It was clear why people tried to find us. My dad cooked hundreds of soups to order from a tiny kitchen. On top of that, there was the celebrities.
Packs of them. Movies were shot in California but cast in New York. Directors, writers, actors, producers, each name bigger than the next, would tip each other off on this great shithole in the Village run by a militant Buddha and his wife.
JFK Jr. was a regular. He would glide in on Rollerblades.
This was a gift from my father to my mother. Most businesses had signs that prohibited dogs, skateboards, and roller skates. My dad was all for such rules. Any other customer would have been kicked out fast for wearing Rollerblades to lunch.
But not JFK Jr.
Because if JFK Jr. was wearing Rollerblades it meant he would be wearing Lycra bike shorts.
And my mother thought he was the sexiest man alive. It was a self-sacrificing kindness by my father, who would argue that the sexiest man or woman ever to come in the restaurant was the father of the model Cindy Crawford.
Maybe it was the actors that led to the models. We always had salad on the menu, but no one would say our food was light. They came in droves, sweet and freakishly pretty, bumping their heads on the lights. Tomato Cream with Garlic Croutons was the soup they all got. It was a tomato soup made to order using marinara sauce as a base with a touch of heavy cream and a ladle of veggie stock. Half a baguette was spread with garlic, butter, and cheddar, then put under the broiler till it bubbled. The broiled bread was chopped and sprinkled into the soup.
The models brought in more models and their boyfriends—magicians, rock stars, nightclub owners, and athletes.
The rock stars brought in rock stars. The magicians brought in comedians and cult icons. And it went on in this circle. We had circles of customers who were printers, and motion graphic specialists. There were circles of young people on their way, directors, brain surgeons, the first website designers. But the celebrities were the easiest circle to spot.
At night my mom would work the counter and the cash register, while a gum-chewing waitress with red hair named Kate worked the tables.
Once there was a two-top that placed its order with Kate. One customer got a cup of chicken soup, and the other a bowl of split pea. Kate put the order on the spindle and spun it toward my dad. As Kate turned around, the two-top signaled her. “Can you change the chicken soup to split pea?” the customers asked.
“My pleasure,” said Kate. She turned toward the kitchen and screamed, “Hold the chicken and make it pee.”
A side of baguette with butter was “grease me up a big one.” With no butter was “leave it alone.”
“Leave now you’ll be early” was my dad’s response to customers that said they were in a hurry. It was Store policy and Kate said it at least once a night.
One night Kate didn’t like a table of four from the get-go; they were in a rush. “Ha ha … ha,” the table said when Kate explained that they could be early if they left now.
The four put in an order getting this, this, and that. A woman at the table wearing a blue headband was ruder than the rest.
The Store was not an easy place to work. There was only one waitress, no busboys, and thirty seats. It was like playing pinball, but you were the ball instead of the flippers.
It began to fill up and Kate started to bounce.
She brought the four-top sodas and went to start another table.
Pickup. Salads, butter-broiled breads, a cheddar corn chowder, and more were brought to the four-top.
Kate had ten tables going. Blue headband flagged her down and shoved the corn chowder at Kate, saying it had bacon.
“So what?” asked Kate. The woman said she couldn’t eat bacon.
Kate brought the soup back to my dad in the kitchen. This happened not a lot, but enough. Sometimes my dad fucked up; he would taste the returned dish and if it was wrong, he would drop everything to make it right.
But that is not what he did here.
“ALL CHOWDER HAS BACON IN IT,” my dad said, buried in checks.
The chowder was not ladled from a big vat. Onions, carrots, celery, baked potato, and bacon were sautéed in a pan till soft. Flour and sherry were added to thicken, next came chicken stock, lots of corn, cheddar, and a squirt of cream.
Kate brought the soup back to blue headband and explained that all chowder has bacon in it, that my dad was not going to remake the soup, and asked the woman if she could swap dishes with someone else at the table.
The woman asked why we were being such hard-asses.
Kate went back to my dad.
“Kick them the fuck out,” said my dad.
Kate went back to the table of four.
“You guys are really dicks,” said blue headband.
The others at the table were still digging into their food. They took headband’s side, though not actively.
Kate began to bus the table.
She took their plates away in mid-bite. Everything went in the bus tray, the chowder, the sodas, and bread. Before Kate could grab the big Caesar salad, blue headband picked it up. The woman then poured the salad over the booth seat behind her, and called Kate a “fucking bitch.”
Kate took a Coke from the bus tray, poured it over the woman’s head, and called her the same.
“I want to see the manager,” the woman screamed.
My dad walked out from the kitchen and explained that he thought it best if the four left. And then he walked straight back to cook his checks.
The four left with the headband woman shouting, “Fuck you.”
As they were out the door, Kate whipped around and asked, “Anybody else?”
The whole restaurant, my parents included, exploded in applause and the bag of sawdust was brought out.
A man who drove a cute little blue Jetta lived across the street from The Store in Gabe and Rita’s building. At the time my dad drove a motorcycle, and was always competing with this guy for the legal parking spot nearest to The Store.
The man came into The Store one morning and asked for half a baguette to go. My mom charged him for the half a baguette.
Then he said he would like the bread buttered.
My mom tried to charge him fifty cents extra. The man was upset that he had to pay for butter in a “place like this.”
“This” brought my dad to the front of The Store. He argued that we had to buy the bread, cut and butter it, and throw away the stale baguettes every night. Then we had to wrap it all up and put up with lousy jerks.
The man left The Store without his half a baguette.
Our baguettes were perfect, with crispy crusts. The stales were used for fencing. Victory was yours if the enemy’s sword folded in half. Sometimes we wouldn’t throw the bag of stales out. We’d leave them in a corner for three days. The super-stale sword hurt more, but when you won, your opponent’s sword would burst into bread crumbs.
Some days no one ordered pumpernickel. But we always had it fresh because it was my mom’s favorite bread. If it wasn’t ordered for two straight days, I would make Frankenstein shoes out of the untouched loaves, and clomp around in the sawdust.