Service Included

by Phoebe Damrosch

  “Does your family drink wine?” I asked him.

  “Does white Zinfandel count?”

  His cousin worked in restaurants, but that was about it for food and wine interest in André’s family. His mother and his stepfather were both in the military and they had moved frequently, all around the country, to Germany, and finally to Texas.

  “So how did you learn about wine?”

  “From reading,” he said. “And from other wine lists. I used to call restaurants and ask for a copy of their list. Then I would spread them all out on the floor and see which bottles they all had. Those were the ones I wanted to try.”

  I wasn’t paying attention. I was silently narrating the potential downfalls of our potential love affair, besides his involvement with someone else. Military? Uh-oh, his mother would hate my politics and forbid him to see me. He played basketball in high school? Uh-oh, I could not date someone who watches the game when there is brunch to be had. Moved a lot as a child? Uh-oh, he’s well traveled but potentially unstable. Self-taught? Uh-oh, possible workaholic. Eventually, the conversation came back to the restaurant and the topic on everyone’s mind: the arrival of the New York Times reviewer. It was only a matter of time, we mused. André and I mused together frequently now, standing side-by-side so we could watch our tables as we whispered.

  When I looked across my pint at André and listened to him segue from Burgundy to basketball to restaurant critics, I had one thought: Uh-oh. I refused to believe in The One, but this was certainly A One. He was also not a Suitable One, given the fact that he was in management and living with my coworker. When we left the bar and stepped back into the afternoons we had planned for ourselves, I envisioned a train leaving a station. The wheels had only barely budged, but if they gathered any more speed, there would be no stopping them. Eyes on the prize, I told myself: four stars.

  THE SECOND MAN in my life was Frank Bruni, the new critic from the New York Times. In a rare moment of generosity, competing restaurants shared old pictures of the critic that were then posted behind host stands around the city with the caption “Have you seen this man?” God help the host who seated him at a less-than-desirable table by the door, the kitchen, or a busy service station.

  In New York, a city that considers itself to be the center of the culinary—if not the whole—universe, the only restaurant review that means anything at all is that of the New York Times. In Paris, there are at least three sources that determine the fate of hotels and restaurants, all of which are rated by an anonymous group of reviewers who visit multiple times over the course of a year. Le Guide Michelin rates on a scale of three stars, Mobil Travel Guide rates with five, and Relais et Château simply adds the chosen restaurant to its exclusive list.

  Like receiving a star from the New York Times, gaining a Michelin star means a dramatic increase in business and respect from one’s peers, while losing one can be a serious blow to the heart and the cash register. In February 2003, amid rumors that his popular Côte d’Or restaurant in Burgundy would be demoted from the highest rating of three stars to two, Bernard Loiseau committed suicide, leaving the restaurant in the hands of his widow and three small children. This tragedy awoke the world to the pressure under which these reviewing systems put chefs and restaurant owners. The Michelin Guide came out with its first American edition in the fall of 2005, Relais et Château already ranked American establishments, and outside of New York, Mobil Travel Guide stars are quite a respected rating system. But within New York, it is still the Times that has the say.

  André and I discussed the arbitrary star system one night after work. After the biodynamic wine tasting, we began to meet at the Coliseum, the bar where all of our coworkers convened. Soon we were sneaking off on our own. Some illicit lovers frequent cheap motels; we frequented cheap dive bars where we were sure to know no one. On one such occasion, we tackled the star system and decided to come up with a stars-for-dummies explanation for our friends and family who had no idea what all this excitement was about. I suggested that we liken the star system to sports, which people seemed to understand and enjoy. André helped me with the details. The four-star restaurants would be the pros; all respectable foodie fans keep up on new developments. Three stars would be college teams; well known but without the glitz of the pros. Two stars are local teams—maybe from our home state or small college; these are our go-to restaurants, places with good food, a casual vibe, a place where everybody knows your name. One stars and no stars are the high school teams; at best they have heart, at worst we check the clock every few minutes to see when it will be over.

  Beginning on June 1, the eyes of New York’s foodie fans were on Frank Bruni and the pros. Would Mr. Bruni, eager to prove himself stringent but fair, demote any of the four-star restaurants? Five restaurants held such distinction in the city, and all but one were French: Jean-Georges, Le Bernardin, Daniel, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, and Bouley. And even though David Bouley was American, his dishes and techniques were French.

  Unlike William Grimes, Bruni’s predecessor, whose preferences and eccentricities were common knowledge, Frank Bruni was a mystery. We knew only that he had been stationed as a political reporter in Italy for the past few years and had written a book about George Bush. Would he like to be coddled or left alone? Did he prefer an underemployed actress with a good heart as his waiter or a stodgy Frenchman with a serviette draped over his immobile arm? Window table or something overlooking the dining room? California Chardonnay or white Burgundy?

  Between the retirement of William Grimes and Mr. Bruni’s first review, Amanda Hesser had acted as the Times’ s temporary critic. She later came to Per Se, presumably not writing a review herself, but one could never be sure. We were almost positive it was her, but it was her husband, the famously reluctant “Mr. Latte,” who gave her away. I had read her book about their courtship, Cooking for Mr. Latte, and she had described his pained look perfectly. Former New York magazine reviewer Gael Greene and former Times reviewers Mimi Sheraton and Ruth Reichl dined at Per Se as well. During each of their tenures, they had different styles but were all known for taking great precautions to disguise themselves. Would Mr. Bruni attempt the same? William Grimes had come to my last restaurant without a disguise. He tasted almost everything on the menu under the scrutinizing eye of hidden restaurant cameras linked to a wall of screens in the kitchen. Every move was analyzed by the managers and chefs with eyes glued to the screens as well as by one of the owners, who peered out from behind a newspaper from across the room where he was pretending to dine.

  To be fair, the job of a critic is grueling and heavily scrutinized. Few readers would pretend to be more qualified than experts reviewing, say, Supreme Court verdicts or new discoveries in astrophysics, but in terms of food, they all consider themselves experts. But it is one thing to dine out a few times a week; eating out seven to ten times a week is another. When the average diner encounters lukewarm spaghetti and rude service, he makes a mental note never to return. When a critic experiences such trauma, he not only returns, but suffers through the entire menu over multiple visits and forces his friends to suffer along with him. Imagine the invitation: “Would you like to have dinner with me at the worst restaurant I’ve been to all year? I’ll pay….”

  Still, at Per Se in the summer of 2004, empathy for the misunderstood and overworked critic was the last thing on our minds. Every day in our preservice briefing, we heard a variation of the same terror-inducing speech: Every table should be treated as a critic. Of course, for a while there it really felt as if there was a critic at every table. But we soon began to joke with one another. “Bruni’s in your section tonight!” “No way, I saw him on table seven.”

  AND THEN, SUDDENLY, he was on table seven. We had expected him at any moment, and still he managed to show up when we were least expecting it. He was slightly thinner than his picture suggested, but he had the same brown hair parted conservatively to one side, the same brown eyes. He was wearing a plain suit. In short
, he had nailed the everyman look. Unfortunately, we spotted him after Patrick had taken the order—on his first official day as captain. This was not a recipe for success in the eyes of management. However, since Patrick had already taken the order, there was no way to move a more experienced captain to that section without arousing suspicion, so he finished out the table. Any eyes not on Mr. Bruni were on Patrick.

  Managers hovered in the shadows and hid behind the flower arrangements; maître d’s paced the dining room trying to seem busy. Since we had nothing to go on, it was hard to know whether to read Mr. Bruni’s reserve as his personality or whether we should assume that he was having a miserable time. Or maybe he was also a little nervous; after all, this would be one of his first big reviews.

  Despite the stress, Patrick was magnificent. He even cracked one of the sarcastic jokes he had become famous for at the restaurant. Earlier in the meal, someone at the table was served the rabbit rillette and it didn’t go over well. Besides mullet and the bizarre sorbets our pastry department concocted, the rillette was one of those dishes that people felt strongly about. Some people requested it as soon as they sat down, others found it dry, stringy, or salty. Mr. Bruni’s table fell into the latter camp, causing much anxiety throughout the kitchen. When Patrick arrived four courses later to serve dessert, the mood was still a little stiff. Patrick’s role in this course was to pour warm chocolate over a generous scoop of orange-scented vanilla ice cream. After a few seconds the chocolate would harden into a shell, much like a creamsicle, for which the dish was named. In the silence that accompanied his practiced drizzle, Patrick commented that perhaps he should have done this to the rabbit. There was a pause, the table erupted into hearty laughter, and a collective sigh rang throughout the restaurant. One visit down, at least two more to go.

  It seemed everyone had a different theory about when Frank Bruni would come back. He would come on a Sunday, since that is often the chef’s night off. He would visit twice, back-to-back. He would wait a few weeks between and see if we improved. He would have to come for lunch. He wouldn’t bother with lunch. He was planning to get the review done as soon as possible. He would try to delay until the fall when readers came back from vacation. I have to believe that such speculation occurred on the floor as well as off.

  All restaurants have ways of knowing when a critic is coming. There is the tip-off—from any number of sources in the know. There is the sighting—sometimes by the staff, sometimes by a fellow diner who happens to be in the business. In fact, managers and maître d’s are even known to show up at one another’s restaurants when a critic has been spotted so as to know whom to look for in the future. Often, a restaurant has a record of phone numbers and, when suspicious, can check to see if a certain number has been used before.

  If someone is asking a lot of questions, that is always a sign. Adam Platt, of New York magazine, was notorious for this and actually made one of our best runners cry when he asked not what was in the dish (which she knew by heart), nor the source of the ingredients (the purveyors of which she knew by name and possibly by face), nor where the china was from (which she could point out on a map). According to the runner, he asked what our escargot ate.

  Another fairly unpopular critic arrived for a ten o’clock reservation having already had dinner. He and his guests took one bite of each dish, including the salmon cornets, and pushed the plates away. After about two courses, we not only knew who he was, but knew where we’d like to tell him to go.

  We did have some new information: Mr. Bruni had flown out to California and dined at the French Laundry. Laura recognized him while he and his guest had champagne in the garden before being seated. Chef Keller, who still spent most of his time in California, offered to prepare a special menu, and he accepted. We had expected Mr. Bruni to visit the French Laundry for research purposes, but would we suffer for it? Could we even hope to compete with Thomas Keller in the kitchen, a team of ten-years’-seasoned staff, and a garden filled with hummingbirds and blooming summer flowers? We began to strategize for the next visit.

  BY ONE MEANS or another, we tentatively expected Mr. Bruni the next time he came. There was some debate about who should wait on him. Should it be someone who had experience from the French Laundry, or someone at Per Se? The diva inside of me desperately wanted the table. I loved those high stakes, the sense of performance, the feeling that what I did really mattered. A larger part of me got cold sweats whenever I thought about it. Finally, it was decided that Michael, who had spent time at both restaurants and had waited on Mr. Bruni in California, would take the table. When I arrived at work that day, the director of operations called me into the small private room at the end of the main dining room. Through the big glass window, I saw the other captains eyeing us as they set up their tables.

  “I am going to cut to the chase,” he began. “We want you to backserve for Michael on the Bruni table tonight.”

  My heart sank. This was the worst of both worlds—all the tension and none of the fun. Not only did I hate backserving, I had not worked the position in a while and was terribly out of practice. Immediately a collage of potential mishaps flashed in my mind, dumping the entire breadbasket on the carpet, pouring water all over the table, marking the wrong silverware, or just getting behind and lost. Having accomplished all of these quite recently, my fears were far from irrational.

  “I don’t know…I am really out of shape for this. Are you sure you don’t want Mona to do it?” I considered my friend Mona to be the best backserver, much more polished than I would be.

  After a moment, I took a deep breath and agreed. The rationale for my being the backserver was that I would observe Mr. Bruni and get to know his style and particularities before I took the table the next time. When that happened, I would be welcome to choose whomever I wanted as my backserver. Mona went over the markings for the most recent canapés, reminding me which needed an oyster fork or a chilled bouillon spoon, which meats required serrated knives, the names of all the breads—all things I had stopped paying close attention to. I reviewed the frenching technique that I had practiced for hours when I first took the job, holding two spoons together like tongs and carefully stacking thin pieces of the walnut bread we would serve with the cheese course onto a bread plate.

  Mr. Bruni did come that evening. He sat with another food writer we also recognized and two other friends. He showed up later than his guests in tinted, plum-colored oversized glasses straight out of the late 1970s. He hadn’t shaved in at least a week and looked a little like a Williamsburg hipster, minus the $200 jeans and trucker hat. We were amused but not fooled. I liked that this was the disguise he had chosen and that he took off the glasses after a few minutes when it was clear that everyone knew who he was.

  They were right; marking every course, pouring water, and clearing plates gave me a good sense of Mr. Bruni’s personality. Unlike some reviewers, who seem to start each meal with the attitude that they should be convinced to have a good time, Mr. Bruni came to the table as if ready to have a good time and inviting us to make it happen. Much to the relief of J.B., the chef de cuisine, he agreed to an extended menu just as he had done at the French Laundry. This way, if he were comparing the two restaurants, at least it would be a fair comparison—that is, if I didn’t dump a bowl of soup in his lap. With the hopes of doing such a menu, J.B. had prepared a chart beforehand. It was divided into four columns for the four guests, each row having different preparations of each course. They would begin with four chilled soups (four chilled bouillon spoons), followed by four preparations of caviar (four mother-of-pearl spoons, an oyster fork for the pickled oyster, and an iced teaspoon with a long, thin handle to scoop our apple granita), and so on. They must have had twenty or so courses and close to eighty different dishes.

  I have heard reviewers talk about how they make notes while at a restaurant. Some have a hidden microphone, others a hidden pad. I remember one saying that he divided the responsibility of remembering certain courses among h
is guests. Mr. Bruni had yet to figure out how to navigate this and got up between almost every course, clearly going to write it all down in the bathroom. This was a nightmare for the kitchen, because we never delivered food to a table when one person was up. It was also imperative that the food be perfect, meaning that many times they would have to start from scratch. The night of his second visit, eager to make up for the rabbit rillette incident, the kitchen prepared a degustation of rabbit, featuring a tiny rack with three toothpick-sized bones and a kidney the diameter of a dime. Corey, the sous chef, was working the meat station that night and was just placing a single leaf of chervil between the ribs when a runner came into the kitchen.

  “Table three is up!”

  Everyone swore and threw up their hands before quieting down and waiting in anxious silence, their eyes shifting from the clock on the wall to the plate of rabbit that was growing colder by the minute. Minutes passed as Mr. Bruni madly scribbled away in his stall.

  “Replate,” J.B. finally called, pushing four perfect plates in the direction of the dish station with a growl of frustration.

  “Table three is back!” exclaimed the panting runner who had been assigned to be the eyes in the dining room.

  “Perfect,” J.B. responded with forced calm, knowing that it would be minutes before he could get another rabbit out. This happened not a few times over the course of the evening. And then everyone crossed their fingers, hoping another guest wouldn’t find it an optimal time to go make a call, have a smoke, or write a novella in the bathroom.