Georgia's Kitchen (30 page)

“Georgia!” a voice called out. “Ciao, Georgia!”

Georgia whipped her head around, her eyes landing on a man sitting at the Oven’s primo corner table. He tossed an espresso cup in his left hand as if it were a Super Ball. “Yes?”

“Luca Santini,” he said, rising from his chair and placing the cup on the table, rim-side down. The top two buttons of his shirt were open, revealing a tuft of shiny chest fluff. His hair was the color of tarnished silver, but he had a full head of it, and he wore it to his collar, parted in the middle, no bangs. He looked like a man who’d been told so many times he looked decades younger than his sixty-plus years that he now believed it. He was dressed like a thirty-year-old investment banker out for a night at the Boom Boom Room.

Georgia stared at him blankly. “Hello. So nice to meet you.” She held out her hand.

“I own this restaurant,” Luca said, staring at her outstretched hand without taking it. “Now does the name ring the bell?” He cocked his head slightly and puffed out his lower lip in a gesture Georgia would soon learn to imitate perfectly.

“Oh, Luca, Mr. Santini, I’m so sorry.” Georgia smiled. “My friend Effie has told me so much about you.”

Luca cocked his head again. He stared at the hand hovering so close to his and, after what seemed like an eternity, grabbed it between his own puffy paws and squeezed. Hard. “Call me Luca. Please have a seat.” He pulled out a chair.

Georgia settled stiffly into the chair, flexing the fingers of her right hand under the table. The imprint of his ring was
embossed on her finger, and Georgia glanced at the mondo diamond shining on her new boss’s pinkie. She tried to remember what Effie had said about Luca and if the word
godfather
played a part in the conversation.

“You made a big impression on that boy, Effie. Aldo, his uncle Aldo, my friend Aldo, says all he talks about is coming to New York to work for you.”

“For me? Oh, you mean here, at the Tuscan Oven.”

“Of course here. Where else would I mean?”

Georgia shrugged. “So what brings you to town? Holiday shopping? Business? Broadway?”

“Oh, a little of this, a little of that. Mostly I’m interested in meeting you.”

“Me?”

The GM had told Georgia that she’d probably never even lay eyes on Luca, who blew through the restaurant with a bevy of blondes every month or so and cared more about replenishing his private wine stash than the state of the restaurant.

“Since you’ve started, I hear the food has really improved. Tickets are up, food costs down. All in, what, two months? You’ve been here two months, yes?”

“Yes. I started in the middle of October.” In two weeks it would be Christmas.

“So, tell me what you’ve done. What you’re doing here at the Tuscan Oven.”

“Sure, Luca. You mean with the food?”

“Unless you’ve painted us some new frescoes I haven’t seen yet, yes, I mean with the food.” He picked up the espresso cup and tossed it in the air again.

“Well, the recipes are good, basic recipes. They just needed some TLC. A little, um, updating, a little more attention paid to the execution, to presentation, and especially to the bottom line.
There’s a lot that’s been going to waste that doesn’t need to go to waste.”

Saving money was always a safe topic with restaurant owners. No one wanted to lose money. An owner could hate the food, the decor, the service, but when it came to saving money, everyone was game.

“The recipes are my nonna’s recipes. Handed down from her nonna, and her nonna’s nonna. We didn’t always live in Bari. If you think they need updating, you go right ahead. But they’ve been making Santinis happy—and fat—for generations.” He patted his belly and smiled, looking, Georgia thought, not exactly like a shark, but certainly sharklike.

“Have you sampled any of the dishes since I came on board, Mr. San—I mean, Luca?”

“Not yet. I’ll be in for dinner tonight with some friends. Ten of us. I’ll let you know what we think. For now I just wanted to meet you, the Georgia everyone talks about.”

“‘The Georgia everyone talks about.’ I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

“I’ll let you know after tonight.” Luca’s cell phone rang, and the espresso cup crashed to the terra-cotta floor. He didn’t even blink.
“Pronto,”
he shouted into the phone. He put it down and turned back to Georgia. “I’m taking this call. Thank you, Georgia.”

Georgia collected her hat and gloves from the chair and walked through the dining room as nonchalantly as she could. If Luca Santini didn’t positively love her food, she was out, Uncle Aldo or no Uncle Aldo.

Pablo, an elegant Spaniard and career waiter, returned to the kitchen and stood in front of Georgia. He was the only waiter who served Luca, and according to Oven lore, he’d once been
forced to cancel his annual trip to Madrid when Luca made a last-minute trip to New York.

“Well?” she asked.

Pablo straightened his tied bow tie—no clip-ons for him—and cleared his throat. “Too soon to tell. I’ll let you know.”

Georgia paced around the Oven’s clumsily configured kitchen, trying not to bump the line cooks. The antipasto and pasta courses—funghi con polenta, zuppa di ceci, and a Neapolitan timbale that had taken forever to prep—had been cleared from Luca’s table, and the waiters had marched into the dining room single file, bearing plates of crispy pollo alla capricciosa, tender arista di maiale, and rich sogliola alla fiorentina.

Daniel, the GM, stuck his head into the kitchen. “Georgia, a word.”

The kitchen ground to a halt. Though the staff didn’t care what happened to Georgia, they certainly wanted to know what happened.

“A word,” Daniel repeated. “Out there. With Luca.”

“You’re kidding.”

Daniel shrugged. “Powder your nose. You’re a little shiny.”

“I don’t carry powder with me in the kitchen, Daniel.”

“You do carry lipstick, I hope?”

Georgia fished in her pocket for her lip gloss and swiped it across her lips. She straightened her chef’s coat and patted her hair down, guessing the frizz factor was a semicontained six. “Of course I carry lip gloss, Daniel.” She strode out into the dining room, her stomach suddenly queasy with déjà vu. Huggy Henderson had asked to see her that last night at Marco. The next day Bernard fired her. Table visits were not Georgia’s thing.

Luca stood as she approached. His party consisted of a handful of bottle blondes and two men who looked like carbon copies of their host, only huskier.

“Georgia,” he said. “The food was wonderful. And the timbale. I haven’t had one in ages. It was as good as my nonna’s.” He kissed his fingertips.

“Thanks, Luca. I’m so glad you enjoyed it.”

His guests murmured their approval. Georgia had the feeling they could have eaten shoe leather and if Luca said it was the best dish he ever had, they would agree, even as they attempted to dislodge bits of charred leather from between their veneered teeth.

“I’ll walk you back to the kitchen.” He took her elbow and steered her to the bar instead. “Drink?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. It’s sort of not very professional of me to sit at the bar and drink during shift.”

“You think you’re going to get fired?”

“I guess not. Good point.”

“John,” Luca said to the bartender. “Two glasses of the Lafite Rothschild. The ’82 you’ve been decanting for me.”

“An ’82?” Georgia said. “I thought those didn’t even exist anymore.”

“They don’t.”

The bartender placed the decanter on the bar and poured the wine into voluminous Yeoward crystal glasses, reserved strictly for Luca’s use. Luca picked up his glass.

“Your friends won’t mind that you’ve left them?” Georgia asked.

“Are you kidding me? Free food, free wine? They’re in heaven, and now that I’m not there, they can actually relax. For some reason I make people nervous.” Luca held up his palms and shrugged. “Do I make you nervous, Georgia?” He cocked his head and pursed his lips.

Georgia considered the question. “Actually, not so much.” It was the truth. She’d worked with much, much worse.

Luca looked slightly disappointed.

“But I can see how you could,” she hastily added. “You know, make someone else nervous.”

Luca chuckled, then held up his glass.
“Salut.”
He took a sip. “I have a question for you, Georgia.”

“Shoot.” After her first sip of the sublime Bordeaux, she hoped he had at least a couple glasses’ worth of questions.

“Why are you wasting your talent here? Of course I’m glad you’re here, don’t get me wrong. But this restaurant, my restaurant, as long as the food is decent, it will make money. The tourists will always come to Rockefeller Center, and they’ll always need a place to eat, a place to splurge when they tire of that Til Friday place.”

“T.G.I. Friday’s.” Georgia drank more wine.

“I don’t need a superstar chef. Which, I think it’s safe to say, you are on your way to becoming.”

“You do?”

“I do. But the question is, Georgia, do you?”

“Superstar? I’m not so sure. I don’t see myself with an empire of restaurants, my name in Page Six or on the food blogs, or forcing customers to eat fifteen-course prix fixe dinners, but I do—”

Luca glanced at her empty glass. “More wine?”

“Just a splash.” Emboldened by the alcohol, she saw her chance. “Look, I may as well be honest with you, Luca. I do intend to open my own place. And hopefully a few more after that. It’s still in the early planning phase, so not anytime really soon. I’m looking for space—”

Luca cut her off. “You have a business plan?”

“Sure,” Georgia lied. If a few scratches in a notebook counted, then, sure, she had a business plan.

“I’m going back to Bari at the end of the week. Get me a
copy of your business plan. I like the way you cook. I like the way you talk. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be able to do some business together.”

“Wow, that’d be—”

“No promises. But I’m always interested in young talent. Youth, talent, and drive are a killer combination. Not to be fucked with, you know what I mean?”

“I guess so,” Georgia lied again.

“And now I must get back to my guests. I’ll leave the wine for you to enjoy, which I see you do.” He motioned to her empty glass and winked. “And don’t forget to get me that plan.”

Georgia emptied the last of the Lafite into her glass and surveyed the nearly empty dining room. One good thing about working at the Oven was that it cleared out early. A much better thing about working at the Oven was having a boss who might be interested in backing her first solo venture, an extremely wealthy boss who wasn’t in the country often. The best investors had deep, deep pockets and lived far enough away that unannounced drop-ins were unlikely. Luca qualified on both counts. Now all she needed to do was produce a kick-ass business plan.

“In five freaking days,” Georgia muttered into her wineglass.

“What was that?” the bartender asked.

“Can I have a Pellegrino, please?”

Though she’d never even read a business plan, let alone written one, she was pretty sure they were chock-full of spreadsheets, endless rows of numbers that somehow painted a picture of a business’s success. A culinary whiz she might be, a computer whiz, not so much. She couldn’t even say for sure that her Mac had Excel.

“Double espresso too, John,” Georgia added. “Actually, make it a triple.” Her green tea days were over.

A
trio of tree gawkers wearing matching pom-pom hats climbed out of a taxi, and Georgia slid into the backseat before the cabbie had a chance to flip on the
VACANT
sign.

“Barnes and Noble, Sixty-sixth and Columbus,” she said.

If she was going to turn around a business plan in five days, she’d need serious help. As her dad preached, when in doubt, make a list. And when that doesn’t work, buy a book. Better still, he’d add, index finger shooting straight to the sky, borrow one from the library. But even her frugal father would have to agree that writing a business plan from scratch, complete with a P&L and cash-flow analysis, terms with which Georgia had only become acquainted after googling
business plan
, warranted an actual purchase.

Coming up with a concept wasn’t a problem. Georgia was full of concepts, some good, some bad, some so bad they were actually good. She and Clem had passed many an evening riffing on the next unpublished-numbered hot spot—one that would be written up in the gossips, host a few fashion-week parties, maybe even throw up a velvet rope before being relegated
bridge-and-tunnel and slipping into oblivion. But that wasn’t what she had in mind for her own place.

Her concept, if it could be called that, was to create the restaurant where she always wanted to eat. The idea was deceptively simple: a stylish, unpretentious space with eighty or so seats; a small, seasonal, market-driven menu, largely American with a Mediterranean influence; nightly specials that ran slightly more experimental; knockout desserts; attentive, friendly service; a well-edited, well-priced wine list; an upbeat, good-time vibe. It sounded like a million other places that had come and gone, and a million more that were barely hanging on, but success was in the execution and the details, and those, Georgia was confident, she could handle.