The Perils Of A Young Chef Skipping The Line To Celebrity
Stop. Stop right there. I had clearly identified myself and my media outlet to the person taking names at the door, checking all of these “lists.” Point of hospitality number one, frequently ignored by over-the-phone customer service people, but not usually by restaurants: if you’re going to pass a customer off to someone who can better help solve his or her problem, the least you can do explain what’s going on, so the customer doesn’t have to rehash the entire situation.
I calmly identified myself. Again.
“Oh, hi!” he greeted me, identifying himself as the chef’s PR guy, and the person with whom I had done the majority of my correspondence.
“Not everyone was courteous as you were, and responded when we first made the announcement,” he explained. “I know it’s New York and no one really likes to plan anything, so we got all these responses the day of, and had to put them in the kitchen.”
“So let me get this straight,” I clarified for myself, and anyone else who might have been a part of this conversation with me. “The people sitting in there are all people who RSVPed this morning, when we’ve been corresponding about this for two weeks and have an interview lined up?”
Again, he stressed the importance of the chef getting face time with agents and networks. I understood. It was a valid point. They were much bigger outlets than us, and I couldn’t give anyone a contract that might pay back their student loans. Respecting the hustle, I was soothed seeing two granola-looking girls from a magazine in cheerful spring skirts get ejected from their kitchen spots, too; we weren’t the only ones. I mentally quieted my inner curmudgeon (it appears I was born with one of those in place of my inner goddess). It didn’t matter where we sat. I was sure the chef would come out and say hello at some point. I’d find a chance to get to know him a little bit.
We were seated in a dining room where no table had yet to be served any actual food. It was pushing 7:40. The first course finally dropped just as my friend reached a lull in recounting his current emotional entanglement.
“Perfect timing!” he told the waitress. And back to me: “I’ll give you one new chapter of the story with each course.”
He finished the whole thing before the third course would come. At one point, we calculated that they were averaging 52 minutes between courses. And there were to be eight of them.
“You know, if this was Restaurant Wars,” I observed, citing the gold standard of pop-up restaurants, “Tom Colicchio would be cracking skulls.”
