Along with the inventory, equipment, and lease, my dad got two days of training.
One of the things the Armenian taught my dad was to add a tiny touch of salt to the coffee before you grind it.
Why? It didn’t matter. My dad added a tiny touch of salt every time he ground the coffee.
My parents hired a sweet delinquent named Dominic to be a delivery boy and store clerk. They taught him to do the daily tasks like breaking down boxes and grinding coffee.
One day a customer complains that the coffee tastes strange.
The next day my dad watches Dominic dump the coffee beans into the grinder, carefully check the grind knob, and slowly sprinkle way too much salt in. Dominic starts to close the lid, and reach for the “on” switch.
“Wait!” my dad shouts.
Dominic freezes. My dad grabs a spoon and opens the lid. He goes to scoop out the extra salt, looks down, and sees that Dominic has drawn a perfect “D” out of the salt.
My dad always eschewed publicity. By “eschewed,” I mean actively fought against it and blacklisted anyone who wrote about The Store.
When The Store became a restaurant, it became famous for not wanting to be reviewed or talked about. People would call, and my dad would say, “Sorry, Shopsin’s is out of business. New York City rent, ya know.” If they asked my dad, “Where are you located?” he would answer, “Next to the phone,” and hang up.
Every commercial business in NYC had to take care of the garbage they made. Some owners hired a private company to pick the trash up weekly or daily, keeping the bags in their basement, putting them out at night. Other owners put the bags in the trunks of their cars and drove them home to Queens.
We had a dumpster. It was forest green and pressed against the wall around the corner from The Store. A company would come pick it up once a week.
Our dumpster was in a sad state. It had been dropped so many times. Wheels had been broken off. The lid was bent. One day the garbage company replaced the dumpster. It was a gift from the gods. My dad was excited. The dumpster wasn’t refurbished or repainted; it was brand-new and brought him pure joy.
Later that same day a sanitation inspector comes into The Store. “I’m giving you a violation,” the inspector says. “The lid to your container is open,” he continues.
“Show me,” my dad says.
They go outside, and the sparkling clean dumpster lid is open. The dumpster is empty except for one small clear bag of garbage.
“It’s not my garbage. I didn’t leave the lid open,” my dad says.
My dad is right. It is not restaurant garbage, no way, no how. Goldilocks has left us her apartment’s trash and didn’t even bother to close the lid.
This is the drawback of a dumpster. Your basement doesn’t stink, you don’t need to put the bags out, but people think the dumpster is free like air. It isn’t—we had to pay by the pound.
The inspector said he was giving us a ticket anyway. My dad asked to speak to his supervisor, to which the inspector said the supervisor was not available.
It got very quiet. My dad went inside The Store. He came out with a huge handful of flour and threw it in the inspector’s face.
Six cops showed up, guns drawn.
The sanitation inspector had called it in as an assault.
One of the cops was happy when he figured out what had happened. He had a sister who owned a hardware store. Next to her store was a little vegetable grocery, and the sister was going nuts from all the sanitation tickets for orange rinds and banana peels left in front of her part of the sidewalk.
The sanitation inspector is still covered in flour. A few guns are still drawn, though the cops seem to be on my dad’s side.
The writer Calvin Trillin shows up to get lunch, and without a skip asks my mom, “What’s the charge, assault with intent to bake?”
The case was settled with a “consent decree.” All my dad had to do was agree never to throw flour at a sanitation inspector again.
The lawyer that won the case was a beautiful woman named Valerie. She represented my dad for free.
Valerie was a regular in The Store. The regulars were always giving us things. Free meals at restaurants they ran, Rolling Stones concert tickets for my mom, computer programs for my brother, dental work, theater tickets, T-shirts, shoes, a tour of a television studio, a laser printer—the list goes on forever. I call them regulars, but they were more than customers.
Sometimes we would barter. A trip to St. Barts was paid for with a year’s worth of Burmese hummus and shrimp gumbo.
My dad had a standing deal with Calvin (Bud) Trillin. Publishers were always sending Bud cookbooks to review. Now and then Bud would bring big stacks of the books to The Store in exchange for food credit.
My dad would pore over the cookbooks, putting his own version of a recipe on the menu. He would get a Greek cookbook from Bud, and the next week, as soon as he figured out where to get the best feta, the menu would double in size.
The Store’s kitchen wasn’t in a separate room. All that stood between my dad and the dining room was a stainless steel shelf and a specials board. The shelf was propped up with cans of black beans that no longer had labels. The specials board was written in every color of dry erase marker that my dad could find. This was only six colors, but it looked like more.
Pendant lamps hung from a pressed tin ceiling. Plastic dinosaurs were used as ketchup bottle caps. Good luck dollar bills were taped to the walls. The smell of burning butter or roasting brisket was constant.
Also constant were me and my siblings crawling in between customers’ legs as they ate. We learned it was okay from our mom, who whenever it came time to take an order would pull up a chair or scootch into a customer’s booth. No matter if it was the first time the customer was in our place or the hundredth.
Every dish that left the kitchen was put on the stainless steel shelf. There were no heat lamps. My mom had to drop whatever she was doing and pick up the food before it got cold. If she didn’t, my dad would scream and shout.
My parents fought like crazy. Gum in the armpit was the least of it. Fighting was like breathing to my parents.
“Stupid, no-good cunt,” my father would scream from the kitchen.
“How ’bout some bread and butter with your soup?” my mom would ask a customer, as if nothing was wrong.
“That’s it. I’ve had it,” my dad would mutter, almost crying.
Finally my dad would push a plate onto the shelf and shout, “Pickup!” My mom would rush to get it, and the fight would be over.
The Store as a restaurant
For a while we were listed in New York guidebooks as a shoe store. It was my dad’s idea, but it was easy to get customers in on the game of hiding us from Zagat’s and Fodor’s.