On some weekend nights Jonah had to wait until twelve forty-five to break down the kitchen, and he kept one burner going even then, in case somebody wandered in late and hungry. The front-of-house staff started to shake itself out—one server quit before he got fired, another hurt his hand and showed up anyhow—and the kitchen kept its rhythm, with Chad and Alyssa to help. One night Antonio, a dishwasher from Empellón Cocina, wandered in to size things up and look for opportunity, told Jonah that he was using the wrong dish soap, and landed a Huertas shift from nine at night to one in the morning on top of the afternoon shift he already worked next door. Suddenly everything got that much smoother; adding Antonio was, Jonah said, “a godsend,” because Lance, the original dishwasher who wanted to cook, was a first-timer whose enthusiasm outweighed his experience.
Grub Street, Eater, and Zagat ran a brief item on the percebes on their websites and caused what Jonah called a “mini-stampede,” which required him to order more of them and turn what was supposed to be a small treat into a temporary big deal. The conserva-and-beer deal was more of a draw than he or Nate had anticipated. He got people who ordered the menu del dia to eat chicken, despite Nate’s reservations, by piling on morel mushrooms and asparagus, as he had planned—and he got them to order a cod entrée, the economical fish equivalent of chicken, by serving it with beets and emergo beans, a large white bean with a creamy texture and sweet flavor.
He didn’t get as many people in the back room as he wanted, though—occasionally a dining-room table sat empty all night, and frequently the ones that did fill failed to turn a second time. Cancellations were still a problem, so much so that Nate endorsed overbooking by 15 or 20 percent, which was about the percentage of no-shows. If they were wrong on any given night, if fewer people bailed and the tables backed up, Nate knew how to finesse a wait.
“I can get out of a sticky situation by smiling and buying them drinks and then they’re impressed with the operation,” he told Jonah. He wasn’t going to leave a party stranded at the bar, as Luke had in the incident that so enraged Jonah, but would find a way to make the wait so enjoyable that people didn’t mind. If the occasional party got irked and gave up, they’d still fill more tables than they were with the current system.
Luke, still smarting from the confrontation over the people he’d left at the bar, found himself reluctant to get in the middle of the debate—his credibility had sustained a sizable dent, or he worried that it had, although Jonah hadn’t brought it up again. Jonah’s silence was difficult to parse. They might be past the incident, or they might not, and Luke felt imbalanced, not knowing. The fact that the staff hadn’t said much in the wake of the blow-up made things worse, somehow.
All of that aside, Luke knew that his perspective on reservations would frustrate both Jonah and Nate, should they ever ask, because it still boiled down to wait and see. Luke simply needed time to be able to figure out how many of the dining-room tables they could hold back, and he thought it foolish to rush into a new plan until they fully understood the existing one.
Jonah agreed on that point: They needed to clarify their reservation policy rather than worry about how to manage the confusion. They didn’t take reservations in the front room, to encourage people to walk in on the spur of the moment. They took reservations in the back, to accommodate people who wanted a more formal dinner and didn’t want to wait for it—but given the current imbalance, he wanted to seat walk-ins in the dining room when there were empty tables and let them order pintxos or raciones from the front-room menu. Jonah didn’t like to see empty tables in the back, not after a party had walked through the crowded, noisy front room to get there. On an off night, the room felt like purgatory. They had to communicate that it was available to people who got discouraged by the wait in the front.
Nate had a solution that he wasn’t quite prepared to share, not yet, because it required them to tinker with Jonah’s basic concept. He thought they might need to blur the distinction between the front and the back menus, not emphasize it, because people just didn’t get it. Other restaurants had a bar room and a dining room—Gramercy Tavern, where Jonah had spent a summer, was one wildly successful example—but when Nate thought about it, front and back at Huertas were “radically different,” maybe too much so to make sense. The front and back at Gramercy Tavern were conceptual siblings, with more casual dishes served à la carte in the tavern room and a set of fixed tasting menus in a more formal setting in the dining rooms. He worried that Huertas was more like two distinct Spanish places cohabiting in a single space. A person in the front couldn’t really cobble together a full meal, and a person in the back couldn’t access the bustle that made the front feel like more fun. Nate was in more of a hurry than Jonah and Luke were to push the issue if the back room didn’t improve, but it was too soon to insist on any kind of official change.
They spent an increasing amount of time trying to figure out how to fill tables, to be one of those places that was booked solid from five thirty until after ten. Some of the most popular restaurants in town simply didn’t take reservations and had elevated the long wait into a bustling outdoor scene, when the weather was good, or a stint at the bar, or even at someone else’s nearby bar, when the weather was bad. They took cell-phone numbers and contacted people when their table was ready—or if a place was too popular to require such niceties, simply took names and left it to the diners to monitor their own progress. A surprising number of people accepted the policy as part of the fun, as reassuring proof that they had made the right choice. Jonah didn’t want to do that. He talked a lot about the “experience” he wanted to provide, which involved making a diner feel cared for but not smothered. A guaranteed and untended wait was not part of his welcoming formula.
Whatever they did, the priority, for now, was to get through a crowded night without any large-scale glitches and hope that momentum carried Huertas through the traditional lull between Memorial Day and Labor Day—or rather, hope that they continued to attract the kind of media attention that sustained the momentum. Opening Huertas, opening any small place that wasn’t part of an existing restaurant group, was like balancing on a set of stones to cross a stream, one step, one mention, at a time. So far they were luckier than many: Just as the May Heatmap expired and Huertas fell off the list for June, Zagat notified Jonah that he’d made the dining guide’s 30 Under 30 list of young industry leaders in New York City. It was a nice nod, but the official announcement wouldn’t come until early July, a potentially helpful coincidence for the midsummer launch of brunch service, useless as long as it had to be kept secret. July was halfway to the other bank, the more secure footing of the post–Labor Day season; they needed coverage in June. Food & Wine was interested in featuring huevos rotos in their “Anatomy of a Dish” feature online, but that wouldn’t run until August. Jonah appeared on a local cable show not because it would necessarily draw a big audience now but as an audition tape to show to larger outlets. He doubted that anyone saw it.
Jonah was invited to appear as one of sixteen contestants on Esquire TV’s Knife Fight, a cable competition show among professional chefs run by Ilan Hall, the Top Chef winner in season two, and accepted with trepidation. If he’d felt he had a choice he would have said no, because there was nothing about it that appealed to him—he didn’t see himself as a performer, winning seemed beside the point, and losing, an unnecessary humiliation. There certainly wasn’t time to make anything that represented what he could do, and even if there were, mystery-box ingredients seemed chosen to stymie, not inspire. The only things the show had in common with his life were knives and raw ingredients and sources of heat, but turning it down was not an option, according to the publicist. When a cable show offered exposure to a chef with a new place, the only acceptable response seemed to be sure, thanks, even though it had the longest lead time of all the opportunities. By the time Knife Fight ran, Huertas would be a year old.
To get more attention now, the pa
rtners came up with two new promotional ideas for June, one authentic, the other an opportunistic nod to the popularity of sports bars. Pintxo pote was a tradition at many Spanish bars—bargain prices on nights that were otherwise too quiet—so Jonah decided to launch his own pintxo pote night on Tuesdays, every pintxo $1, when they usually cost between $2 and $4 each. And on Sundays during the World Cup they’d set up a big-screen television in the dining room to show soccer games, and serve cheap drinks and cheap food in the style of the competing countries, with a Spanish twist: beer or a wine-and-Coke for $3, and dishes like Swiss rosti potatoes with the garlic sauce from Jonah’s papas braviolis for $5.
Both ideas ought to merit at least an announcement on Eater, Grub Street, and some of the smaller local food sites, and the soccer afternoons would help to ease the staff into daytime weekend shifts, in advance of brunch service. That was the far more important announcement: Brunch launched on July 5. Too late, Jonah realized that they may have overdone it, putting out three announcements in barely three weeks. There was nothing to be done—he couldn’t reel it back in—but he worried that bargain pintxos and soccer might eclipse brunch coverage. It was hard to know how much news was enough and not too much.
The challenge was not to think about any of it, since it was too late to fix, but to focus on the day-to-day and the fact that he and Marina were getting married in Sonoma, California, which required him to disappear for five days. Had Huertas opened on any of the opening dates it had missed, Jonah’s long-planned wedding would have taken place after the restaurant had settled in, maybe even after it had been reviewed. He might have stayed away for more than five days including travel time. He and Marina might have had a honeymoon, which was out of the question for at least six months. The best they could hope for, instead, was to be left alone long enough to have a fast good time.
Nate and Luke swore they wouldn’t bother him, Chad had settled into a routine in the kitchen, and Chris was set to arrive the day Jonah left town, and both of them had cooked in far bigger kitchens for many more people, under the kind of pressure that made even a rough day at Huertas look easy. They were there to exude calm, keep the collective spirit high, and maintain standards, all the while being careful not to step on Jenni’s less experienced toes.
• • •
Nate calculated the May figures before Jonah walked out the door and gave him an impressive pre-wedding present: Instead of losing $25,000, which was what they had projected for their first full month of business, they had made $20,000, a $45,000 swing in the right direction. It was exceptionally good news, and they allowed for a moment’s euphoria before they forced themselves into a more sober and businesslike frame of mind. As Luke said, it was always better to under-promise and over-deliver, whether they were dealing with investors or customers. People had come in the first time because of all the media attention, but what if the press so far had been too positive? If it over-promised, if it made Huertas sound even better than it was, people might be disappointed and not come back.
Luke liked to say, “The only way to get a great review is to be great every day,” but they weren’t there, not yet. He also liked to talk about how important it was to be humble, and if they were being humble, they had to ignore the very coverage they were chasing. Publicity was like a business suit one size too big; they didn’t quite fill out their image. It wasn’t that they were making big mistakes. They were inconsistent from one shift to the next—but they were new, that was all, and it could take a while to adjust to the variable of a fresh batch of customers every night. They needed a little time, and the airspace between reality and what people said about them made them hope that the media would neglect them for a couple of days, because they’d never had to operate without Jonah around. They wanted critics to catch wind of Huertas, even as they hoped no one would bother until the chef-owner got back from California.
The first night Jonah was gone, Jacques Torres came into the restaurant with an editor from Bon Appétit. Torres, the French chocolatier who for years had been the pastry chef at Le Cirque, now ran his own stores as well as a Brooklyn factory. He was a welcome guest, predisposed to enjoy himself and happy to acknowledge that he had. At the end of a meal in the dining room he walked over to the kitchen with candy and cookies he’d brought for the staff.
He wanted to meet the chef.
Jenni explained, apologetically, that the chef was in California about to get married.
Then who is the sous?
Jenni said that she was. Chad and Chris might outrank her in terms of experience and pay, but Jonah had told everyone that she was in charge.
“Then if the chef is gone, you are the chef,” said Torres, who instructed her to come out of the kitchen for a photograph, and to stand in the middle of the group, which was where the chef belonged.
• • •
Jenni had wanted to be a chef since she was a kid in the kitchen, like Jonah, although she had a different dream: a little place in Northern California, near her folks, or a food truck, which appealed to her because it represented less risk and more freedom. She could have a life and a family and a food truck. She would have gone straight to culinary school if not for her father’s concerns about the instability of her chosen career, which translated into an attractive offer: He’d send her to college, and if she still wanted to go to culinary school when she was done, she would have had four more years to save money for it. A bachelor’s degree in business sounded like an asset, so she agreed, and once she graduated she enrolled in the two-year associate degree program at CIA’s Napa Valley campus.
She chose New York for her externship, a six-month stint in a professional kitchen, because it would be her one chance to work in what was still the restaurant capital of the United States, the big leagues, and she figured she’d learn more in that competitive environment than she would anywhere else. Six intense months, and she’d return to CIA to finish up her classwork.
Jenni trailed at Maialino and at one other restaurant, and both of them offered her an externship, Maialino at $7.25 an hour and the second place at $11. Her trail at Maialino had both scared her and inspired her, so she said yes to less pay, because the point of an externship was to learn, and $3.75 an hour was hardly the difference between being broke and being rich. When she was done, Nick Anderer offered her a job as a line cook at the $11 hourly rate she would have made as an extern at the other restaurant. One by one, Jonah and the other sous chefs sat her down and said the same thing: You went to CIA to get the job of your dreams. This is the job of your dreams. You could quit Maialino to go back to school to spend another $30,000 to graduate and work someplace that’s not as great as this, a year from now, or you could stay put.
She had an eye for the strategic bet, even if it bore no resemblance to what she had told herself she was about to do, as though having a plan freed her up to think about something that wasn’t part of it, to consider surprise from a safe vantage point. Jenni had never intended to work in New York City and had always planned to return to school, but this was too much of an opportunity to pass up. She told her skeptical parents, “If you’ll pay the next $30,000, okay, but if not, I’m not paying another $30,000 to get the same kind of job I have now. I have my foot in the door at just the kind of place I’d be headed to.” The second-year curriculum at CIA required stints working front of house, which she’d done in high school and college, and banquet class, pastry, and European cuisine, which had little to do with her long-term goals. She could learn more about Italian cuisine at a real job and get paid for the privilege.
Jenni flew out to California, sold her car, packed some of her furniture, flew back to New York, found an apartment, and went to work two weeks later on the garde-manger station plating cold salads and appetizers, with the promise of a move onto the hot line when Nick decided she was ready. Within months she was on the morning hot line, and then morning contorno, cooking side dishes for breakfast and lunch,
and finally the evening shift on the flat-top.
The promotions were heady stuff, and they fed her natural impatience. When Jonah announced that he was leaving Maialino to open a place of his own, she told him to keep her in mind. She let him know every time she moved to a new job, and when she got to a tapas bar he said he was glad she was learning about Spanish food, which was somewhere between a vague expression of interest and a job offer. She knew she was a long shot for anything more than a line-cook position with Jonah, but she also assumed that he couldn’t pay enough or promise enough stability to lure one of his sous chef peers into the kitchen.
Jenni had so far worked at three restaurants that were part of established empires, owned respectively by Danny Meyer, by chef-owner Andrew Carmellini, and by chef Mario Batali and his partner, Joe Bastianich, because she was committed to building her résumé by working for what she called “known” chefs at high-profile places. “I thought I was moving back to California,” was her reasoning, “and I wanted names they would recognize.” But a promotion to sous chef in a big operation could be tough, with so many line cooks clamoring for each post. The smart move might be to move to a smaller place, to “a mom-and-pop, basically,” to add sous chef to her résumé.
Jenni was a bit apprehensive about the added responsibilities—ordering, scheduling shifts, being in charge on Jonah’s nights off, and helping him with hiring and training until she was ready to take over those tasks herself. She worried about the undoubtedly expanded hours—but then, she always worried about something, by her own admission. She said yes when Jonah offered her the sous chef job at a starting salary of $38,000, not huge by the standards of the big places she’d worked at but acceptable because it meant that she was done being a line cook.
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