Dear Feastlings,
I’d like to pretend that new menu day begins with a frisson of positive energy, and in many ways, it does. There’s always the freshness of new dishes (pork secreto, for example,) or the occasional return of an old favorite (like warm weather millionaire’s shortbread) to stoke the fires of enthusiasm among the crew.
But it also invariably bumps and sputters as well. The first text this morning began with two apologies, one for texting so early; the other, as my seafood rep bounced and swerved past whatever construction there is on I-10, asking what the best substitution would be for the scallops that weren’t going to be arriving this morning.
Each month, we change eight or ten items or so on the menu here, and each month, there’s a familiar Venn diagram of excitement and mild to grave disaster. Today’s is mild, and scallops have already arrived, albeit not the correct size, handed off by a sheepish seafood salesman who tried not to run into me personally.
I don’t hold him responsible for a second; as someone whose end product- a dining experience- forces him to depend on over forty staff members, a few score of distributors, delivery drivers, warehouse pickers, plumbers and electricians and refrigeration experts, I know as well as anyone else what it’s like to depend on people and circumstance to make it all come together as it should. And I know what it’s like to be the face on an end product whose shortcomings may not be entirely my fault.
I had someone ask me yesterday whether the summer is less stressful than the busy season, and that’s not exactly the case. I’m on my feet for fewer hours, which is nice, but the stress of the frantic attempt to keep up with a busy season is replaced with the stress of the attempt to keep up with bills and payroll while our business shrinks in inverse proportion to the mercury level in Tucson’s thermometers.
So whether my stress-related eating comes from keeping up with the number of catered events or turning tables, or from having saved enough money during the busy season to carry us through the summer, I’m ultimately eating a disproportionate amount of the trimmed edges of millionaire’s shortbread, so I already regret putting it on the menu, and it’s not even 2:00 yet.
All of that said, things have gone pretty well today, apart from the ridiculous amount of shortbread I’ve already consumed. The new menu is in place,
https://www.eatatfeast.com/dining/menus/lunch-dinner/
and we’ve got a wine tasting all lined up for Saturday,
and we’re ordering well in advance the squid ink and osso buco we’ll need for Ferragosto,
so with any luck, there’ll be no gruesome surprises come the Ides of August.
And, with any luck, everyone else will eat the shortbread scraps before I’ve gotten to them. See you soon.
Your pal,
Doug