Delancey

by Molly Wizenberg

  “If we don’t like it,” he said gently, “if it doesn’t make us happy, I’ll sell it. Give it five years, and we can sell it.”

  The following week, I went to a therapist that a friend recommended, and all I could do was sob about how overwhelmed I was. I could see that the therapist was sort of scared for me, or possibly of me. He told me to take some time off work, to give myself a break, and afterward, he sent me a bill for $300.

  * * *

  When the therapist recommended that I take a break, he was probably envisioning naps and hot baths. But I needed something to do. I didn’t want to write: I had nothing to say and, as far as I could tell, probably never would again. But standing still didn’t feel any better. My husband was moving forward, and the longer I stood there, or lay in the bath, or whatever, the more the shape of us as a couple would stretch and contort. I knew that my reluctance to get behind the restaurant was tantamount to a decision. I didn’t want my life to change. That was it: I didn’t want my life to change. But it already had. I hated that.

  But it’s why, in mid-May, I began to help Brandon with the construction full-time. I still wanted no part of actually operating the restaurant, but now that I wasn’t writing, I could at least think about the restaurant without getting the shakes. I could see that if he was right, if this business was going to make it, he needed help. I needed something to do, and he needed someone to do it. By this point, we were also running low on money and the restaurant’s first rent check would be due soon. The clock was ticking: the restaurant had to hurry up and open, so that it could start making money. Getting to that point, however, would take more hours and sweat than one person can produce. So we started a new routine: each morning, Brandon and I would go together to “the space,” as we called the restaurant before it began to look like a restaurant.

  I had been using a lot of emotional energy keeping even the thought of the restaurant at arm’s length, so it surprised me now to find that it felt good to give in to it, to let myself be pulled along by something so tangible. I was relieved to find that it was nothing like writing. I could put my whole body into it. It was like wading into the ocean at night. I couldn’t see farther than my own hand. I knew I had to jump in, and I chose to jump in, but it was dark in there. We moved by feeling our way. We swept, and we cleaned, and then we hauled equipment, and then we opened a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and then we finished the bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and then something got installed, and then something broke, and then something got fixed, and on it went. It began to be our restaurant.

  Though we wanted to open within a month, there were still piles of insulation and rubble in the corner, and neither the floor nor the walls were painted. Even the furniture needed attention, because most of it was salvaged, which is shorthand for “an amazing find, but it’ll eat through an entire package of steel wool and sponges and an afternoon of scrubbing before you can safely use it.” There were also concrete tabletops to build. There would be eleven of them in all, and each would require a bag of dry concrete mix, a gallon of water, and a lot of sweat. Brandon did the mixing by hand, the way he did when he built the oven, and I helped by filling pitchers of water, dumping them into the mix, and cheerleading. When the consistency was right, he’d pat the wet concrete into a mold. The next day, he’d unscrew the sides of the mold, and then we would gently lift out the concrete slab. When it was fully dry, I would smear it with seven coats each of two types of sealant. Then Brandon would wiggle each slab into its own steel frame (thankfully not made by us; that’s what metal shops are for), and then the whole thing would be glued to a piece of plywood, and then the plywood would be screwed to a salvaged table base. After we’d done that eleven times, it was hard to stop doing it, so we mixed a double batch and made a top for the bar.

  Once we’d swept up the concrete dust, it was time to paint. We wanted the restaurant to look minimal but not cold, so we chose a warm white for the walls. No one mentioned that we should consider using a primer to cover the mural of the ships above the front door, so even after four coats of paint, they sail proudly on, toward the dining room and eternity. We disguised them with an acoustic panel.

  I had never experienced anything as consuming as those days. It was as all-encompassing as my post-book letdown had been, but where that was like a fog with no visible boundaries or end, I could at least see that this construction process would stop at some point, even if it wasn’t until the day before we opened. I could do something about the restaurant. I could push it forward. I could move with it. Sometimes I would get a glimpse of what the place might look like in the end, when it was full of noise and people and the oven was full of fire, and it would make me so proud and excited and terrified that I didn’t know whether to grin, or sob, or both. And the afterglow of that feeling would light the way through the dark for a while, until I got a glimpse again.

  * * *

  In late June, my cousin Katie and her friend, Pantea, the team who designed the restaurant, came to help with the final details. As a thank-you, and so that Brandon could get some practice on the wood-burning oven, we cooked dinner for them. Olaiya and her boyfriend came, and Sam, and Ben, and we sat under a row of lights that Katie and Pantea had fashioned from old cider jugs, at a big wooden table that Brandon and I had carried home from Goodwill in the rain three years earlier, thinking that we might someday use it in our dining room. Now it was in our restaurant. Sometime between plating wild arugula salads and slicing Brandon’s pizzas and washing what felt like eight million dishes, I realized that I was having a very good time. We were feeding a roomful of our favorite people, giving them a good night. I felt like a part of the place—the walls, the floors, the old loaf pans we used for storing the silverware. I remembered something that Brandon had said a couple of months earlier, after I had told him that I didn’t want him to open the restaurant, after we had stopped screaming. He told me that even though I couldn’t see it yet, Delancey would embody everything that mattered to us. (Actually, I can’t remember his exact words, and nobody but Steve Urkel whips out embody in spoken English. But that was the gist.) That night in June, for the first time, I believed him.

  The restaurant had taken away what control I thought I had over our marriage and our future, and after I was done denying the fact that there was a restaurant at all, the only thing to do was hang on. I decided to stop thinking so hard. I decided to get in the middle of it. After that dinner in June, I decided to try working in the kitchen at Delancey. It might not be forever, but I wanted to try. I’d been helping Brandon brainstorm the menu, anyway, and I loved that. It made sense for me to be in the kitchen with him. I remember thinking about it for days before I told him. I wondered if his jaw would fall off his face. Oddly, as I was writing this, I realized that I don’t actually remember how he responded, so a couple of nights ago, I asked him.

  “I was happy,” he told me.

  “That’s all?” I said. “Not surprised? Not worried?”

  “No.” He smiled. “Just happy.”

  I would be the opening pantry cook, the garde manger.

  I knew that wherever we went from here, the restaurant was opening, and I wanted to be standing inside of it when it did. If I wasn’t there, I might never understand what it would ask of Brandon, or who he was becoming. Anyway, I was already inside, albeit unofficially: I had sneaked through the door in a hard hat, hiding from my uncertainty about writing, my career, everything I had thought I wanted. The restaurant had offered me a way out of a place that I was stuck in, and I took it. It did exactly what I hoped it would. It did it so well that it eventually brought me back to myself, and that was the trouble.

  FRIED RICE WITH PORK AND KALE

  Fried rice is one of my favorite things to eat, and it’s also a convenient way to use up odd bits that collect in the fridge. We make it often for lunch, both on our ancient electric range at home and in the wood-burning oven at Delancey. The recipe below is intended to serve only as a guide, and you should run wi
th it wherever you’d like, substituting as you go. Here are some tips to help you as you improvise.

  • Instead of kale, try substituting chopped raw chard, sliced fennel bulb, chopped broccoli, snap peas, snow peas, chopped carrot, frozen peas (thawed, if possible), leftover roasted vegetables, or whatever you’ve got. In general, aim for at least one big handful of prepped vegetables per person. And if you’re using frozen peas or leftover cooked vegetables, add them at the end, cooking them just long enough to warm through.

  • We use smoked pulled pork in this recipe, but that’s only because we often have it left over after eating at a barbecue restaurant in our neighborhood. You’re welcome to try any other cooked meat instead: the slow-roasted pork shoulder, or brisket, ribs, hot dogs, hot links, roasted chicken, Italian sausage, steak, cooked bacon, carnitas, pork tenderloin, and so on. Be sure to cut or tear the meat into bite-sized pieces. Or, if you want to use uncooked bacon, go for it: Four strips, chopped, is about right for this amount of rice, and you’ll want to cook it first thing, starting with a cold, unoiled wok. If the bacon gives off a lot of fat as it cooks, pour a little off before proceeding, but reserve about a tablespoon for cooking the vegetables.

  • Or, hey, try using shrimp. As with the bacon, you’ll want to cook it first, before the vegetables. But in this case, get the wok nice and hot, and use some oil. When the shrimp is cooked, remove it from the wok while you cook the rest of the ingredients, and add it back at the end.

  • If you happen to have some fresh ginger in the crisper drawer, try mincing a little and adding it early on, when you cook the vegetables. The same goes for sliced scallions. These aromatics are especially welcome if you’re using a meat that’s on the bland side, like roasted chicken or pork tenderloin.

  • My favorite rice for frying is Calrose, but basmati and jasmine also work. Whatever you use, make sure it’s thoroughly chilled before you begin, and it should ideally be a day old. We often pick up an extra to-go box of rice when we leave our favorite Korean or Chinese restaurants, or when we get Thai takeout.

  • Chopped kimchi is wonderful in fried rice, especially with bacon and a little sesame oil.

  • Few fried rices don’t stand to benefit from the addition of some chopped fresh herbs at the end. I like cilantro and basil, and a little dill can be nice, too.

  • I like to top my fried rice with an over-easy egg, cooked in a separate skillet. (Some people can decently fry eggs in a wok, but I am not one of them.) I also add a spoonful of hot sauce, such as sambal oelek, and a squeeze of lemon or lime.

  1 bunch (about 250 g) kale, preferably lacinato

  3 tablespoons peanut or grapeseed oil

  Fine sea salt, to taste

  2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or to taste

  4 cups (about 600 g) cold cooked rice

  4 ounces (110 g) smoked pulled pork

  1 tablespoon fish sauce, or more to taste

  Unsalted butter (optional)

  * * *

  Wash and dry the kale leaves. Trim away and discard their woody stems, and then chop or tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces.

  Heat a wok or large (12-inch) heavy skillet over high heat. When the pan is hot enough for a drop of water to instantly evaporate, add 1 tablespoon of the oil. Add the kale, and stir to coat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the kale is wilted and beginning to char at the edges, 1 to 3 minutes. Add a good pinch of salt; then taste and adjust the seasoning as needed. Scrape the kale into a bowl, add 1 teaspoon of the lemon juice, and toss to mix.

  With the wok still over high heat, add the rice, and then immediately add the remaining 2 tablespoons oil, drizzling it down the sides of the wok. Stir to coat the rice with oil. Then spread the rice all around the wok, so that as much of it touches the hot surface as possible, and let it cook, untouched, for 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until the rice on the bottom is browned and can be scraped away from the walls of the wok without resistance. Stir well, and then spread it out and let it sit again, untouched, for another 30 seconds to 1 minute. Continue to cook until the rice is evenly hot and browned to your liking. Then add the pork and 1 tablespoon fish sauce, stirring well. Continue to cook until the meat is heated through; then stir in the kale. Add the remaining 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and toss well. Taste for seasoning. If the rice is lacking salt, add more fish sauce, about 1/2 teaspoon at a time. If the flavor is a little flat, try adding 1 additional teaspoon of lemon juice. And if your meat is on the lean side or you find that the rice tastes dry, adding even 1/2 tablespoon of butter can work wonders.

  Transfer the rice to a serving dish, taking care to scrape up any tasty browned bits that stick to the wok. Serve immediately.

  Yield: 2 hearty servings

  13

  It was now July of 2009. We were nearly out of money. I had cleaned out my savings account to pay the rent and buy the point-of-sale computer system. But we were getting close. The construction was essentially done, or as done as it was going to get for the time being. Two members of our construction team (rhymes with “Holly” and “Landon”) accidentally glued an eight-foot-tall chalkboard to the floor in the entryway and had to tease it up with razor blades, and the secondhand acoustic panels still needed to be screwed to the ceiling, the photographs and mirrors hung, and the computer system set up, but we were very close. And we seemed to remember how to cook, which felt promising, since that was the whole point.

  Of course, before you can open a restaurant and legally sell food, you have to pass some inspections. This sounds supremely unexciting on paper, but in actuality, it’s real edge-of-your-seat stuff, because each inspector tells you to do something that contradicts what the previous inspector told you to do. We had to repeat our plumbing inspection three times before passing, because one inspector insisted that we put a doll-sized floor sink on a pedestal underneath the stainless steel prep sink, a nonsensical demand that we nonetheless heeded, only to have the next inspector try to make us remove it. (For the record, it’s still there, dutifully carrying out its purpose: to back up, overflow, and incite panic precisely at 5:01 p.m., as the host is seating the night’s first customers.)

  Then there’s the building code inspection, which, when passed, gives you a very official-looking Certificate of Occupancy to hang on the wall. “Certificate of Occupancy,” however, is no misnomer: it gave us permission to occupy the space, but not to actually cook anything. To do that, we’d have to pass the health inspection, the final obstacle standing between us and opening—aside, of course, from all the other details.

  The first Sunday in July, we had a cleaning party. It was essentially a chain gang, but for public relations reasons, we decided that “party” was a better word. The place had been under construction for seven months, and it was still many layers of dust, dirt, and trash away from being a restaurant. There was no way that we could pass the health inspection without going after the room with a power-sprayer, or its human equivalent. So I sent out an e-mail to nearly every able-bodied person we knew in the city of Seattle, offering beer and greasy junk food in exchange for elbow grease.

  I made a list of tasks, and as our kind, unsuspecting friends arrived, they claimed them. Tara scraped paint and old gummy tape from the front windows. Rebecca detailed the bathrooms. Mohini climbed to the top rung of a ladder and cleaned the pendant lights in the dining room and above the bar. Keaton brought an industrial vacuum from her husband Mark’s metal shop and walked the perimeter with it. Ashley and Gabe sat on the sidewalk out front with a spray bottle of distilled vinegar and wads of steel wool, scrubbing rust from the shelves of a secondhand refrigerator. Myra scrubbed the inside of a secondhand reach-in fridge, and before she left, she took an American Gothic–style portrait of Brandon and me next to the front door, him with a pizza peel and me with a large spoon. It was hot out, and when evening finally came, Brandon, Sam, and I opened a Belgian beer the size of a bottle of wine and sat out on the sidewalk, passing it back and forth.

  The next morning,
Brandon triumphantly called to request the health department inspection. The inspector assigned to our part of town curtly informed him that she was too busy to come. In fact, she would not be scheduling any inspections for a few weeks. After several minutes of begging, Brandon convinced her to give him the number of a guy assigned to a different part of town. This guy, as it turned out, was on vacation. But a couple of days later, he called back, and then, boom, we had a date for our final inspection. He would come the following day.

  On the morning of the inspection, Ben met us at eight, wearing his denim overalls and old sneakers, to help tidy up the last corners and details. The three of us worked until noon, when the inspector’s truck appeared at the curb outside. Ben sneaked out one door as the inspector walked in the other. I paced the bar and tried to look nonchalant while Brandon—who, by this point, was a certified expert in What Inspectors Want to Hear—showed the guy and his clipboard around. We passed. We could now open Delancey. The sun was out, so we got in the car, drove to Ben’s (by this point, walking the half-block seemed too hard), and dragged him to a Mexican restaurant for celebratory midday margaritas.

  The days that followed were a blur of pizza-testing, convection-oven buying, and kitchen-rearranging, and then, on Saturday evening, just as we were wrapping up a long day of errands, Brandon gashed his thumb on a sheet of steel in a home improvement store. I looked at his hand for an instant, just long enough to see a lot of blood, and then I opened my purse, took out a Kleenex, handed it to him, and privately began to hyperventilate.

  Clearly, he was going to lose his thumb. He wouldn’t be able to cook. Why hadn’t we bought disability insurance? Why hadn’t we had his hands insured for millions, the way pianists and hand models do? We were going to lose the restaurant before it was even open. We’d be up to our eyeballs in debt. With no restaurant, no job, and only one thumb, Brandon would fall in with a bad crowd. He wouldn’t come home for weeks. I would cry myself to sleep. One night, high on desperation, he would commit a burglary, and he’d bring the stolen cash to me, promising to come home, to help me pay down our debt. We’ll start over, he’d plead. But the cops would be after him, and we’d have to run. We’d go to Oklahoma City, to my mother’s house. They’d never look for us there. He would live in the attic, and I would tell people that he was dead, and it would be awful, but we would still have each other.