“Can we have dinner? Jasper told me you aren't leaving until Monday morning.” It's true. Since Ruth, Fiona, and my dad agreed to watch Chloe and check in on Richard, I've arranged to stay in town an extra day to clean out the storage space in our old apartment.
I shake my head.
“Listen,” he says, grabbing my arm. “I assume you saw the review?”
“Of course I have,” I tell him, even though I hadn't. Early on in my work with Dr. D-P, she'd declared a moratorium on contact with New York, forbidding the daily monitoring of my old life, which had included reading New York newspapers and checking in regularly with Tony, Renata, and Hope.
“Jasper was right. Things aren't the same since you left. None of it is, actually,” Jake says quietly. “Sunday night, the restaurant is closed. Come to Grappa. Please?”
Jake still has hold of my arm, although he has loosened his grip and allowed his hand to slide slowly down my forearm until it brushes gently against my fingers.
The touch of his skin on mine is electric. I feel as if I've been ripped loose from the shaky mooring of my life and hurled by a rapidly rising mistral into someone else's. Mine, but not mine. Since getting back here I've been looking for a foothold, something familiar to grab on to, some way to orient myself. I know I should get in a cab and head straight for LaGuardia, change my ticket, and get back to Pittsburgh.
“What time?” I ask him.
Â
I run downstairs, change my clothes, and find the closest Internet café. I order a double latte and settle in at one of the worn wooden booths. Finally, I find it, one thin column buried deep within the Wednesday Food section several weeks back.
It's a bad review, written by a staff writer, right away a bad sign. If Frank Bruni writes you a bad review, people will still come to your restaurant, for a little while at leastâif only to see if he was right. According to the reviewer, who I'd never heard of, many of the dishes seem tired, in contrast to the recently overhauled décor, which is uncharacteristically slick. The reviewer lauded the addition of a martini bar and happily noted that the wine selection also had been considerably enhanced. I am mentioned by name, a little two-sentence blurb near the end of the article: “with the departure of chef Mirabella Rinaldi, the pasta specialties have suffered mightily.” The reviewer cites as evidence a gluey cream sauce and an uninspired chard-filled ravioli. While it might have been the public affirmation I was after, it still makes me sad.
I consider Jasper's comments at the meeting this morning. He said
I
am Grappa. Me, not Jake. Yet, at least at one time, we were good together. The problem is, if I come back to manage Grappa and Jake is at Il Vinaio, we will still, at least according to Marcus, be part of the same brand, which will, I imagine, entail some working together. And then there was Jake's comment as he brushed his hand against mine and invited me to dinner. What exactly had he meant that “none of it” is the same since I left? Where is Nicola in all of this? Since Renata is on the outs with both Jake and Nicola, I have no hope of getting any scoop from her, but I am not above pumping Tony for information tonight, when we meet for dinner. If anyone knows anything, he will.
On my way back to the hotel I call Jerry Fox. Of course, I get his voice mail, so I leave a message telling him to expect a package from the AEL Restaurant Syndicate on Monday morning, along with my authorization to review the materials.
Next, I call Ruth who, unlike Jerry, answers on the first ring.
“Well, how did it go?” she asks.
“Amazing, actually,” I tell her. I fill Ruth in on the details of the meeting, omitting only the tidbit about my interchange with Jake. By the time I finish I'm nearly breathless. “Oh, and did I mention the Napa Valley?”
“Yes, you did.”
“Do you have any idea what that means? We could join the ranks of Cyrus, Ad Hoc, the French Laundry, America's greatest restaurants!”
“That sounds like some pretty stiff competition, if you ask me,” Ruth says.
“I admit it would be hard work, but people who don't call the requisite two months ahead for a reservation have to eat somewhere, don't they? If we could just get an inâ”
“Mira, please tell me you didn't sign anything, did you?”
“No. A promise is a promise. But I did have the financial statements sent over to my lawyer. They've given us full access to their accounting firm andâ”
“Why not let me have a look at those financial statements? In case you've forgotten I've got an MBA from Wharton, which at the moment is gathering dust. I'd love to have a look.”
“Sure,” I tell her, embarrassed that I hadn't thought of it before. “If you're sure you have time.”
Ruth sighs heavily into the phone. “Oh, it will be a struggle, but I'll pencil you in between nuking the microwave Easy Mac and our trip to the park. You can pay me in food. Hey, I've exhausted my freezer stash and have had to resort to Lean Cuisine, which, by the way, doesn't taste as good as I remember. I think you've ruined me,” she laughs.
“Don't worry. Help is on the way. I'll be home on Monday.”
Ruth fills me in on Chloe and Richard, and I promise to call Marcus right away to arrange for Ruth to receive a copy of the financial statements. We're about to hang up when Ruth says, “Look, Mira, I know this is exciting, but justâ” She hesitates.
“What?”
“Be careful, okay?” Ruth finally says.
“Of course, I'll be careful,” I tell her. “But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I'd be investing only a portion of what I got out of Grappa, but I'd be an owner again, and the returns would be more than I've ever made before. They also promised me a creative say in the restaurant syndicate. That they have the confidence in us is pretty incredible. We could be the next Jean Georgesâit's almost too good to be true.”
“Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of,” Ruth says.
Â
I've arranged to meet Tony for dinner at the Blue Ribbon restaurant after he gets off work, around midnight. Once I decided to come to New York and hear out Jake's investors, I called Tony, who confirmed that he'd been in touch with the AEL syndicate and told me that I'd be crazy not to jump on the next plane and sign on the dotted line.
“They're offering you Grappa on a silver platter, Mira. What the hell are you waiting for?” Tony asked.
From the inside, the Blue Ribbon looks like any of a hundred other dimly lit restaurants in Manhattan, but what makes it unique is the line that begins to form after midnight, often snaking all the way around the corner onto Spring Street. It isn't a fancy place, but the food, although simple in concept, is innovative: tender veal meat loaf, celeriac mashed potatoes, lobster mac and cheese. It may not be the only place you can go in New York City to eat cheese fondue at four in the morning, but it is the best. Although it's usually full throughout the evening, it doesn't really get lively until well after midnight when, after the close of dinner service most everywhere else, New York's chefs go out to eat.
Jake and I got into the habit of coming here at least once a week when we first lived in the city, before we opened Grappa. It was the mid-nineties, and a young Mario Batali, the West Village's rash and innovative chef, commanded a large table in the back, often buying out the entire raw bar and threatening to drain the wine cellar dry. Jake and I often waited in line an hour or more for one of the white linen-covered tables, dreaming of the day when we would be invited to join New York's cooking legends for a raucous, candlelit supper. Even after Mario and his crowd stopped coming, Jake and I would still sometimes go, take a seat at the bar, and share a dozen blue point oysters and a bottle of wine.
Tonight, because I've gotten here earlyâjust a little after midnightâI've been able to secure a plum table in the back. I order myself a glass of Gewürztraminer, thinking, as the bright-eyed waiter takes my order, what strange lives chefs lead. By necessity and for convenience, most of your friends are chefs. Who else besides another chef would want to share a four-course meal with you at two in the morning? It isn't that chefs are inherently more fun than nurses, or pharmacists, or off-duty cops, or other people who work night shifts. It's just that often what you want to talk about is food. Odd perhaps, that after putting in a twelve-hour day surrounded by the stuff, you still want to talk about it, your ideas for reviving a tired sherry reduction, or a particularly innovative use of foie gras. No one besides another chef wants to do that in the middle of the night.
A few minutes after I arrive, Tony comes in. He looks exactly the same as last time I saw him, the same leather bomber jacket, the same white chef's tunic, the same shaved head, glossy and brown as a freshly baked brioche. Tony greets the bartender, a short, wellmuscled guy named Bob, who gestures toward my table in the back.
“Hey,” Tony says, depositing his knife satchel on the extra chair and approaching my side of the table to envelop me in a hug. He smells of sweat and food, of tobacco and browning onions and fried things.
“You look great,” Tony says, pulling away and studying my face.
“Thanks. You too,” I tell him, giving his thick arm a squeeze.
Tony waves away the menu the waiter offers him. “I want a steak, bloody, an order of fried leeks, and the blue cheese mashed potatoes,” Tony tells him. “A glass of Cab with dinner and a double Grey Goose martini as fast as Bob over there can make it.”
“Tough day?” I ask him.
“Aren't they all?” says Tony.
Over his martini, Tony fills me in. He's been working under Philippe, who, in Tony's opinion, is a competent cook, but will never be a chef. “Wouldn't recognize a creative spin if it bit him on the ass. You know the kind,” Tony says, taking a hefty gulp of his drink.
I do. Jake and I had worked for plenty of them in our time. But, given the mediocre review in the
Times
, and what I'm sure is Tony's accurate assessment of Philippe's stewardship in the kitchen, how is it that profits are up ten percent? Something doesn't quite add up.
“So,” I ask. “What gives?”
Tony shakes his head. “Seriously, Mira, these guys may be fucking geniuses. First, they've replaced someâmake that allâof the expensive suppliers. I assume you've heard about Renata, right?”
I nod.
“Eddie, too. But that's only part of it. They've cut staff and pay, considerably beefed up the wine list, and added a froufrou martini bar. The markup on the wine is huge, and the martinis are exotic, interesting, and expensive. Suffice it to say, we are attracting a slightly different type of clientele. But we're still crowded every night and booked a couple weeks out on the weekend. We are making more money than we did this time last year, so it's not all bad, you know?”
Not all bad? Even though Marcus and Jasper had mentioned making changes, I hadn't really focused on precisely how those changes impacted Grappa. “Tony, how is any of that good? People can get good booze anywhere in this city!”
Tony holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I know, I know,” he says. “Obviously, the downside is that, if steps aren't taken to address the drop-off in food quality, we may be living on borrowed time. Which reminds me, I brought you a present,” Tony says, his eyes flashing mischievously. He reaches over to rummage through his knife case and pulls out a small Styrofoam container. “Here you go.
Buon appetito,
” he says, smiling. I open the container. Inside is a small portion of gluey-looking gnocchi and a handful of limp morels. “I figured if you were having any doubts about coming back, this would put you over the top.”
I spear a a piece of gnocchi, which offers more resistance than it should. Right away I can tell, without even tasting it, that it will be too tough. “The dough's been overworked,” I tell him, laying the untouched pasta on the edge of my bread plate. Tony picks up another from the container with his fingers and pops it into his mouth.
“Yeah, and the flavoring is too overpowering. The morels are completely lost. It's crap,” Tony says. “Yes, I like the restaurant syndicate concept, and the numbers are pretty hard to ignore. But in terms of maintaining Grappa's quality, we need you back soon. You're right; people can get good booze anywhere, and sooner or later they are going to realize that the food is no longer great. It's already started. Some of our longtime customers are coming around less frequently. But, if you come back soon, we can turn it around. Speaking of good booze . . .” Tony drains the rest of his martini. He turns around and waves a finger in Bob's direction. “Look, I had my lawyer review the papers from AEL. He says everything looks kosher. I've already put in about half of my sabbatical fund at this point, and I'm planning to invest the rest, but only if you're in, too. What do you say? When are you moving back?”
I hesitate. There is still so much I have to figure out. I want to ask Tony about Jake and Nicola, but I don't quite know how. Luckily, Tony anticipates my question.