“Maybe. Listen, thanks, Shelley. I mean it. Let me know your flight info and I’ll pick you up.”
Shelley’s voice took on the pudding-smooth tone it always did when she was feeling ennobled. “I’ll send it to you and you can reimburse me,” she said.
CHAPTER 8
“I START WITH SOUP,��� SHELLEY SAID. “I tell them to go in there and make me a soup, and then if the soup isn’t a travesty, I tell them to make me a protein. You’ll need to stock the cooler, obviously.”
“Obviously,” said Britt. “But I disagree about soup. How much soup are we ever going to serve here? Probably none.”
Shelley gazed at him sadly. Her long brown hair hung in a braid down her back, and she wore some sort of knitted porridge-colored scarf or cap or babushka over the rest of it. The two of them faced each other across the banquette. Harry sat at the end of the table, eyes shuttling between them. He had not warned Britt about Shelley’s visit, allowing him instead to show up that morning and discover her there like the corpse of a mouse. Now Britt had to make conversation until he could collar his brother out of earshot.
“It’s not about soup,” Shelley whispered. Britt had noticed that she liked to whisper when she wanted to convey a bone-deep weariness with others’ foolishness. “I’m sure you’d rather they arrange a centerpiece or tailor a suit, Britt, but I’m trying to keep things relevant. The soup is just the medium. Can they build flavor? Can they work with what you have and keep their food costs down?”
“She’s right,” said Harry. “We did that on the island a lot. I had to make a soup.”
Shelley laughed. “I remember,” she said.
“The bisque!” Harry yelped.
“I don’t think you can call that a bisque.”
“Maybe a chowder.”
“Okay,” Britt interrupted. “I like the soup idea, you’re right. We tell them to make soup. I’d like to suggest their protein be eggs, though.”
“And why is that?” asked Shelley.
“Because it’s easy to fuck up an egg,” Britt said shortly. He knew a test when it was sitting across from him with its wispy hair and pursed lips.
“True,” said Shelley grudgingly. “Agreed.”
“Great,” said Harry. He looked at his watch. “The first one’s going to be here at eleven. Shell, you want to run to the store with me to stock up?”
“You and Britt should go,” she said. “You know what you need, I’m sure. And I’m still a little tired from the flight. I’ll just have a cup of tea and be restful. Do you have rooibos? Genmaicha?”
“We do!” Harry said.
“We do?” Britt said.
“I picked some up.” When Harry brought her a tin of green tea, Shelley sniffed the cap and inspected the tea and toasted brown rice grains. She picked up a grain of rice and squeezed it inquiringly. Then she gave a wan smile to Harry and said, “I’ve gotten spoiled on the West Coast.” Harry looked crestfallen. Britt considered setting fire to the tea but decided it must be doing Harry a rough kind of good, being reminded what it was like to have Shelley in close proximity.
Harry and Britt walked silently to the car. They said nothing until they’d reached the grocery store, gotten a cart, and were chucking essentials into it: olive oil, butter, heavy cream, broth. As Harry compared diced tomatoes in juice with whole tomatoes in puree, Britt finally lost patience.
“There is something so different about the restaurant today,” he said. “It’s hard to put my finger on it. It’s like something blew in through the vents, perhaps. Have you had the ventilation checked?”
Harry placed both cans of tomatoes in the cart and turned to face him. Britt raised his eyebrows. “I should have told you,” said Harry. “It was last-minute, and I want you to know this came out of my personal budget, not the restaurant’s. I know how you feel about Shelley, but you have to remember she was grinding Italian sausage when she was eleven years old. I needed a fresh opinion.”
His lack of combativeness was disappointing. Britt had been ready for a good pissing match. “A, I am your fresh eye,” he said. “B, you can’t be springing things on me. I can’t walk in every day to find an exciting new employee I wasn’t told about.”
“Not an employee. I agree, but I still think we can make use of this.”
“She has completely different taste,” Britt complained. “How are we supposed to get useful input from someone who’s going to tell us Sysco has a nice tempeh now?”
Harry nodded and started pushing the cart toward the produce aisle. “She’s much more workmanlike,” he agreed. “But I think that can be good. I don’t know about you, but I need ballast sometimes. I need someone who doesn’t get all flighty about inspiration but knows her basic food costs, you know?”
“Sure,” Britt said, sighing. He threw onions, leeks, and garlic into the cart. He was mollified, but only slightly. He’d walked into the space that morning, two cups of coffee in hand and a bag of pastry under one elbow, whistling, and there was Shelley, gliding out from the kitchen like some kelp-colored apparition, Harry sheepishly in tow.
“Britt!” Shelley had said, as he found himself, trancelike, pressing cheeks with her. “It’s been so long. You’ve barely aged at all. Maybe the tiniest bit around the eyes.”
“Since last Christmas,” Britt said. “You made that whole wheat pudding orb, if memory serves.”
“And you brought a woman—Pamela, was it? Or Penelope?—who just seemed so in love with you even if she never said a word. Really, it’s odd to see you without some woman trailing after you like a nanny goat.”
“I guess I don’t bring too many women to work with me. Most of them are busy running businesses.”
“I know the feeling,” she said. She crinkled her eyes at him as if they were old sparring partners. They smiled fiercely at one another and then turned to Harry, who was lurking near the bar.
It was this demeanor that worried Britt: the way he hung back at first, then eagerly pointed out this or that item to Shelley for her approval, as if Shelley were Thomas Keller. Watching him, Britt had felt downright uneasy: where was the steely resolve Harry had shown with hiring Hector, the lack of apology in his dealings with Leo? Because however uncomfortable those moments had been on a fraternal, social level, they’d also set off a welcome bell in Britt’s mind, telling him that his feckless little brother was tougher than he seemed. Britt was just praying this was a minor setback, but nevertheless he now watched with a critical eye as Harry pawed a pile of collard greens and shook water off some chard. Where was the decisiveness? Get the water off with a brisk shake and get the hell on with it. But there was Harry, lifting a bunch of spinach to the light as if it were an offering for an angry deity.
THE FIRST INTERVIEW WAS WITH FREDDY, who’d been working as a line cook in Linden for ten years. Told to make a soup, he did a double take, then said, “Like what?” Told that it was his decision, he pressed for likes and dislikes, expressed dismay at the range in the cooler and coded resentment at the assignment, and eventually placed before them a roughly pureed tomato soup studded with seeds.
The second was Elliott, who was fresh out of culinary school. He terrified all three of them by leaping up from the bar and running full-tilt into the kitchen for supplies, until Britt realized that Elliott thought he was being timed and hollered after him to calm down; it wasn’t a quick fire. Elliott made a smooth carrot ginger soup with a garlicky crouton and a confetti of tarragon. He was jittery and high-octane as he moved about the range, murmuring to himself and to his carrots, dropping tasting spoons. When Britt asked where he’d found the fresh tarragon, Elliott blushed and confessed he had brought his own.
The third was Jenelle, who’d started working the egg station at the Breakfast Bar six years before, not long out of high school. She stood before them with hands on her hips, her short hair hidden beneath a baseball cap, thick brows gathered as she listened to the soup assignment. Then she nodded shortly, set a pot of water on to boil befo
re she did anything else, and made a brisk, calm assessment of the contents of the kitchen and coolers. Jenelle moved easily and quickly about the station, slicing leeks, rinsing mushrooms, and in twenty minutes served them a silky mushroom and leek soup thickened with potato and cream and topped with crisply fried shiitakes. Britt detected a faint hint of sesame oil and took another sip, pleased.
Fourth was Marianne, two years out of culinary school, soft southern accent, hoping to open her own restaurant. “I’m a baker as much as anything,” she said, causing Britt’s heart to sink, but then she made a stunning cream biscuit to accompany a corn and shrimp soup with bacon, and he revised his judgment.
Fifth was Phillip, who caused a small fire.
Finally they saw Janet, who was in her forties and had been knocking around—her words—the kitchens of Linden for ten years. She worked clean and quick, didn’t overthink it, gave them a chicken and rice soup.
Of the six, Jenelle, Elliott, and Marianne were asked to make an egg dish. “You’re probably sick of that,” said Harry to Jenelle, but she simply said, “Nah,” and turned out three perfect, satin-yolked eggs en cocotte with Gruyère cream, spinach, and spiced tomato. Elliott made a thoroughly correct spinach soufflé bearing a faint whiff of shallot and nutmeg, during the baking of which he stood, back to them, at the oven, periodically peering at them over his shoulder. Marianne poached eggs and served them with hollandaise, sautéed spinach, and crisped prosciutto.
By seven o’clock the interviewing was finished and Harry, Britt, and Shelley were sprawled in a banquette, biliously eyeing their seltzer. Finally Harry hauled himself into a sitting position and clapped his hands.
“So, anyone we can just rule out?” he asked.
“Elliott,” said Shelley.
Britt frowned. “He’s well trained,” he said. “Young and nervous, but his soup was fantastic.”
Shelley sniffed at her seltzer and then put it back down. “If he calms down, I could see it. But he prepped a lot more ingredients than he needed, and don’t forget, people are watching him cook out here.” She gestured languidly in the direction of the empty space. “He’ll make people nervous. Have you ever been around one of those animals who’ve spent too many years in a really tense household? And they just make you prickly and upset because their energy is so…so disrupted? That’s what Elliott’s going to be like out here.”
Britt said nothing. He was trying to sort out his emotions. Shelley was possibly the most annoying person he had ever met, which made it extraordinarily difficult to accept when she was talking sense. Harry, perhaps sensing a watershed moment, was as still as prey. “Let’s keep an eye on him,” Britt said. “In a few years he might be good to know.”
Harry took a deep breath, and Shelley smiled and closed her eyes.
“I like Jenelle,” said Harry. Shelley nodded approvingly.
“She was good,” said Britt. “It’s just…not a lot of fire, you know? Or creativity, maybe. She seems so stolid. We have all those kinds of cooks at Winesap and after a while you want some personality in there. And how much training can she have had to just do the egg station for six years? Don’t get me wrong, I thought she was really solid, I just…I don’t know.”
“But I want solid,” said Harry. “You never go to the Breakfast Bar, but if you did, you’d see that they serve about six hundred people in a weekend. Maybe more. You cannot do that station without losing your mind if you aren’t cold as ice. That chick was like a metronome.”
“Hey, why’d you like the water?” Britt said suddenly. “You smiled when Jenelle set a pot on to boil.”
Shelley turned to look at him, truly meeting his gaze perhaps for the first time all day. “Because she started her water before she even looked in the cooler. It takes the longest, and if you don’t know what you need to make, it’s just a smart way to get going—chances are you’ll use it, and then you don’t have to wait. It was just a smart basic move, that’s all. We had a cook in St. Louis who liked to keep a big vat of water at a high simmer at all times. He said you never knew when you’d need it.” Then she rolled her neck and resituated herself. “Oh, Lionel,” she said fondly. “He was one of those tortured souls who stumbles through the world but fries a great eggplant.”
Britt and Harry were silent for a long beat, waiting to see what had happened to Lionel, but Shelley just glanced between them and said, “So, my vote is Jenelle, but obviously my vote only counts for so much. I’m just a visitor. Harry, can you run me back to my hotel if we’re done here?”
“Of course,” Harry said. “You’re not hungry, I know, but we could buy you a drink. A glass of wine.”
Shelley gave a trill of laughter. “That sounds lovely. I have to tell you, though, that living among the vineyards has ruined me. I’ve become kind of an accidental connoisseur. You wouldn’t believe how hard to please I am! I won’t subject you.” And because it really had been a useful day in the end, Britt stopped himself from thanking her.
CHAPTER 9
HELENE’S HAIR WAS BOTHERING LEO. He kept eyeing her at the maître d’ station whenever he walked through the dining room, noting the way her bangs flopped into her eyes. Leo understood that he was hovering. Maybe she was just trying out unpleasant new hairstyles now that Britt was over at Stray more often than not.
This was where Leo struggled, trying to match or mimic his brother’s flawless taste. For all he knew, Britt would have told him that he was being an old man, that Helene’s long side-swept bangs were solely responsible for a 5 percent uptick in bar sales.
“What can I do for you, Leo?” Helene finally asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “I just kept noticing your hair.”
A frown crossed her pointed, miniature features. “My hair.”
“It seems to be in your way,” Leo said. He swiped at his own sparse hairline to demonstrate. “You keep brushing at it.”
“I don’t even notice,” she said reassuringly, and looked back down at the book. Leo did too: thirty-eight on the books. Okay for a winter Tuesday. A moment later she looked up again.
“Leo?”
“It’s just that I worry about guests being unable to make eye contact,” he said. “People resist that. They like a nice, clear sightline.”
“You’re looking me in the eye right now,” she pointed out.
“That’s true.” Leo began to feel very uncomfortable. “Maybe if you don’t spend as much time looking down, the guests won’t even notice.”
“During service, I rarely do,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re right.”
Helene returned to erasing table numbers and jotting servers’ initials next to reservation names. “Leo,” she said after a few moments, “how are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m better than fine. How are you doing without Britt here?”
She shrugged. “Fine. It’s a basic Tuesday night. Alan’s hoping for a bar diner or two. Erica and Apollo are opening, David’s closing, and we have a backwaiter working-interview scheduled now that Christian’s leaving.”
“Are we still calling him that?”
“Apollo? I guess so. I can’t even remember his real name. I think it’s stuck.”
Leo paused, trying to remember the real name of the newest waiter, who was so glowingly beautiful and creamy blond that on his first night Jason had said, “Get Apollo back here to pick up his halibut,” and now no one could call him anything else.
“Kelly’s trying out a new dessert at staff meal. Some kind of tart.”
Kelly—tall, sturdily built, with near crew-cut black hair and two sleeves of tattoos—had just been hired for her deft touch with pastry and her ethereal sugar work. So far her desserts had been perfectly executed classics with one subtle switch or addition: the herbal bite of Chartreuse where one didn’t expect it, a reversal in texture or temperature. The dishes were good—it wasn’t that she wasn’t good. It was just that Leo wanted to be stunned by the alchemy of it all, and she was amu
sing him instead.
According to Britt, Hector was spending the last few weeks before Stray opened perfecting some mad scientist’s ice cream cone, cacao custard in a cup constructed out of malt or something equally odd, plus a salted, buttered popcorn ice cream. He’d created some kind of hot fried pastry with a cool Meyer lemon center, served with Thai basil cream and a sparkling drift of sugared zest. Britt had described them as otherworldly beignets.
“That sounds good.” Leo sighed now. “But a tart? I don’t know—didn’t we hire her for her ideas? I thought we were branching out from this grand-mère shit, you know?”
Helene looked taken aback. “Were we?” she said. “I don’t know the details on the tart. Maybe you should talk to Thea about that.”
“Right, right.” Helene now had the patient look of someone who had been playing rummy with her great-grandfather for several hours. “Well. I’ll check in with Thea.”
On his way to the kitchen he reminded Alan, yet again, not to set place settings on the bar until someone ordered food. He sometimes wondered if Alan was really worth the trouble. He sometimes wondered if any of them were worth the trouble. That was one thing Harry would get a taste of: the enduring, Sisyphean struggle, on any given day, not to fire your entire staff. But Alan had been working for Winesap for years; he knew their wine list, and now that he could back up Helene on hosting duties he was more central than ever.
Leo glanced back toward the dining room and saw that Alan and Helene were in close conversation, heads bent together. Now he’d pushed them together in union against him. It was as if he’d never managed people before; he was behaving like a neophyte. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d dealt with the minutiae of the dining room. Britt had taken over so much of the personnel handling that Leo had forgotten how prickly and unruly a staff of thirty adults could be. The front-of-the-house staff was not only at odds with the world at large (who liked to ask what else the waitstaff did in their lives) but also with the kitchen staff, who resented their higher income and their requests for sauce switches and onion-free sautés.
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