Dear Feastlings,
The hum is returning. The restaurant is quiet tonight- this whole week, really, but we always expect that of Halloween. The hum of industry, though- the one that dissipates every Mother’s Day and only creeps back around now, when the first frozen nights of the north and the east send our winter neighbors back to live among us in a suddenly inhabitable Tucson- that hum is creeping back. It’s the hum of extra traffic, the hum that the exhaust hood makes when it’s kicked on at 6:00 am to get a breakfast catering out on time. It’s the hum of a staff with something to try and keep up with again, and the hum of the slightly mistuned radio that plays the same songs that spill out of every kitchen radio I’ve known.
It’s also the hum of the inside of my head as I try to ready it all- two interviews today, a stage tomorrow, two no-show stages so far this week of whom one was a new hire yesterday, a menu that begins Tuesday whose ingredients were promised and then denied, a couple more caterings, a failed return of Rye that somehow came in labeled as Cabernet Sauvignon and was somehow accepted and paid for as Cabernet Sauvignon. There’s a wine dinner menu for a private event, one down the road for a public event, a tasting on Saturday and the Thanksgiving menu for pickup. And that infernal radio playing music that irritated me thirty years ago, let alone now.
Somehow, though, it feels like we might accomplish something this year. Enough people have come and gone that some good ones are sure to stick. Some already have, and I can’t thank them enough. Our crew has been rebuilt a hundred times since we opened, but it feels like ninety of those times have happened in the past ten months, so any little glimmer of hope is spellbinding. Wish us luck this week, with the next couple of people who come to stage. Wish us a good cultural fit, adults who care about what they produce and know which end of the knife is the handle and which is the blade. We’ll be grateful for it, and we’ll give back to all of you in spades.
Once again, we’re getting it done in the meantime- the wine tasting is set up,
the Thanksgiving takeout menu is posted and we’re ready to take your Thanksgiving orders,
and with any luck, we’ll get in what ingredients we need to start the November menu on the first Tuesday of the month. If we get that luck you’re wishing us.
Your friends at Feast