Liquor
Opening Night Menu
Starters
Prosciutto-Wrapped Figs in Calvados + Blue Cheese-Cognac Cream
Pan-Fried Risotto Balls with Absolut Citron Vodka
+ Vermouth Tapenade
Aquavit-Cured Salmon Carpaccio with Roasted Capers
Fresh Marinated Sardines in a Galliano Sweet and Sour Sauce
Pork Terrine with Wild Mushrooms and Bushmills Irish Whiskey
Soups & Salads
Cold Sapphire Cucumber Soup (Bombay Sapphire Gin)
Salad of Mixed Greens, Macadamias, and Manchego Cheese with Walnut Eau de Vie Vinaigrette
Creole Tomato Salad with New Orleans Rum-Pickled Red Onions and Cranberry Beans
Main Courses
Pecan-Crusted Gulf Fish of the Day with Rum Beurre Blanc
Roasted Duck on the Bone + Sauce of Sun-dried Cherries,
Roasted Garlic, and Kirsch
Grand Marnier-Fennel Osso Buco + House-made Orecchiette
Garlic-Perfumed Beef Ribeye Flamed with Cognac
Roasted Pork Loin with White Beans, Fresh Fennel, and Grappa
Tequila-Stewed Gulf Shrimp and Avocados + Louisiana Popcorn Rice
Pan-Fried Rabbit with Mustard and Herbsaint
Cognac-Flavored Wild Mushroom and Arugula Lasagna
Only after everybody had had a chance to read the menu did Rickey speak again. “I’m sure we’ll make a few changes before opening night, but we’re basically pretty satisfied with this. We’ll all be back in here the day before we open to see the final menu, check out Tanker’s desserts, and go over composition and plating of the dishes. Anybody got any questions right now?”
Terrance wanted to know what orecchiette were, and Rickey explained about the little handmade ear-shaped pasta.
“Some of you already know us well enough to know how we work,” said G-man. “The rest of you should be able to figure us out pretty soon. We’re the laziest, most useless bastards in the world when we’re off work, but when we’re here, we’re hardcore rollers. We expect you to work as hard as we do.”
“In exchange,” Rickey said, “we won’t dog you with a bunch of moronic rules—just a few. Number one: We don’t care what you do in your free time. We don’t even really care what you do here as long as you do your job. I’m not gonna forbid you to have a couple beers during your shift. Just don’t come in too fucked up to work.
“Number two: If you can stand up, don’t call in sick.
“Number three: You work in your uniform at all times. I been seeing cooks in T-shirts, but I’m kinda conservative about this—just like you might have noticed the decor in the dining room is kinda conservative. I think your whites remind you to take yourself and what you’re doing seriously. You can wear one of our paper toques or you can wear a bandanna like I do if you want. No baseball caps, because they don’t really catch sweat, and none of those little square hippie caps, because with all due respect, they look like ass.
“Any questions?”
There were none, but the crew looked happy, as well they might; they were used to managerial harangues about Being Part of a Team, and Rising to the Challenge, and Communication. Rickey began to relax. These people weren’t going to walk out on him or judge him to be a shoemaker. They were just kitchen people like all the others he’d known—even better, because he and G-man had hand-picked them. This was easy.
“We don’t have an employee handbook,” said G-man. “We’re not gonna give out Xerox sheets about our vision and all that shit. We think the best way you can understand our vision is by cooking with us.”
“We told you about our food and heard your ideas when we interviewed you,” said Rickey. “I don’t really see the point of standing here now and making giant sweeping statements about what great food we’re gonna make. Of course we’re gonna make great food—I think we all share that standard. We wouldn’t have hired you if we thought you just cared about slamming it out.”
“Of course, you gotta be able to slam it out,” G-man said.
“Sure. But we all know we can do that. What we might not all know, but what we can keep learning, is that the food has to be perfect every single time. Yeah, I see some of you giving me that skeptical look. I been on the line for twelve years. I know it won’t always be perfect. But that doesn’t mean it’s not required to be. Do you get it? Do you all know what I mean?”
The dishwashers looked blank, but the cooks nodded.
“OK,” said Rickey. “So does everybody know what they’re supposed to do on opening night? I’ll be expediting. G’s on sauté. We got Terrance on the grill, Shake doing cold apps, Tanker in the dessert ghetto back there, but he can help with salads if you need him …”
They got the positions sorted out, took a few more questions, then dismissed the kitchen staff and watched them clock out. Terrance stayed behind, and as soon as the others were gone, he said, “Mike’s disappeared. You heard?”
“No,” said Rickey, who hadn’t been paying attention to anything but the restaurant. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
Terrance related the story of the melee at Escargot’s. Rickey and G-man laughed at the part where the bartender threw Mike through the window, but Terrance scowled. “I didn’t like it,” he said. “It was like using an A-bomb to kill a rat. It was too much.”
“So he’s gone now?” said Rickey.
“After I brushed the glass off him, he just ran out the place. Never showed up the next day. Nobody seen him since.”
“Not even NuShawn?”
“NuShawn says he ain’t seen him in a week. That’s what really makes me think something happened.”
“Maybe somebody finally threw him in the river like he deserves,” said Rickey.
“I don’t know. It’s crazy—the owner’s son been coming in, and he’s a hotel guy. Don’t know a damn thing about restaurants. Kinda nice, though, compared to having Mike around. Still, I’m real glad to be out of there.”
“You should be,” said G-man. “You’re gonna have a good time in this kitchen.”
“Yeah,” said Terrance on his way out, “except when I gotta cook them nasty-ass hunks of steak fat.”
Then they were alone in the kitchen, in uniform with everything set up around them for the first time. Rickey leaned back against the counter and sighed. “I think they actually listened to us.”
“Weird, huh?”
“No kidding. We’re the assholes now.”
“Well, we just gotta be the best assholes we can be.”
They had decided to open “soft” for a week, notifying a few potential customers and letting word of mouth bring in the rest. Then they’d start running ads in the local papers. Rickey got the advertising material from the small office at the back of the kitchen, and they went into the dining room to go over it. The furniture had been moved into place since the night they’d camped out here. They sat at one of the tables in a diffuse pool of light, poring over the papers before them just as they had seen any number of chefs and managers doing in other restaurants. Acting like bosses still seemed a little strange, but they were beginning to get used to it.
chapter 27
No way, Tank,” said Rickey. “I’m pretty open-minded, but there’s just no such thing as Camembert ice cream.”
“Try it,” Tanker urged. “It’s good.”
The day before opening, and they were in the kitchen working out the last kinks. Tanker’s dessert menu was mostly brilliant: he’d taken classic cocktails and reconstructed them into sweets. There was the “Mint Julep,” a tuile cookie cup filled with chocolate-mint and chocolate-bourbon mousses; the “Amaretto Sour,” lemon curd touched with di Saronno in an almond tart crust; the “Fuzzy Navel,” two perfect poached peach halves in a Grand Marnier sabayon sauce; the “Margarita,” orange and tequila-lime sorbets served in a sugar-edged martini glass garnished with a chocolate-dipped pretzel swizzle stick.
There were others, and Tanker was just trying to narr
ow them down to five that could be served on opening night. But his concept for a big, expensive signature dessert hurt Rickey’s brain. Though he was calling it a Napoleon, it had nothing to do with puff pastry or cream. That would have made too much sense. Instead, he’d found an actual reproduction of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death mask and coated the inside with chocolate to make a mold, which he proposed to fill with a frozen mousse of Napoleon brandy surrounding a scoop of the terrifying Camembert ice cream.
“C’mon, Rickey. It’s no more extravagant than a whole baked Alaska. They do those at Antoine’s and charge a fortune for them.”
“Yeah, but people actually want to eat baked Alaska. Nobody wants to have some guy’s face for dessert. And why the Camembert?”
“To follow through on the death mask theme. I want it to have a little bit of a corpsey flavor.”
“You’re nuts!”
“Just try it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Remember what you told me when you fixed those kidneys?” said G-man from his spot by the sauté station. “A good cook is a fearless cook.”
“So I suppose you tried it already?”
“Sure.”
“And?”
“It’s pretty gross,” G-man said cheerfully.
“There you go,” Rickey told Tanker. “My sous chef is authorized to make decisions for me. I don’t have to try it.”
“Just a little taste,” said Tanker, undiscouraged.
Sighing, Rickey took the spoon from Tanker’s hand and sampled the ecru dollop. There was a sour edge to it, rather like Creole cream cheese but with a little more rankness. He let it sit on his tongue and melt, then said, “Give me one more taste.”
“See?” said Tanker, hunting for another dessert spoon. “You like it.”
“It’s not bad,” Rickey admitted. “It might be just weird enough to appeal to the freak contingent. But I don’t know about having a death mask on the dessert menu.”
“Aw, come on. You know how much New Orleanians love Napoleon. They even got a little apartment still fixed up for him on the top floor of the Napoleon House, down in the Quarter. It’ll be a big hit.”
“Why you gotta make something like that?” said G-man, coming over to the dessert nook. “Why can’t you make something normal, like a chocolate Superdome?”
“Suck my ass, yat boy.”
“Yeah, where you from? Rocky Mountain High?”
“I’m actually a Yankee,” said Tanker. “I was born north of the lake, in Covington. C’mon, Rickey, let’s just try this. I got an inspiration. People don’t like it, we’ll take it off the menu.”
G-man shook his head and went off toward the walk-in. Rickey considered the Napoleon. It was insane, but it seemed to give Tanker a thrill, and the other desserts were winners. Between themselves, Rickey and G-man had already agreed to do pretty much whatever it took to keep Tanker happy. He was a rarity. And who knew? Maybe the death mask would be a big hit, kind of a morbid Mile High Pie. “How many would you prep?” he asked.
“Not a lot. This is, like, a fourteen-dollar dessert for the whole table to share. I could make a bunch of the masks—molded chocolate keeps real nice. But prepped up with the fillings for a regular service, I might do five or six.”
“I guess,” said Rickey. “But I’m letting you do it because your other ideas are good, not because I think this one is.”
Rickey knew he pretty much had to accept whatever Tanker wanted to do anyway, because he didn’t have time to argue about desserts. He and G-man had been here since eight o’clock this morning, and they had a million things going. The white beans and cranberry beans were simmering; the pork terrine and the tapenade for the risotto balls, both made yesterday, were resting in the reach-in; the figs were steeping in Calvados. G-man was showing Matt and Shake how to prep cold-pantry stuff like the salad dressings and rum-pickled onions. Rickey was simultaneously making pasta dough and prepping sauces. They’d made their stocks the previous day, with Terrance and Shake looking on to learn how they wanted it done.
Leaving Tanker to deal with the weird ice cream, Rickey turned back to his project of the moment, a bordelaise sauce that would accompany the roasted duck. He browned some shallots and duck trimmings in clarified butter, added red wine and kirsch, and let the sauce reduce over medium heat. When the alcohol had evaporated, leaving only its flavors, he put in the stock—three parts chicken to one part veal. Leaving this to simmer, he took out his pasta dough and shaped half of it into orecchiette. The rest would be rolled out into thin sheets for the wild mushroom lasagna.
After twenty minutes he reseasoned the sauce and strained it. Tomorrow he would finish it with whole roasted garlic cloves and sun-dried cherries plumped in more kirsch. For now, he put it in the lowboy by the sauté station and headed back to the walk-in to get some more veal stock.
Some of the meat had come in this morning, but the seafood and produce wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow, and the cooler still seemed empty. Rickey stood just inside the heavy steel door for a moment, his breath making a little cloud in the refrigerated air. He knew this was the last time he’d see it this way, shiny and clean just like the rest of the kitchen. After tomorrow its shelves would be crammed with boxes, crates, Lexans and hotel pans, cases of beer for the kitchen crew, the occasional forgotten item developing into a new and moldy life-form. Somehow he felt that this was his last chance to sense the presence of the murdered man, if there was a presence to be sensed.
He stood there until the thin layer of kitchen sweat beneath his clothes grew chilly and a shiver ran down his spine, but the only departed presences in here were some nice fresh pieces of cow, pig, and bird. Maybe he just wasn’t sensitive, or maybe the guy really was completely gone. It had been more than twenty years, after all. At any rate, Rickey couldn’t let it creep him out any more. He had a kitchen to run now, and this walk-in was an integral part of it. Satisfied that he had gotten any residual creepiness out of his system, he fetched his veal stock and returned to his sauces.
They spent the rest of the day taking care of details. They called purveyors to confirm tomorrow’s orders. They had a last short meeting with their maître d’, Karl—a tall, shaven-headed, ebony-skinned man who was also acting as the defacto dining room manager—to make sure everything would go smoothly in the front of the house tomorrow. They touched base with Mo about the drink specials and reminded her of their Drunkard’s Agreement with Sid Schwanz. They printed up an optimistic fifty copies of the menu. After they dropped these off at the restaurant, they drove around for a little while, considered stopping by the Apostle Bar or some other place, eventually decided they didn’t really want to talk to anybody else and just went home.
They sat at the kitchen table smoking a bomber packed with enough weed to make two or three normal joints. There was a sanguine air to the evening, for they knew now that whatever else went wrong, barring major catastrophe, they were at least set up for opening night. There was no further licensing problem, no nascent hurricane spinning in the Gulf, nothing on the horizon that looked likely to stop them. It was too late even to be scared. By the time they finished the bomber, there was only a pleasant, thrumming nervousness between them.
“How many you think we’ll get?” said Rickey. “Ten?”
“We got more than that guaranteed. My folks, your mom and her boyfriend, Lenny and the suits …”
“I don’t mean people we know. I mean walk-ins.”
“Oh … well, we sent out those two-for-one entrée coupons to the neighborhood association. Some of them’ll probably show up. Maybe Sid Schwanz, maybe Anthony B. But I figure we’ll have a pretty slow start. I mean, that’s how we want it, right?”
“I guess. It’ll be better that way—let everybody get used to working together, get used to the menu. But you know what? I feel like I’m ready to roll.”
“I know what you mean,” said G-man. “We been thinking about all this other stuff for so long. It’ll be good to get ba
ck in the kitchen and just go.”
Rickey nodded. “Exactly.”
“You know, I thought you’d be more keyed up than this.”
“So did I. Hell, I thought I’d be bouncing off the walls. But I guess I got it all out of my system. I feel great. I want to do this. I’m ready.”
“That’s good,” said G-man. “This would be a real bad time to change your mind.”
“Yeah, and spend the rest of my life working for Lenny.”
“Dude, don’t even say that.”
“Not gonna happen,” said Rickey. “Who knows? Maybe Lenny’ll be working for us someday.”
“I take back what I said about you being calm,” said G-man, feeling Rickey’s forehead as if checking for fever. “You need some rest.”
“I need sex,” said Rickey. “I don’t think anything short of a hard-on is gonna get my mind off the restaurant.”
“I think I can take care of that for you.”
One of Rickey’s favorite things was to lie in bed with G-man and just kiss for a long time before they did anything else, but he didn’t have the patience for that tonight. He left a suck mark on G-man’s neck, licked the length of his spine, gnawed on his hipbones. They’d had their dry spells, but they were blessed with a talent for enjoying each other as easily and thoroughly as they had at sixteen, with the added intimacy of many years together. Sometimes, Rickey thought, the taste of G-man’s skin was the only thing that calmed him.
chapter 28
They didn’t really have to be at the restaurant until midmorning on opening day. The deliveries wouldn’t start arriving until then, and if there was any kind of dinner crowd, they might stay open late tonight. But they woke with the sun and couldn’t get back to sleep, so they decided to go on in.