Dear Feastlings,
Whether it appears that way to you or not, I’ve been chesting my cards lately. I’ll whine and complain in broad strokes, most certainly, but I don’t spill all the beans, as it were. I won’t give all the gruesome details of the three days running of no-call/no-shows, but I’m apt to guess that while one of them was mere misunderstanding, two were nearly certainly the result of self-medication, and I can’t say that I’ve seen anything approaching this level in my 41 years of hash-slinging, this in an industry that’s been rife with alcoholism and drug abuse for as long as I’ve worked in it.
So new ads get posted today- one for a dishwasher and one for a broiler cook- and we’ll wade through the replies again, schedule a dozen interviews to get four who show up, hire one or two who may or may not show up on day one, and hope that somehow this process nets us more people than we had a month ago, one of them with any luck approaching a level of competence we can work with. And, with any luck, who returns the following day or the following week.
In the meantime, the core crew of Feast who’s stuck it out has been superlative- they’ve covered the shifts of people who’ve fallen by the wayside without complaint, they’ve contributed their skills and their ideas, and kept Feast running all the way into the summer, where we can pause and actually afford not to have a full crew while our nights are punctuated with the stories of guests about to leave or returning from vacations and summer haunts. But we’re back to interviewing again, and the ensuing rituals of staging, hiring, and waiting to see what happens. My kingdom for a broiler cook who shows up for work.
That superlative core crew will be putting it all together for you as if everything behind the kitchen door were normal- there’ll be a wine tasting on Saturday,
and a whole menu of French specials for Bastille Day,
and in between, a new menu for July with, I’m assured by my produce purveyor, an abundance of squash blossoms, which I know will cheer many of you as much as it cheers me. There’ll be more as well, and I’m hoping hard to speed the ripening process for figs over at Mission Gardens. No matter what, though, we’ll have some summertime dishes for those of you who’ve remained in town, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for that elusive responsible line cook, and the dishwasher, and whomever else we suddenly need to replace. Wish us luck.
Cordially,
Doug and your numerous other friends at Feast