Service Included

by Phoebe Damrosch

  Owen wore a green velvet suit and top hat that he bought on eBay. Laura was barefoot in white. They took turns holding the baby throughout the ceremony and then danced with her when the bluegrass band started playing. At one point, I looked over at André, who was happily drinking his organic beer and laughing with my brother, and marveled at how comfortable he was in this scene. To me, an outdoor hippie wedding was normal. Hummus was my first food. But for someone who grew up on military bases eating Texas portions of red meat, this was a different planet. But the only thing he seemed to find odd was how many Subarus he saw on the road.

  After the wedding, we checked into our bed-and-breakfast. Ours was the Blue Room at the top of the stairs. It was blue. Although it was still early and the Brattleboro nightlife was just getting started, we put on the white robes that had been laid out for us and listened to the quiet.

  The next day, our drive was slightly more leisurely, although we both had to be at work by the dinner shift. The wedding had me thinking about families. We talked about mine and my parents’ divorce. André had met my father briefly at the wedding, but my mother didn’t come. He talked about his mother’s big family and the death of his stepfather. Leigh came up a few times.

  “Why do you think it didn’t work out between you two?” I asked.

  He didn’t respond right away, and I wondered if he had heard me or whether he was choosing not to answer the question. When he did respond, he answered a different question altogether.

  “Leigh taught me how to love.”

  There was such tenderness in the way he said this, as if he had no interest in revisiting the negative parts of their relationship. As I would discover, he chose never to say anything negative about any of his past girlfriends. That meant I never got to gloat, but it also showed me that he was careful with people, as if he wanted to respect the privacy of their relationship even now that it had ended.

  We left the little roads and bridges behind us and joined the masses elbowing their way through tunnels and over bridges to get into the city.

  “Look!” I said to André when the skyline came into view. “We live there!”

  “I know,” he answered with a touch of pride.

  Even if we lived in different boroughs, I liked that we called the same place home.

  YOU’VE GOT TO be kidding, I thought to myself. Again?

  One of the managers poured Mr. Bruni some champagne, and I approached his table once more, with two menus under my arm.

  “Do you ever get a day off?” he asked before introducing his guest.

  I had now waited on him, in some capacity, on four occasions. If he were the average guest, he would be a regular. I decided to treat him as such. We chatted about our favorite restaurants in the city, and about some of the dishes he had enjoyed at Per Se. Toward the end of the meal, I asked whether we could expect to see him again, figuring that he could answer vaguely if he wished to continue the facade. To my surprise, he answered as himself.

  “I think I have played favoritism enough. Usually I go to a place three or four times. I have been here six.”

  Six? We had only counted five. After a few more questions, it was clear that he had been in during our first weeks of service.

  “I sat right here,” he said, reaching up to the second level and grabbing the leg of the chair by his head.

  “How was it?” I had to ask, but was afraid to hear his answer.

  “Let’s just say you’ve worked out a lot of the kinks.”

  It was a heartfelt good-bye, at least on my part. I thanked him for making what could have been a horrendously stressful process a lot of fun. He said he had looked forward to his visits and would miss coming back.

  “He’s going to miss coming back!” I squealed as I tore back into the kitchen. Corey rolled his eyes, but I knew he was ecstatic.

  A few days later, I was walking through the kitchen on my way to set up the dining room. I was a little early and the kitchen was quiet, each cook silently prepping for service. Corey was at the pass, wrapping some square piece of meat in caul fat. I wanted to ask what it was exactly but was not really up to the challenge of conversation. But that day it was Corey who spoke first.

  “Hey,” he called out just as I was about to round the corner into the breezeway, “have you talked to your friend Frank lately?”

  “No, I think I will wait to call until after the review.”

  Corey looked shocked. “I was joking. Are you seriously going to call him?”

  I explained that I wanted to do a stage, as it is called in chef’s parlance. A stage is an unpaid apprenticeship in a kitchen—or in my case, a dining room. Corey looked horrified.

  “Is that what you really want to do? Review?” I could tell that if I had ever had the chance to win an ounce of favor with him, I had just blown it. He went on a long tirade about how little reviewers know about food, how unfair it is to a restaurant to base everything on one person’s opinion. I nodded and scratched my head, not telling him that these were the same fears I had myself when I considered the career. At the end of his speech, he sighed and went back to the sheets of caul fat in front of him that looked like sturdy cobwebs. As our conversation appeared to be over, I turned once again toward the breezeway where my colleagues would soon congregate to gossip about last night’s juicy escapades.

  “So what you are saying is”—apparently the conversation was not finished—“some day I am going to hear that you are sitting in my restaurant and really wish I had been nicer to you?” I could barely see the grin, as his head was bent over his task, but I could hear it in his voice.

  “Pretty much, yeah.” For one moment, I felt as if I had won. And then, realizing that he had just let me win, braced myself.

  EVERY WEEK, STARTING in the middle of July, we were convinced was the week the review would come out. The Times usually calls sometime over the weekend to arrange for photographers to come before the review appears in Wednesday’s “Dining Out” section. There was a growing suspicion that it would come out after our assumed clientele moved back from the Hamptons or flew in from late summer weeks in Monaco. But then there were a million theories floating around. Mr. Bruni had bumped Bouley down to three stars, with the chilling comment that he had “the sense of being at a party to which I had come too late, or at which I had stayed too long.” Although there isn’t a four-star-restaurant quota, the demotion of Bouley seemed to leave a spot wide open for another restaurant of American cuisine and French influence. On the other hand, it was rare for any restaurant to open with four stars.

  We received the call in the first week of September and immediately began preparing the room for the photographers.

  “It must be pristine!” Paolo, our Italian manager, called out, pronouncing pristine so it rhymed with feline. He circled the dining room, calling out what were apparently supposed to be inspirational words—“world-class!”—while frantically folding and refolding napkins, holding wineglasses up to the light, and measuring the angles of all the lamp shades. “I invite you to polish all the surfaces.” Accent on the second syllable of surfaces.

  In the end, the photographers rearranged everything in order to get shots of the plates against certain backgrounds. They took some pictures during service as well, but none of this mattered to me. I had no interest in being the face of Per Se, and, in fact, I had a feeling that they would choose their standard dining room shot and maybe a few of the food. I was much more worried about what Mr. Bruni had to say and whether it would include the phrase “down-home country.” Okay, so there is no “I” in team and all that jazz, but I had waited on Mr. Bruni in some capacity four of the six times he ate at Per Se, and if he had something negative to say about service, you had better believe all eyes would look my way.

  We held our collective breath until Tuesday night. It is a tradition for the New York Times critic to give a synopsis of the review on New York 1 News at about 9:20 P.M. on Tuesday night. In these clips, they carefully block out his face
to maintain his anonymity, as if he were in some sort of gastronomic witness protection program. That night we had our preservice meeting as usual, all of us fidgeting through what were supposed to be encouraging speeches about continuing to set our own standards and not letting the review go to our heads, no matter how many stars. I chewed on ice from a Styrofoam coffee cup. The director of operations chewed his lower lip.

  Sometime between six and seven that evening, when the dining room was about half full, my party of six arrived. In the party was none other than William Grimes, the previous Times reviewer. Either we had nothing to worry about, I thought to myself, or Mr. Grimes did.

  I was in the kitchen a little after eight o’clock when Chef Keller breezed in from the airport wearing his usual California-casual attire and chef clogs. He was holding a printout of the review above his head and grinning.

  “Congratulations!” he called out. The kitchen froze. “Four stars!”

  The kitchen and breezeway erupted into four-star mayhem, kisses and congratulations flowing freely. As it turned out, Thomas happened to be walking in through the back of the restaurant just as the baker saw it come out online. It was a fittingly dramatic entrance and for a moment, we forgot everything else. Since everyone was kissing everyone, I went and found André, who was standing by the wine cellar.

  “Still in service, people!” someone shouted above the din, reminding us to pick up the food that had been momentarily forgotten on the pass, to refill water glasses that had been drained while we were dancing in the back. Chef Keller insisted that we pour champagne for everyone in the dining room and quite a few of us stopped by Mr. Grimes’s table, hoping that he would pass along our thanks to his colleague at the Times.

  As soon as we finished our tables in the dining room, we were told to head to the large private room in the back where everyone would convene. I was one of the last to be finished and when I got there, the room was packed. Staff members who were not working had rushed over from bars and living rooms where they had been glued to New York 1 and were earnestly shaking one another’s hands. All the chefs, still in their blue aprons, and the floor staff, still in our black suits, filled the room. There was a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot and the largest tin of caviar I have ever seen. Thomas gave a speech commending everyone and encouraging us to continue setting our own goals and standards. “Next is Mobil Travel Guide five stars,” he added with a gleam in his eye.

  The few staff who did not make it over to the party met us downtown, where the restaurant had rented out the top floor of a bar. One of the captains arrived with a huge stack of papers and we all tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to read over one another’s shoulders, cocktails balanced precariously on borrowed limbs. Looking around, I realized that it was one of the few times since orientation that we had all been together: early-morning prep cooks, hosts and reservationists, sommeliers, captains, backservers, kitchen servers, bartenders, bakers. Of course, as we had all just worked a long, tense shift and were expected to provide four-star service the next day as well, the crowd thinned toward the early-morning hours. Gabriel, Patrick, André, Mandy, and I all slid into empty seats, put our feet up, and grinned at one another. It was finally calm enough to read the review all the way through. Patrick’s line about the rabbit made it in, and much to my relief, “down-home country” did not. It would be some time before I would be able to tell anyone about that. Besides the rabbit comment, which was only one example of the “cheeky banter” Bruni encountered during his visits, service only got one real line: “I am handicapped slightly in evaluating the service,” the review read, “because the vigilant staff repeatedly recognized me and kept a special watch over my table.”

  One lousy line for all of that?

  In the end, what convinced him of our worth was the simple elegance of the vegetable tasting menu. I remembered watching him as he ate the truffle risotto and the look of amusement when I delivered him his potato salad. This was the evening when he asked me about eggs and, as I read the review, I saw why he had asked. He was fascinated by what the kitchen was doing with the most humble of dishes and ingredients: eggs, potato salad, ice cream cones, “Pop-Tarts.” I was thinking about this when Corey walked over. We hadn’t said anything to each other yet, although we had both been in the kitchen when Chef Keller arrived with the review. His hands were stuffed deep in his pockets, and I realized that I had seen him only once before without an apron on. I had been walking out of the building after service one night and found him sitting on a ledge smoking a Marlboro.

  “You joining us across the street, Corey?” I’d asked, motioning to the Coliseum. Recently it had become quite a scene with the restaurant crowd; we were beginning to get to know the staff of Jean-Georges, Café Gray, V Steakhouse, the Hudson Hotel, and Picholine quite well.

  “I think we spend enough time together as it is,” he had answered and took a long drag of his cigarette.

  But standing there on the night of the review, with his hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets, he looked almost like he might want to join us for a beer. Patrick, Gabriel, and André glanced up from the paper where they had just discovered that we were mentioned in a tiny paragraph on the front page as well.

  “Did you see what he said about the veg menu?” Corey asked.

  “I was just reading it. I told you he loved that risotto,” I said, wondering when this conversation would take its usual turn for the worse.

  “Yeah, well, I just wanted to say that I know you were a big part of making that night what it was.”

  My friends were watching this with amusement, knowing how our exchanges often went. But their eyes could not have grown as wide as mine as Corey leaned across the bar table and gave me a kiss on the cheek. He was out the door before I even recovered.

  “Did you see that?” I asked incredulously when I finally moved. They all smiled at me, and André squeezed my hand under the table.

  “Chef,” he whispered. “That was a four-star review.”

  * * *

  • A TIP •

  Please do not make faces or gagging noises when hearing the specials. Someone else at the table might like to order one of them.

  * * *

  • not in the stars •

  oNE MORNING IN early fall, after André left my apartment, I leaned back into my shabby chic thrift store couch—emphasis on the shabby—with a mug of coffee in my hand, and thought about how much I loved my life. Per Se had four stars. I made great money talking about food all day. I worked with passionate, driven future leaders in my field with whom I would spend my time, even if they weren’t colleagues. I had a spacious, sunny, nearly one-bedroom apartment for which I paid less than what my friends paid for windowless partitions in dingy lofts. One such friend lived with a balding Web page designer who ate entire supermarket cakes when stoned (a frequent occurrence). He was an improvement on her NYU roommate, who went by Jedi and decorated their room with Star Wars action figures. Finally, I had fallen in love with a man with whom I could imagine sharing a life and a spotlight. Just the other day I had caught him staring at me from across the dining room.

  “What were you thinking about over there?” I asked him later.

  “What our children would look like,” he answered.

  In short, and in contrast, life was good.

  I sighed and took a sip of coffee before rousing my computer. It slept peacefully on a wooden chest, which it shared with a stack of food magazines and the occasional pair of feet. Upon waking, my computer had news for me. André had left his e-mail open.

  I scrolled up and down a little, scanning the subject lines of e-mails from managers and the other sommeliers. There were some from Leigh, a couple from his mother, nothing all that surprising. But after a few pages, I noticed that a certain New York cell phone number sent more than its fair share of texts. There it was again. And again. I snapped my computer closed. How would I like it if he were reading my journals? When I opened to the most recent pages of my latest journal, I
saw why this should be avoided.

  Toast. Toast would be reassuring. My senile old silver toaster required careful observation; if I glanced away for a second, it burst into flames. I had considered replacing it, but it looked great in my 1950s kitchen, next to the vintage fan that I had used for white noise until it too began sparking. It could be anyone. It could be one of the other sommeliers or a persistent wine rep, or a friend he hadn’t told me about. My mind wanted to buy that, but the jury of my body, my clammy hands, my hollow heart, the minor chord playing in the pit of my stomach, needed further evidence. Within minutes, my toast was getting cold on the wooden chest while I scrolled through André’s entire inbox.

  Drinking Margaritas and watching the game.

  What are you doing later?

  Long day. How are you?

  Dinner this week—just us?

  Call me when you get a chance.

  It seemed that I could open André’s e-mail whenever I wanted, without a password. I crawled in when I got home at night, when I woke up in the morning, throughout my days off. I began to think of this mysterious texter as “2040,” the last four digits of the phone number—2040, like the minimum vision requirement for a driver’s license.

  Ironically, things with André were better than ever. He doted on me at work, and he practically moved into my place in Brooklyn when he was off. One day we stopped into a new wine bar that had opened in my neighborhood. It had a real homey feeling to it, in part because of the general store whose entrance it shared. The store sold milk in glass bottles, sausages that hung from the ceiling, and little homemade pies lined up by the register. It was one in a growing number of nostalgic shops and eateries: polka-dotted bakeries, diner cars, rustic hunting lodges, and a surf shack with a sand-covered floor. I had the feeling that there were more out-of-work set designers than I had originally thought, and that all of them were this close to moving back home and planting some sweet peas.