he was shopping for inspiration. He liked to stroll the length of the market before he made a purchase—particularly today. He was still shy a dessert, beyond a simple flan, and the pressure to come up with the right one didn’t make being creative any easier.

  The weeks between summer and fall were full of jewel-toned fruits, as bright peaches and nectarines yielded to more somber Italian prune plums and Concord grapes, and the scent of the grapes wafted through the market. Jonah walked past one stall, then another, looking for a way to make the flan more exciting, wondering what he could do to make a grape memorable.

  Then it came to him. Grapes were small and round and had thin skins. Cherry tomatoes were small and round and had thin skins. At Maialino, they put Sungold cherry tomatoes into the deep fryer just until their skins burst, and Jonah had always thought that the same technique might work with grapes. The skins would crisp up and slip right off; they’d be a little bitter, and crunchy, which meant that he could use them instead of pine nuts, a more traditional Spanish presentation.

  He bought grapes, hustled back to Huertas, and spent a half hour frying sample batches until he got it right: A thirty-second dip in the fryer and the skin gave way with a gentle squeeze, leaving the inside of the grape intact.

  Jonah had his menu. A friend at a bigger restaurant called to see if he should dispatch people to make Huertas look busier, and Jonah turned him down. The dining room wouldn’t be busy when Wells arrived at six forty-five, but by the time he left it would be pretty full, which was preferable to an onslaught.

  Tonight might almost be fun. Wells could have bailed after the first or second visit, but he hadn’t, so Jonah had one more opportunity to stick to what had worked so far, to cook for himself, to offer Wells a meal that Jonah loved. Holding to that standard made all the rest tolerable. If Jonah was happy with a dish, if he was proud of it, he could withstand the occasional request for sauce on the side, a less runny egg, the deletion of what seemed to him an essential ingredient, lamb sent back to be cooked for too long; possibly even bureaucrats and licensing delays and staff betrayals.

  • • •

  By the time the restaurant opened that night, the staff was reduced to magical thinking and superstition.

  The dining-room captain and one of the servers wished that there were a way to time-travel to midnight to know that they’d survived.

  Olivia tried not to have second thoughts. “God, I hope I’m right,” she said. “I’ll feel so guilty if I put everyone through this for nothing.”

  Jonah cut the citrus wedges for the bar himself rather than have one of the bartenders do it, as though uniform segments were the ticket to success.

  And Nate smiled when Wells walked in the door holding a bicycle helmet, grateful for good karma wherever he found it.

  Jonah monitored every plate that went to Wells’s table—table forty, even though it was a party of two—and every plate that came back. He was happy that Wells ordered the cheese course, which might mean that he wanted to experience the full menu. He saw it as a good sign that Wells and his guest lingered even after he paid the bill—they must have been there for almost three hours—which they wouldn’t have done if Wells was disappointed.

  He distracted himself by wondering about the timeline. If September 26 was the final visit, would someone call about taking photos the week of the twenty-ninth? If they took photos the week of the twenty-ninth, would it run in time to help with the holidays?

  He got his answer quickly—the Times dispatched a photographer and informed Jonah that the review was scheduled for October 7; he should expect a call to fact-check the details. The
re was nothing left to do but wait until the afternoon of October 6, since reviews went up online the day before they appeared in the paper.

  And then Ryan Sutton, the lead critic at Eater, showed up twice in a matter of days for the menu del dia, first on a late-night visit by himself, identified by another diner who recognized him and quickly sent a heads-up text to Nate, “Just FYI, Ryan Sutton at bar,” and again in a party of three. His colleague, Robert Sietsema, had already reviewed Huertas, so no one had bothered to research his appearance—but here he was, acting as though he was going to write something. There was no time for hard-earned relief at having finished up with the Times critic: It seemed likely that Huertas was going to have its fate sealed, one way or another, twice in one week.

  • • •

  Alyssa had started to get overdraft notices back in August, which had to be a mistake. It wasn’t as though she had suddenly started spending money on clothes or home decor. Her life was circumscribed by work: She took the subway in from Astoria, cooked, took the subway back, slept, did laundry, and paid the same monthly bills she always paid. And yet she seemed to have less money than she thought she should, through August and into September.

  When she finally had a chance to look at her account, she saw the problem immediately: Her loan repayments for four years at CIA’s main campus, in Hyde Park, New York, had increased automatically when a temporary reduction expired, and she’d forgotten that it was going to happen. Alyssa owed close to $80,000, as she’d paid for all of her CIA bachelor’s degree with student loans. At the time, she thought that the degree was essential because she hadn’t gone to college, so she powered through the program in three years, no summers off, even as she worked at a nearby restaurant. If she’d come to regret that decision, to think she could have gotten where she was on experience alone, she could hardly ask to have the loans forgiven on the basis of her bad judgment.

  Alyssa had spent her externship at Gramercy Tavern, graduated in December 2010, and went back to Southern California to spend the holidays with her family. She started on the line at Maialino the following March, followed by a stint as a private chef—only to get to here, worse than broke. Paying off her loans was like having three rents, she thought, on a paycheck that barely covered the first one.

  “Forget keeping my head above water,” she said. “I’d just hoped for my nose.”

  She was well-paid for a line cook, at $13 an hour—most New York City line cooks earned an hourly rate of between $8 and $12—but Los Angeles restaurants tended to pay more, so she decided to go home. The math was inescapable: Alyssa couldn’t afford to work as a line cook in New York City and pay off a four-year culinary education. Jonah had said that he might still promote her to sous, even though lunch service was on hold for now, a casualty of a slow September and the new menu—but he hadn’t brought it up recently, and she didn’t see how he could give her a raise when things were so slow and there were no added shifts for her to supervise. In truth, she wasn’t sure it would make enough of a difference.

  Alyssa had been cooking professionally since she was seventeen, nine years of working the line for too little money, even while she was at school. She’d been cooking for a paycheck longer than Jonah or Jenni had, and all she had to show for it, she felt, was a mountain of debt and not enough of a prospect, here, to make staying a rational choice.

  She didn’t have the kind of food dream that propelled Jonah and Nate. Alyssa’s idea of success was closer to the ground: She wanted to open what she called a “threefold” business with her brother, who didn’t want to spend his life helping their mother with her tax prep and immigration business—a sandwich shop; an adjacent store that sold the breads they used in the shop as well as meats, cheeses, and pastas; and a small restaurant with a bar. “A delicious bar room,” was how she described it, “with a dining room that chefs could rent for pop-ups or I could use as I please. Maybe a tasting menu this Saturday? Get out the word: ‘Chef’s trying something new.’”

  First she had to retire the debt, though, and the only way to do that was to cut her limited expenses ever further. She would go back to Southern California, move back with her mom in the house where she grew up, and find a job so that she could start to dig herself out.

  Alyssa made up her mind in September but didn’t tell Jonah because she didn’t want to undercut morale with the Times review at stake. When she did quit, after the review came out, she would reassure him that this wasn’t the standard two weeks’ notice. She wanted service to be steady. She’d stick around until mid-January.

  It was the right thing to do, she knew it, and yet it was hard to see past the debt, hard to stay positive about having a little place of her own.

  “I’m not even sure I’ll continue cooking,” she said, the exhaustion talking. “But then, I don’t know anything else.”

  12

  THE VERDICT

  Huertas Gets Tapas Right and Set Menus Wrong.”

  Eater’s two-star review went up at twelve thirty on Tuesday afternoon—or rather, the headline went up, linked initially, incorrectly, to the earlier review by Robert Sietsema that had enabled Jonah to put the word “superb” up on the Huertas website. The word “Wrong” in the headline implied that Ryan Sutton had found fault with something, but probably nothing of consequence, not with two stars attached. They were halfway to Nate’s stated goal for the day, two stars from Eater and two from the Times. While they waited for the right review to appear, and wondered what cranky comments Ryan Sutton might make about the back-room menu, Nate focused on the stars and walked over to shake Jonah’s hand. Stars lasted, while details faded away.

  “Great job,” he said.

  Then the new review appeared.

  “My companion sighed when I announced we were ordering the five-course menu at Huertas, an ambitious young Basque spot in Manhattan’s East Village. ‘You mean we all have to get the same thing?’ Indeed, the same thing. There are no real choices, not in the back room of this pintxos bar. And therein lies the problem.” Sutton mentioned in passing the “stunning array of affordable hors d’oeuvres and preserved fish” in the front room before returning to his central complaint, “an expensive incongruity” of lamb sausage with lamb leg on the fixed menu.

  “Sometimes, lack of choice ends up working against the consumer,” Sutton wrote. “This is one of those times.”

  The upshot, for Eater readers: Visit the front room, a “smoky, sexy wood-fired affair,” and avoid the dining room.

  Anger was pointless, even though it was Jonah’s instinctive response, heartily seconded by Nate. Why review the menu del dia if you reject the concept? What’s the point of complaining about the framework when you should be talking about the food? Readers didn’t care if the people who accompanied Sutton chafed at the menu format. He should have spent more time on the food and less on the template, and let readers decide for themselves if they wanted to give it a try. The review surely would have been more positive if he had.

  • • •

  The staff went through the motions of afternoon prep like zombies, slowly, because they all had their cell phones out and had to stop every two minutes to hit “refresh,” which made it difficult to walk quickly, carry anything, or work near flames. No one knew exactly when the Times review would post. In the meantime, they worked hard to construct a comforting rationale that would enable them to dismiss the Eater review as an aberration. The Times was going to be the definitive judgment. It had history, decades of being the make-or-break opinion, and it had a week’s run. Eater coverage would be obliterated by new coverage before the weekend. The Times review was the product of three visits over a month’s time, not thrown together in a week.

  Having been spurned by Eater, the Huertas staff had no choice but to find fault with it—either that or consider the grim possibility that Sutton’s was the first vote in a unanimous day.

  People at the Times already k
new the verdict—random copy editors, fact-checkers, digital staff, none of them with any vested interest in the outcome, while at Huertas, the clock seemed to be slogging through mud.

  The cooks cut vegetables in a syncopated rhythm interrupted by phone checks, assembled their mise en place, pretended to care about family meal, and didn’t talk much. The front-of-house staff readied the tables and checked the glassware and flatware for spots, and refreshed, and waited, and refreshed again. Jonah and Nate repeated their public position, glad that they’d kept their stated expectations lower than their private hopes: No stars was almost surely not a possibility. They’d be proud of one star, or at least they said so, and thrilled by two. Jonah reminded himself of what Danny Meyer had told the Maialino staff when that restaurant got two stars: A casual place ought to be thrilled with two. Three was often a curse, because people regarded three-star restaurants as having somehow fallen short of four.

  Jonah had another set of numbers in his head, which he tried to ignore: forty covers in the dining room a week earlier, but only six on Tuesday and ten on Saturday. They were nowhere near stable. Whatever number of stars they got, it needed to be enough to make a difference.

  • • •

  Nate figured that he must have refreshed his phone three hundred times, and by late afternoon he found it hard to cope. He went outside to call his younger brother and confessed that he was so nervous he was having trouble breathing—as people inside suddenly started to shriek. He refreshed his phone again.

  Two stars. A Times Critic’s Pick. “A Serendipitous Trip to Spain.” He darted inside.

  It was not a solid two-star but a great two-star. People blurted out phrases as they got to them, too excited to calm down and read the review start to finish, as though no one else had a phone or knew how to read. The narrative, which started with Wells’s frustration at the long wait at his intended destination, built in a crescendo of happiness: