Seven Weeks In
Three Saturdays ago was exactly one month since we opened, and there hadn’t been a night with under 250 reservations since that night. We were almost to six hundred for St. Patrick’s Eve until a record number of folks remembered what St. Patrick’s day in River North is actually like.
After a very busy third week, my two days off that week had been both partially occupied with work business—writing out by the glass training on that Sunday, after tasting every wine by the glass for the first time at the end of the previous night, and then starting staff wine classes with my colleague Monday.
And then, as the song goes, it was “back to the Madison.” This pallet-sized collection of liquor and wine was left to be dissected two Wednesdays ago:
We finished binning and putting it away three days later.
That was the first Saturday night I hadn’t seriously considered throwing in the towel—new openings are brutal, especially when you go from building out shelving to opening in one week, and then average about four hundred covers a night.
My left big toe felt like it needed to be amputated by the end of that service, but otherwise, a month is a serious bellwether, as a friend recently observed, and I somehow made it that far, and have now survived three weeks hence.
Much to my relief, my new Sommelier colleague had recovered from stomach flu that grounded him the whole previous weekend, so I did not work St. Patrick’s weekend alone, as I had the previous one. Like most rather tenuous situations, it was OK until it wasn’t, but like Senator Warren, I persevered nonetheless.
Over five hundred people is a lot for one person to process, and the sales seem to come in waves. Things can be relatively quiet, and then three big ticket Bordeaux that will need to be decanted can be ordered in a fifteen minute period. Thank goodness we have this phenomenal machine that is a miniature of the big drying turbines at the car wash. It also blows hot air, so flipping decanters is relatively painless. I am obsessed with it.
2.
Now seven weeks in, the space and team are cohering together into an actual restaurant. It’s felt like that all week. I know most colleagues by name, and the collective “fake it until you make it” energy is dissipating as the menu, room and pace of service become more familiar to all of us.
I can now recognize the best-selling bottles by number, we have two bottles of each selection stored at the proper temperature, and the freight elevator to our fourth floor storage cage that was broken for two weeks is fixed.
No more running up three floors multiple times a night, and the wine refrigerators are organized enough so that servers can pull their own bottles if necessary.
Beyond the logistical, the development of trust and solidarity among coworkers is happening. A sense of who you can lean on if necessary, whose sense of humor you jibe with and everyone’s general capabilities under stress.
During the week especially, the number of guests is less excessive, and this means the weekend business feels like a natural step up in the pace, not like another starting gun when the whole apparatus is dragging.
3.
One somewhat “interesting” aspect of this particular job is how people understand and approach the person they buy wine from in a restaurant considered the hot new thing.
Up until now, selling wine has never been my only job during service, as I’ve always worked as both a Wine Director and General Manager (in smaller spaces that compressed both jobs into one) and I would be as likely to have sat a table, brought them food or checked in with them prior to delivering myself table side as a presumed authority on the wine list.
People seem to have a mixed amount of comfort with the purported “authority,”and “expertise”of their Sommelier at this moment in time, to put it gently.
Those with some familiarity with dining out in general tend to see me or my colleague as an ally. We have spent more time with the wine list than they have, have tried a reasonable number of the wines, and can help presumably narrow down the best choice for a particular evening, based on what they expect to order, the tastes of their guests and what price range is desired.
However, given a general unfamiliarity with the French wine milieu among American wine drinkers, I often find myself an uncomfortable sort of translator of French wine for people who really just wish they spoke the “language” themselves, and who might even resent my supposed “fluency.”
“Here’s the Somm,” one tipsy woman said flippantly when I came over to their table, as if I’d shown up to her family reunion driving an ostentatious vehicle. She then observed that “you kinda look like a Wes Anderson character.” She did not mean it as a compliment.
(What could possibly say Wes Anderson about this particular outfit in an antique freight elevator?)
Then there are incoherent requests, like “I want a big French Pinot Noir that’s low in acid.” (Burgundy’s cooler climate encourages the development of heightened acidity and does not produce “big” wines in the California style.) Pointing this customer to the relatively lower acid level wines of Bordeaux was as fruitless as expected. She sampled the wine, made a face like an animal in a reaction meme and then said “Uh! Too acid!”
Childlike behavior is even observed: a man quite clearly capable of speech clutched his wine glass to his chest to prevent me from pouring him more, and the next time I tried to pour him some wine, he physically pushed my hand away without speaking a word like a feral orangutan guarding its fruit.
4.
Opening any restaurant is a giant leap of faith. Opening a giant one is an even bigger one. Our group opened the progenitor of this restaurant in midtown NYC in 2020, so they are capable of the impossible, but with any opening, there are always the same questions to be asked: “Will people come? Will they continue coming? Will they order wine?”
So far, yes. I’m counting the days until week eight, when my health insurance kicks back in. My chiropractor was throwing massage appointments at me I had no time to attend until my insurance stopped at the end of February. Knowing what my PT cost with insurance I do not even wish to ask what my appointments would cost without it.
I’ve averaged twenty-seven flights a day this week and walked seven miles on the floor on Saturday, so it is safe to say it is not really less physical working as a Sommelier in this particular setting than bartending was.
I can still work frozen muscles out with my PT ball on our far too comfortable yoga mat (all I want to do is sleep when I sink into its embrace), but my back could use an adjustment, and between the time change and my in-time being all over the place, I basically have jet lag right now.
5.
The last two days have been mildly restorative. I’ve collaged a bit, we took a walk and I mustered enough energy to finish this essay.
For the moment that will have to suffice.