Books |
Turning Tables
Heather and Rose MacDowell
By
Published: Jan 01, 2008
Category:
Fiction
One of my friends once had every job imaginable in a three-star restaurant. On the side, she worked parties for the mega-rich. Now she’s married and socializes with the Upper East Siders she used to serve. Sometimes they look at her, as if to say, “I know you from somewhere.” And she is so tempted to help them out with this showstopper: “I boned your fish.”
I love this story because it illustrates the reality of social mobility in New York. Buy me three single malts, and I’ll reel off half a dozen Manhattan women who started as waitresses, then parlayed the right looks, flashing wit and tolerance for the wealthy into massive social upgrades — they’re now social figures, with bold-faced names.
The moral would work nicely for Balzac: You just never know who your waitress is. Or can be.
So when I felt like reading some froth, my hand lingered on Turning Tables, a novel by twin sisters who have done time in some of the finer restaurants in New York, San Francisco and Nantucket. I hoped that they’d write chick-lit better than the society types who have lately dabbled in the genre. And I figured that, at the least, they’d take the reader into the dark and comic inner life of fine dining, giving automatic reading pleasure.
Right on both counts.
Erin Edwards is a 28-year-old marketing manager who can’t get a job in marketing. She hasn’t waited tables in years, but through a family connection, she gets hired at Roulette, one of those “hot” Manhattan restaurants with a celebrity chef and a fickle clientele.
Her first day is a revelation. This is a joint where salmon are stored on their bellies in crushed ice to mimic the “swimming position and put less stress on the muscle, so the texture stays firm.” The rib-eye is “organic, free-range, slaughtered humanely, and dry-aged at high altitude.” The salad is finished with “Villa Stabbia olive oil and a splash of seventy-five-year-old balsamic vinegar”.
But Roulette is not really about food. It’s about the dining experience. So in addition to reeling off the specials and getting the orders straight and handling burning hot plates as if they were frisbees, Erin must deal with the “guest mood evaluation” — an ongoing scorecard that waiters revise as they struggle to move any unhappy diners up “at least three points” before dessert.
This is inherently funny stuff, and the small fact that Erin is totally incompetent and desperately playing catch-up only makes it funnier. She may be an imposter; the other characters are spookily real. The media-obsessed chef, the cold-hearted manager, the gay actor who’s counting down his days as a waiter, the Stepford Hostess, the head busboy who sends money home to Veracruz, the bartender every woman wants, the Chinese food runner who taught economics in his own country — it’s an all-you-can-eat cast.
There’s romance here, or two, one real and one convenient. There’s a visit from the New York Times critic that’s a model of tension and absurdity. There are late nights in bars and restaurants that read like non-fiction. And there are lots of zingers. Restaurant gospel: “A cocktail is never more full than when it’s dropped.” A relationship built on sex: “Why ruin a good thing with conversation?”
There are only two dead zones. Erin’s family is too cute by half, and their visit to Roulette reads fake. And if I read about one more single woman adopting a dog in New York, I’m gonna scream. This novel is 325 pages. At 300, without the dog, no one would have felt cheated.
I thought “Turning Tables” had me on page 59, when the chef quotes Nietzsche at the pre-dinner staff meeting — “In heaven, all the interesting people are missing” — and someone quietly asks if Nietzsche’s in the restaurant business.
But I knew I was in the right place a hundred pages later, when Erin is a guest in a home where she has only recently worked. A bitch, recalling Erin from somewhere, gives her The Look. Erin snaps, “You might remember me by my pepper grinder.”
“Turning Tables” is a three-star meal, trapped in a one-star format.
