Carrying their trusty thermos (full of chicory coffee and milk today, not liquor), they let themselves in the back door. Rickey drained the figs that had been steeping in Calvados and began wrapping them in thin strips of prosciutto. G-man started making the blue cheese-cognac cream to serve with them. Since this had been one of the most popular dishes at the Apostle Bar, they could make it on automatic pilot, and the familiar motions had a calming effect.
Their order from Old Country Seafood was lugged in by a man old enough to be their grandfather. It was kind of a lousy job for a guy in his twilight years, but Rickey was too busy examining the order to spare him any pity. As usual with Old Country, it was perfect: the shucked oysters were fat and smelled of clean seawater; the 16/20-count brown shrimp were so fresh they seemed to quiver; the redfish was translucent and glistening.
Rickey hauled the fish and oysters back to the walk-in while G-man started prepping the shrimp. A few minutes later the produce order arrived, and Rickey examined it as carefully as he had the seafood. “These tomatoes are hard,” he said, holding up an unripe Creole.
“They nice,” said the deliveryman.
“No they’re not. C’mon, I got a Creole tomato salad on my menu. I can’t serve these. Take ’em back.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with them tomaters.”
“Would you let your momma cook with them?” said Rickey, irritated. “I know we’re a new restaurant, but I been through this a million times in other people’s kitchens. You can bring me good tomatoes or I can start ordering from Favre Brothers, but either way, these fucking softballs are going back on your truck.”
“Awright, awright,” said the produce man. Unperturbed, he loaded the tomato boxes back onto his dolly and trundled them out. It was just a dance they had to go through, a kind of test to see what would fly with the new customer. Some restaurants would accept the inferior tomatoes without batting an eye, and Rickey supposed the purveyor wanted to see if Liquor was such a restaurant. He pulled out his cell phone and called them. “Look,” he said, “I know you guys are gonna fuck me from time to time, but I wasn’t expecting to get crappy tomatoes on my very first day doing business with you.”
“Sorry about that. We’ll send some ripe ones right over.”
“How about a free case for my trouble?”
“Nope.”
Rickey and G-man didn’t talk much over the course of the morning, but fell into their usual kitchen routine, each doing his own work in a companionable semisilence, occasionally helping each other out without ever getting in each other’s way. Tanker arrived around noon and ensconced himself in the dessert nook. Soon the other cooks began to trickle in. Since they weren’t required to be here this early, Rickey figured they must be excited about opening night. He’d had jobs he loved and jobs he loathed, but there were very few times he’d voluntarily arrived early for a shift unless he knew he was going to be slammed and wanted to play catch-up. These guys didn’t need to play catch-up yet, so he and G-man must have done something right.
Gradually the elements of the night fell into place. G-man had his sauté station ready to go and was helping Shake set up the cold pantry. Terrance was prepping his grill station. The new tomatoes arrived, ripe and fragrant. At four-thirty, Rickey went out to the dining room for a last-minute meeting with the rest of the front-of-the-house staff. “Tonight shouldn’t be too rough even if it gets busy,” he told them. “Most of the customers will probably be people we know, people who are already pulling for us. By the same token, these are gonna be the people spreading our word-of-mouth publicity, so let’s give ’em something good to talk about.” He went over the menu one more time, his heart sinking only a little when he realized one of the waiters still didn’t understand what tapenade was. All in all, though, they looked good: Karl in a green silk suit that matched the dining room, Mo in cigarette pants and a cream-colored blouse, the rest in white shirts, black pants, and spotless white aprons, everyone with an electric edge of first-night jitters.
Rickey was too nervous to eat the staff meal G-man had prepared, so he went into the foyer to see the flowers that had arrived throughout the day. There were mixed bouquets full of dyed daisies and baby’s breath from his mother and various members of G-man’s family, a bunch of irises from Anthony B, a flashy spray of exotics from the Duvet Corporation, a dozen pink roses from “H”—guessing that must be Helmut, Rickey pulled off the card and threw it away. There were various smaller assortments from other friends and colleagues. Strangely, there was also a cross made of white carnations like something you’d see at a funeral.
Frowning, Rickey looked more closely at this last item. It was definitely a cross, and it hadn’t been delivered by mistake: the card said “John R. Rickey,” nothing more. Maybe it was somebody’s idea of a twisted joke. Opening a restaurant? In sympathy; R.I.P. if you can. He could imagine that coming from some of his old colleagues. It would look weird to customers, though. Rickey carried the cross back to the kitchen and threw it in one of the big trash cans.
“What’s that?” said G-man.
“Aw, we got some kinda funeral flowers. Somebody’s a comedian.”
“Mike?”
“Huh?” said Rickey, who hadn’t even thought of that.
“You think they’re from Mike?”
“I don’t know. I just figured … Shit.”
“Well, don’t worry about it. Probably nothing.”
“I don’t got time to worry about it. Did Terrance cook the pasta yet? We need to get rolling.”
G-man could have kicked himself for mentioning Mike. He’d expected Rickey to think of that possibility at once, but apparently he hadn’t. Rickey was already keyed up and didn’t need anything throwing him off his game.
Rickey didn’t seem distracted, though; he just turned away and started talking to Terrance. Reminding himself not to say anything else that had the potential to alarm, inflame, or agitate, G-man went back to his station. He had a six-burner stove, a small oven, a lowboy, a cutting board, and a bain-marie that held his sauces and the hot soup. One of his burners was occupied by a pot of water that would be kept at a boil for dunking the pasta. With the other five burners at his disposal, he was responsible for the risotto balls, the pecan-crusted redfish, the tequila shrimp, the rabbit, and the pork. He had the veg lasagna too, but that was moronically easy.
After taking care of everything possible on his station, G-man went around checking the others. “How’s those tomatoes?” he asked Shake.
“Succulent as a young girl’s pudendum,” said Shake, who had always prided himself on the erudition of his foul mouth.
It was just after six now. Technically they were open for business. G-man went to the front of the kitchen where Rickey had set up his expediting station. The ticket machine here would spit out orders as the waiters typed them into the computer. Rickey would see them first and call them out to the various stations. He also had a long table upon which he would finish the plates with the herbs, oils, and other items in his mise-en-place. On the shelf above his station were a boombox (silent; Rickey liked to have the option of music in the kitchen but rarely played it), a water bottle, a flask of Wild Turkey, an empty pastry bag, and a big stack of clean side towels for wiping the edges of plates.
“Whatcha think—” G-man started, then forgot what he was going to say as the ticket machine came to life and began chattering out their first order. For a long moment they just stared at it as if they’d never seen a ticket before. Finally Rickey pulled it out of the machine, scanned it, and said, “Shake, ordering two tomato salads, one sardine, one terrine, two figs.”
“Two tomato salads, one sardine, one terrine, two figs,” Shake called back to him.
“Terrance, ordering one ribeye medium-rare, one duck … G, get back to your station, you slack bastard … ordering two redfish, one shrimp, one pork.”
“One ribeye medium-rare, one duck,” Terrance repeated.
Instead of returning to the sauté sta
tion, G-man went to peek into the dining room. The entrées wouldn’t need to be fired for at least fifteen minutes, and he wanted a look at their first customers. He saw Lenny, Bert Flanagan, and Oscar De La Cerda sitting at a six-top with two women—G-man thought one of them was Flanagan’s wife—and a man he didn’t know. Beyond them, Karl was leading another couple to a table.
G-man returned to the kitchen. “It’s Lenny and the suits with three other people,” he told Rickey. “And a deuce just sat down.”
“We’re in business,” said Rickey, looking as if he might faint.
While the salads and appetizers were being prepared, Rickey sent the runner out with amuses-bouches of a poached oyster, a morel, and an asparagus tip arranged on a crouton with a touch of the sauce Robert. The second ticket came in just as Lenny’s first courses were going out. The deuce had ordered risotto balls, the oyster soup, and two redfish. Rickey called out these orders, then told Terrance and G-man to fire the entrées for Lenny’s party. G-man started the risotto balls and arranged his redfish, shrimp, and pork in various sauté pans. He now had only one burner free.
“How’s that ribeye coming?” he called over to Terrance.
“Just fine. Way you taught me this, I could do it in my sleep.”
“Don’t fall asleep. You’ll burn yourself.”
The runner came back with the plates that had held Lenny’s party’s first courses. “Chef, table ten,” he said, and G-man saw Rickey glance at the plates to make sure they were empty. Rickey had read about this practice somewhere and decided to implement it; if anybody had left more than a bite or two of food, the runner would have said, “Chef, this is table ten,” and Rickey would have checked the leftovers to see if there was some problem. It was a good system for a control freak. In this case the plates were shiny-clean, and were soon followed by Lenny himself coming in to congratulate them. “There’s three more tables sitting down right now,” he said. “Two deuces and a four-top. I knew this would go well.”
“Jeez,” said Rickey. “Where are they coming from? How’d they hear about it?”
G-man suspected that Lenny had bent a few ears, but he wasn’t going to say anything if Lenny wanted to keep quiet. Instead he said, “Who are those people at your table?”
“Oh, that’s Jasper Ducoing and his wife. He writes the restaurant reviews for the paper.”
G-man winced as Rickey dropped a ladle.
“You brought in Chase Haricot?” said Rickey. “The Times-Picayune critic? On our first night?”
“Don’t worry, he’s not gonna write his review based on tonight’s meal. He loved your Calvados-marinated figs at the Apostle, and he said he simply couldn’t wait any longer to have them again. That’s a direct quote—‘I simply can’t wait any longer.’”
“Great. Thanks for telling us. Now get out of here.”
“OK, guys. Good luck. Call me.”
“Dude!” said Rickey when Lenny had gone. “The restaurant critic’s here! On our first night!”
“Just forget it,” said G-man, lifting a corner of his red-fish with an offset spatula. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I gotta sneak out there real fast and see what he looks like. C’mon, it’ll help if we can recognize him when he comes in to do the review. I’ll go now, before the next tickets come in.”
“Stay where you are!” said G-man in a tone that, for him, was quite sharp. “I got a good look at the guy. I can recognize him just fine. Get your mind off it. Concentrate, Rickey. Concentrate.”
Rickey sighed. “You’re right. I just can’t believe he brought the guy in on our first night.”
“It doesn’t matter. Are you bored? I got hot shit needs to go on plates over here, if you don’t have anything to do.”
“I got stuff to do,” said Rickey, shaking off the distraction. “You’re right, it doesn’t matter. Fuck ’em.” He pulled another ticket from the machine. “Ordering two green salads, one tomato …”
Rickey did go out to the dining room when his mother came in with her gentleman friend, Claude. By then they were busy enough that he didn’t have much time to circulate, but he took the chance to point out Chase Haricot to Karl. Karl squinted at the man, then nodded and said, “I got him memorized.”
“I said hi to Haricot,” Rickey told G-man upon returning to the kitchen. “Didn’t let on that I knew who he was.”
“Any of my folks here yet?” G-man asked. He didn’t want to talk about Chase Haricot. Rickey could get fixated on a thing like that and have his whole night thrown off.
“I didn’t see any of ’em. I’m sure they’ll all come barging in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, probably so.”
When the dessert orders began coming in, it quickly became apparent that Tanker was screwed. Within an hour, four tables had ordered the Napoleon death mask. “‘I’ll just prep five or six for a regular service,’” Rickey mocked. “‘That’s all we’ll need.’”
“Fuck you!” said Tanker, losing his cool a little. “You didn’t even like the idea. What do we do? You wanna 86 it when we run out, or you want me to prep some more?”
“Do a few more,” said Rickey. “Looks like it’s gonna be more popular than we thought.”
“Yeah, go on. Say I was wrong, Tanker, and you were right.”
“Sure,” said G-man from the sauté station. “Ask him for a pony while you’re at it.”
G-man’s parents, five siblings, and assorted in-laws showed up around eight, talking and laughing until Rickey had to herd them out of the kitchen under the guise of making sure their table was ready. G-man would have dealt with them himself, but he was so busy he’d barely been able to give his mother a kiss. His speed wasn’t a problem, but he wished he had about four more burners.
For a first-time cook, Terrance was brilliant. “How you doing over there?” Rickey or G-man would ask him periodically, and Terrance always replied, “Maintaining.” He was going to be solid, just as Rickey had predicted.
The worst thing that could happen in a restaurant kitchen was meltdown, where no one knew what he was supposed to be doing and everybody was left to flail in the weeds. This crew was almost at the opposite extreme, working in near-perfect sync. When they all knew each other a little better, G-man thought, they would be unstoppable. They’d learn each other’s rhythms, habits, and foibles, just as he and Rickey had done long ago, and they’d be able to handle anything the starving hordes could throw at them.
They would begin their late-night schedule next week. This week, in order to feel out the capabilities of the crew and the demands of the clientele, they were only serving until eleven. The orders started tapering off around ten-thirty, and Tanker sent out his last desserts at twelve-fifteen. Rickey came over to the sauté station, clamped an arm around G-man’s neck, and said, “Our kitchen! Our menu! Our goddamn restaurant! You believe this shit? We actually did it!”
“Course we did,” said G-man, laughing. “I always told you we would. You wanna quit strangling me to death?”
“Sorry about that,” said Rickey, and went over to put the same chokehold on Terrance, who bent slightly at the waist and lifted him clear off the ground.
“So how many you think we did?” said Karl, coming in.
“I was trying to keep track,” said Rickey. “I think it was about eighty.”
“Eighty-eight. Not too shabby for a soft opening.”
As they finished breaking down the stations, G-man kept glancing over at Rickey. He looked as happy as G-man had ever seen him; there was a kind of radiance about him. They’d had a nice time these past few months, living off Lenny’s stipend while they got ready to open the restaurant, having lots of sex, checking out restaurants they’d never had the time or money to try before. It was the closest thing to a vacation they’d had in their adult lives. But a restlessness had started to come over them, and over Rickey in particular. It was good to be back in the kitchen.
In the bar, Mo had a Dave Brubeck CD cranked up on the ster
eo system. Everybody sat on barstools or stood leaning on the long zinc slab, and from a distance they appeared as a solid line of white, black, and houndstooth, punctuated by the tall green column of Karl. The sense of giddy camaraderie was helped along by Mo’s industrial-strength tequila sunrises.
“You were jamming on that grill,” Shake said to Terrance. “You sure you never done any cooking before?”
“I never cooked in a restaurant. I spent plenty time watching other people do it. And I like to barbecue when I get a chance. Now that’s stressful, my whole family crying for ribs and chicken.”
“You got kids?”
“No, I just cook for my relatives. Some of ’em kinda act like kids, though.”
“So did Sid Schwanz ever show up?” G-man asked Mo.
“Unfortunately, he did. Waving his Drunkard’s Agreement in my face and hitting on me all night. I think you guys made a bad deal there. Why’d you do it anyway?”
“Aw, he wanted to write an article about some shit that happened here like twenty years ago—”
“Shut up!” said Rickey. “Tell her some other time. I don’t want to hear about that tonight. It’s a jinx.”
Mo raised her eyebrows at Tanker, who shrugged; he hadn’t yet heard the story of the Red Gravy Murder.
Eventually people began drifting homeward. Rickey and G-man stayed at the restaurant until everyone but the night porter had left: writing tomorrow’s prep lists, figuring out what they needed, calling in orders. When they finally got home, they realized they’d been at the restaurant for twenty hours, and pretty soon they would have to go back and do it all over again.
chapter 29
After a week in business, Rickey had almost stopped experiencing a reflexive rush of panic every time a ticket came in. He read the latest one, then called it out: “Matt, ordering one tomato salad.”
“One tomato, Chef.”