Generation Chef (19 page)

First she had to retire the debt, though, and the only way to do that was to cut her limited expenses ever further. She would go back to Southern California, move back with her mom in the house where she grew up, and find a job so that she could start to dig herself out.

Alyssa made up her mind in September but didn't tell Jonah because she didn't want to undercut morale with the
Times
review at stake. When she did quit, after the review came out, she would reassure him that this wasn't the standard two weeks' notice. She wanted service to be steady. She'd stick around until mid-January.

It was the right thing to do, she knew it, and yet it was hard to see past the debt, hard to stay positive about having a little place of her own.

“I'm not even sure I'll continue cooking,” she said, the exhaustion talking. “But then, I don't know anything else.”

H
uertas Gets Tapas Right and Set Menus Wrong.”

Eater's two-star review went up at twelve thirty on Tuesday afternoon—or rather, the headline went up, linked initially, incorrectly, to the earlier review by Robert Sietsema that had enabled Jonah to put the word “superb” up on the Huertas website. The word “Wrong” in the headline implied that Ryan Sutton had found fault with something, but probably nothing of consequence, not with two stars attached. They were halfway to Nate's stated goal for the day, two stars from Eater and two from the
Times
. While they waited for the right review to appear, and wondered what cranky comments Ryan Sutton might make about the back-room menu, Nate focused on the stars and walked over to shake Jonah's hand. Stars lasted, while details faded away.

“Great job,” he said.

Then the new review appeared.

“My companion sighed when I announced we were ordering the five-course menu at Huertas, an ambitious young Basque spot in Manhattan's East Village. ‘You mean we all have to get the same thing?' Indeed,
the same thing. There are no real choices, not in the back room of this pintxos bar. And therein lies the problem.” Sutton mentioned in passing the “stunning array of affordable hors d'oeuvres and preserved fish” in the front room before returning to his central complaint, “an expensive incongruity” of lamb sausage with lamb leg on the fixed menu.

“Sometimes, lack of choice ends up working against the consumer,” Sutton wrote. “This is one of those times.”

The upshot, for Eater readers: Visit the front room, a “smoky, sexy wood-fired affair,” and avoid the dining room.

Anger was pointless, even though it was Jonah's instinctive response, heartily seconded by Nate. Why review the menu del dia if you reject the concept? What's the point of complaining about the framework when you should be talking about the food? Readers didn't care if the people who accompanied Sutton chafed at the menu format. He should have spent more time on the food and less on the template, and let readers decide for themselves if they wanted to give it a try. The review surely would have been more positive if he had.

•   •   •

The staff went through the
motions of afternoon prep like zombies, slowly, because they all had their cell phones out and had to stop every two minutes to hit “refresh,” which made it difficult to walk quickly, carry anything, or work near flames. No one knew exactly when the
Times
review would post. In the meantime, they worked hard to construct a comforting rationale that would enable them to dismiss the Eater review as an aberration. The
Times
was going to be the definitive judgment. It had history, decades of being the make-or-break opinion, and it had a week's run. Eater coverage would be obliterated by new coverage before the weekend. The
Times
review was the product of three visits over a month's time, not thrown together in a week.

Having been spurned by Eater, the Huertas staff had no choice but to find fault with it—either that or consider the grim possibility that Sutton's was the first vote in a unanimous day.

People at the
Times
already knew the verdict—random copy editors, fact-checkers, digital staff, none of them with any vested interest in the outcome, while at Huertas, the clock seemed to be slogging through mud.

The cooks cut vegetables in a syncopated rhythm interrupted by phone checks, assembled their mise en place, pretended to care about family meal, and didn't talk much. The front-of-house staff readied the tables and checked the glassware and flatware for spots, and refreshed, and waited, and refreshed again. Jonah and Nate repeated their public position, glad that they'd kept their stated expectations lower than their private hopes: No stars was almost surely not a possibility. They'd be proud of one star, or at least they said so, and thrilled by two. Jonah reminded himself of what Danny Meyer had told the Maialino staff when that restaurant got two stars: A casual place ought to be thrilled with two. Three was often a curse, because people regarded three-star restaurants as having somehow fallen short of four.

Jonah had another set of numbers in his head, which he tried to ignore: forty covers in the dining room a week earlier, but only six on Tuesday and ten on Saturday. They were nowhere near stable. Whatever number of stars they got, it needed to be enough to make a difference.

•   •   •

Nate figured that
he must have refreshed his phone three hundred times, and by late afternoon he found it hard to cope. He went outside to call his younger brother and confessed that he was so nervous he was having trouble breathing—as people inside suddenly started to shriek. He refreshed his phone again.

Two stars. A
Times
Critic's Pick. “A Serendipitous Trip to Spain.” He darted inside.

It was not a solid two-star but a great two-star. People blurted out phrases as they got to them, too excited to calm down and read the review start to finish, as though no one else had a phone or knew how to read. The narrative, which started with Wells's frustration at the long wait at his intended destination, built in a crescendo of happiness:

“This kitchen knows where to get the good stuff,” he declared, after a serving of Iberico ham.

“From the front door to the table, our service had been proactively friendly and enthusiastic,” this, after Nate had warned the front-of-house staff that Wells rarely singled out service.

He ordered huevos rotos. “It was gone in 30 seconds.”

And, “The way this night went was that by the time the other restaurant called, we didn't want to leave.”

He was kindly disposed by the time he tried the tasting menu, so much so that he cut Jonah some slack for the garlic shrimp, not as sweet or firm as they should be, but, he was sure, “an anomaly; in general, the cooking at Huertas stands out for its pure, fresh flavors.”

He pronounced dessert “a dream, a round and closely packed little goat-cheese cheesecake with a topping of candied almonds instead of a bottom crust. More tangy than sugary, the cake took beautifully to a sauce made from ripe nectarines.” If he didn't get around to Jonah's crispy Concord grapes, it hardly mattered. Nothing mattered except the pendulum swing from a cranky Eater review to what felt like a rave from the
Times
.

The summary toward the end of the article made everyone dizzy with joy: “This night and a later one made it clear that dinner in Huertas's back room ranks among the best deals in town, up there with the
how-do-they-do-it bargains at Contra and Delaware & Hudson. Mr. Miller shapes his menus so skillfully that it's hard to imagine wanting more.”

It could not have been any better; that was the quick consensus as the phones began to ring and people shouted out more lines from the review and texted it to everyone they knew. They scoffed at the Eater review, buried now under an avalanche of intelligent praise, as they repeated “among the best deals in town” and “it's hard to imagine wanting more.”

Jonah clung to the routine of getting ready for service as though it were an anchor, as one by one people came over to congratulate him, clap him on the back, try for an awkward hug. He'd been holding it together for weeks, for months, and he had to measure out his relief carefully so that it didn't swamp him. Happiness seeped in, in increments. His mouth relaxed into an almost goofy smile, and his shoulders no longer sat quite so tight, as though protecting him from the possibility of bad news. His usual slump was powered now by delight. He could relax, a little bit.

Nate was less moderate about celebrating. He put Queen's “We Are the Champions” on the sound system and cranked the volume way up, as everyone reeled around the room like pinballs, bouncing from one squealing embrace to the next, unable to hold still. They sat down, they stood up, they checked their phones for more congratulations, and then they read the review over again. It was impossible to read it too often.

Jonah and Nate agreed: It would have been a three-star review if they had linen tablecloths and a slightly more polished air, which made it the best possible review. It read better than any two-star they could recall, and it avoided the raised expectations, and almost certain letdown, of a three-star.

And then it was almost five thirty. They had to peel themselves off the ceiling and get to work.

Nate grabbed the short wine tumblers and poured an inch of cava, a sparkling Spanish wine, for everyone at the lineup meeting—which today included not only the front-of-house staff but the cooks and the prep cook and Juan, who rarely got to leave the basement prep kitchen these days, between butchering and prep and maintenance work. It was Jenni's day off, but Alyssa called and put her on speaker so that she could share in the good news.

By now Wells had tweeted the review to his seventy-four thousand followers, and Nate gleefully recited the message: “How I fell into @huertasnyc and why I didn't want to leave,” with a link to the story.

“I couldn't be happier with you guys right now,” said Jonah. “It's a victory for everyone. He didn't just love the food but the experience. And special thanks to Jenni and Nate.”

Alyssa held her cell phone up.

“She can hear you,” she said.

“Hi, Chef,” Jenni yelled, ignoring his rule about calling him Jonah.

“Now I'm self-conscious,” he said. He raised his glass. “I'm sure this will taste better with two stars.”

With that, everyone went back to work.

One of the hosts consulted the reservation list and smiled.

“The two parties that canceled tonight are going to regret it,” she said.

•   •   •

The party started
before the party started. Nat, the long-ago bar mitzvah boy who had taken Jonah to Chanterelle and worked alongside him there and at Gramercy Tavern, showed up early with a friend who was a wine purveyor. Jonah's parents arrived—and because it was a quiet Tuesday in the dining room, Jonah and his dad had time to stand at the pass and pick apart the San Francisco Giants baseball game. Nate circulated with an empty wine bottle, had every staffer sign the label, and
wrote the date and drew two stars on it as well. The publicist came by with an instant revisionist analysis, all the better for making sense: She was glad the Sutton review had run today, because the
Times
had overshadowed it.

“Three weeks from now it would have been of concern,” she said. “Today it evaporates.”

Stew dismissed the review altogether because Sutton had referred to an almond cake, when in fact it was an apple cake.

“Sloppy,” he said.

There were already five cases of beer downstairs, stocked in advance in optimistic anticipation of a celebration party that would begin as soon as they could close up the kitchen, and a growing number of champagne bottles from friends. For once, they wished for an early, sparse crowd in the dining room so that they could get around to having a good time, fast. They had that luxury, now that they knew the slow times were about to end.

Nate surveyed the busy bar, which was always good on Tuesdays because of the $1 pintxos. Life, he figured, was about to be better than this all the time.

“I am ready for the burn every single day,” he said. “Enough of this boredom.” He glanced at Jonah, who was concentrating on the plates in front of him, and leaned over the pass.

“I'm waiting for you to smile, man—jump over the pass,” said Nate, bouncing up and down on his toes. Jonah kept plating the five dishes in front of him. The review was a thrill, but he had his eye on the opportunity it presented, which was to convince a raft of new diners to put Huertas on their short list. Pete Wells had done what he and Nate could not, though not for want of trying: He'd filled up the back room, at least for the foreseeable future: They started the day with only eight
reservations for Wednesday night, but by the time they finished with Tuesday's dinner service they were up to twenty-seven.

Jenni blew in just before nine thirty, happy to sacrifice her night off for a party, carrying a rectangular two-layer Duncan Hines chocolate cake with Duncan Hines chocolate frosting and crumbled Oreos between the layers and homemade cream cheese frosting on the outside. She threw an apron on over her dress, filled a large pastry bag with more chocolate frosting, and made space for herself at the pass, opposite Jonah.

She held the bag poised over the cake.

“I'm going to write ‘Thank You to the Staff,'” she told him. “Anything else?”

He smiled. “'Four stars in one day?'”

Jenni piped a star and realized that it was too big to fit four in a row, so she grabbed a spatula to lift it off just as a server bumped into her, damaging the top of the cake. She slathered on more frosting to cover the mess and started over.

“It has to be perfect,” she said.

She tried again and got closer, but the final star slid over the edge of the cake like a Dalí clock, so she swiped all of them off again and refrosted the top. On the third try she got it: four stars in a row with “#AllDay” under them.

Luke arrived carrying a bottle of champagne and wearing a suit, his new uniform as an assistant general manager at Quality Meats, a midtown steakhouse owned by the restaurateur who had created the original TGI Fridays and his son—just as Jonah and Nate decided that nine forty-five was late enough to stay open and closed the front door. Jonah walked up to the bar to pour himself a glass of vermút while everyone else broke down the kitchen in triple time. He looked at his cell phone for the first time in three hours. Twenty-five e-mails and four text
messages; not that many, he thought, but then, everyone he cared about was at Huertas.

The servers set up the dining room for drink service, as Jonah dispatched his final responsibility of the evening, the only unpleasant consequence of the
Times
review, given his feelings about public speaking. He stood on a chair in the front room as everyone clapped and yelled, and announced, “I'm going to regurgitate my speech from opening night,” which he did. He had wondered who would be there when he opened. He had allowed himself to wonder, too, who would be there when he got this first great review.