A Trip to the Beach (11 page)
Love,
Mel
Five days before the opening, the pace had shifted to a dead run. The last little details were being finished on the building, and all the food and wine was on order. Clinton and I were adjusting lights out in the garden when he asked, “When the rest of the staff comin' to work, anyway?”
“Bob and Lowell are getting the food and wine at Blowing Point tomorrow, and everyone else is coming the next morning. That will give us three days with the whole crew before we open.”
Lowell had borrowed a pickup so he and Bob could get the final supplies from the port when they arrived. The
Lady Odessa
was running two hours late. As they waited at the pier, Lowell was cool and patient while Bob paced, counting things that had to be done before the opening.
Island time,
he scolded himself.
I've got to adjust to island time.
They watched the
Lady Odessa
tie up, and its crew unloaded a jeep, three goats, an engine, and some car fenders. Our food was then lifted out of the cabin and stacked on the pier. It reminded Bob of the dripping boxes of chicken on the pier the day he'd met Shabby. Our suppliers had used a lot of ice, at least, but Bob knew he didn't have much time before the sun did its damage. With the help of a porter equipped with a wheelbarrow, Bob and Lowell made twenty-two trips carting boxes of wine, produce, and meat up to customs at the ferry terminal.
“You got a bond number?” asked the customs officer.
Relieved that someone at the bank had told him about this process, Bob confidently said, “Yes. It's three-four-zero-three.” This allowed him to bring food orders in without going through the paperwork process beforehand.
The officer inspected the boxes and told Bob and Lowell they were free to go with everything but the wine. “Wine gotta go in the warehouse,” he said.
“What?”
Bob felt his face redden.
“Your bond is good only for perishables, not wine. You gotta do an entry and leave it in the warehouse until you pay the duty.”
“Some of this wine is very perishable. I have old Bordeaux that will spoil in the warehouse. It's an oven in there. And our restaurant opens in two days.” Without that shipment, our new glass wine cellar would look ridiculous, and Bob thought we might have to postpone the opening. But, we already had reservations, and he wasn't ready to give up.
“Lowell, what do we do?” Bob asked, exasperated.
“Hold on,” he said, and disappeared behind the customs window. Bob could see him talking with another officer. After a few minutes they both came back out, and the officer shook Bob's hand. “This my brother Glen,” Lowell said. “He gonna help.”
“I can't release the wine now, but if you take these papers to your broker and get them back here before I leave at six, we'll clear the wine,” said Glen, saving the day.
“Thank you so much,” Bob said. “Lowell, you finish loading the food and I'll go look for Tippy under the domino tree. Put everything in the walk-in cooler and meet me back here for the wine.”
“Yeah, boss. No problem,” Lowell said.
Luckily Tippy was in his usual spot and helped out with the emergency entry. Bob and Miguel spent the next day organizing the wine cellar, sorting bottles by region and labeling each with a bin number. The wine racks were filled from floor to ceiling with selections from 350 vineyards stretching from Napa to Bordeaux. The doors of the cellar had small-paned glass windows, and we dimmed the lights inside so that the bottles glowed, quietly adding a sense of luxury to the dining room. We couldn't wait for guests to arrive.
In the kitchen, Clinton and Ozzie danced as they chopped, sliced, diced, and riced. Shabby took charge of the grill. Garrilin helped with salads and desserts. And Bug was a born comedian; he could wash dishes and keep us laughing all night.
We went through some trial runs. We made all the sauces, salad dressings, and soups. The gazpacho was just as chunky as I'd envisioned.
Gazpacho
Coarsely chop 5 large plum tomatoes, 1 red pepper, 1 small onion, and 1/2 of a seedless cucumber. Add to the vegetables 1/2 cup red wine vinegar, 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, and 1 1/4 cups tomato juice and mix well. Season with a pinch of cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill. Serves six.
We cut the meat, cleaned the fish, and made ice creams, sorbets, and cracked coconuts. The chicken was marinated, and the jerk sauce was, as the menu stated, hot hot hot.
Bob reviewed the dining room layout with the waiters, assigning a number to each of the eighteen tables. He'd gone over serving, clearing, and resetting, and I had explained the menu. He and Miguel practiced locating, presenting, opening, and pouring wine. Alwyn polished silver.
Blanchard's Restaurant was about to be born. At twenty minutes after midnight the night before we opened, we pronounced everything ready. We had twenty-two reservations for opening night, and as Bob and I said good night to our new family of staff, I didn't know if I was more tired, excited, or just plain scared to death.
We collapsed into bed, and Bob said, “Can you believe this whole thing started with a simple trip to the beach?”
Chapter 6
Six o'clock on opening night. Our staff was in high gear. A bond had developed among everyone; in just a short time, the common goal of creating and building this restaurant had brought us all together. The first day of unloading containers with the Davis brothers was history now, as were the long, hot days of construction, the endless testing of recipes, and the unnerving search for ingredients. Opening night was the culmination of what had become a collective dream, and each member of our staff had played their part. Blanchard's was
their
restaurant now as much as ours.
In the kitchen, everyone was in clean, starched chef's jackets and ready to cook. Garrilin washed the bush, as she called it, for salads. Shabby had the grill hot and ready to go, and the rest of us nervously waited for our first order.
The wait staff bustled about, looking strikingly handsome with their crisp white dress shirts contrasting their smooth black skin. They were proud of their Blanchard's logo embroidered over the pocket. With meticulous care, the stemware had been polished until it sparkled, and each glass was held up to the light, ensuring that no smudges or spots remained. The mahogany bar top was burnished to a glowing sheen, and bottles were straightened repeatedly on the back bar until each was where it belonged. The bar refrigerator was stocked with freshly squeezed orange juice for rum punch, icy cold Heinekens, Caribs, sodas, and Perrier. The ice bin was full, and in it, bottles of sauvignon blanc from the Loire Valley chilled next to chardonnay from Sonoma, ready to be poured by the glass.
Lowell, Miguel, and Alwyn checked the dining room with Bob again and again, straightening place settings, moving glasses an inch to the left, then to the right, then back to the left. They recited the table numbers and seat numbers and reviewed the menu and the wine list for the umpteenth time.
We had arranged flowers in bud vases for the tables, picking blossoms from the garden. Some had green furls made from a leaf, a brilliant yellow allamanda tucked in the middle, and a tiny dot of red in the center from a firecracker plant. Others had long, leggy green shootsâalmost Japanese in natureâand pink hibiscus floating in the center.
Bob and I stood in the middle of the dining room and looked around in awe. The floor-to-ceiling teal shutters were flung open, and beyond them the gardens twinkled as a gentle breeze shifted the plants and flowers that were illuminated from below. The fountains shimmered as underwater lights bounced off the water columns dancing in the air. Beyond the gardens, the sea crashed against Meads Bay; our stone path, lit softly on each side, meandered toward the waves. In the dining room, potted palms rustled under lazily spinning ceiling fans. The white rattan chairs sat ready to be broken in, and our dishes, silver, and hand-blown crystal flickered in the candlelight. The sound of Vivaldi filled the room.
I felt a rush of excitement ripple through my body, and I squeezed Bob's hand. It was like waiting for the curtain to go up on Broadway.
“What if they don't like my food?” I asked him.
Bob looked into my eyes and said, “I've worried about a lot of things: making this shack look like a restaurant, running out of money, putting together a good staff. But there's one thing we absolutely don't need to worry about, and that's your cooking.”
“I wish I could be as sure.”
With several minutes left before the first guests were due to arrive, Miguel made us each a sample of his favorite frozen drink. Banana cabana, he called it. Carrying our drinks, Bob and I walked through the bar and out the front door and followed the path down to the beach. It stopped where the white sand began, and I stood next to Bob, arm around his waist, watching the last bit of orange light disappear into the west. Above, the sky was already full of stars and the small crescent of a moon lay on its side, clear and bright against the navy blue sky.
Bob took a long sip of Miguel's thick banana drink. “Mel, this is fantastic. I love it. It's much better than a piña colada and not nearly as sweet. People are going to go crazy for this.”
Banana Cabanas
To make two banana cabanas, put 1/2 cup Coco Lopez into a blender. Add 1/2 cup Baileys Irish Cream, 2 ripe bananas, 2 cups ice cubes, and, if you like, 2 ounces white rum. It's great with or without the rum. Blend on high speed until smooth and creamy.
“I should go check on the kitchen,” I said. But Bob wouldn't let go.
“Let's always remember this night,” he said. “Our new life is officially beginning right now.”
“It's going to be an unhappy life if I don't go check on the kitchen,” I said. We turned away from the sea and walked back to the restaurant, anxious to begin.
By six-thirty we were ready. There was nothing left to straighten, polish, prep, bake, check, or recheck. Bob dashed in and out of the kitchen and I went over the menu one last time with the staff.
“Follow my lead,” I said. “As soon as orders come in, we'll take one at a time and do it all together. Once we get the hang of it, there won't be anything to worry about.”
Lowell and Miguel tried to look busy in the dining room, but mostly they peered through the shutters, watching for headlights.
“People comin',” Lowell finally said. “Yes. People comin'.”
The first guests arrived a few minutes before seven. We had twenty-two reservations and didn't expect more, which was fine with us. It was October and the island was quietâa perfect time to smooth out any wrinkles before the season really started. Twenty-two felt like just the right number.
Within an hour, forty-eight people were seated and my orderly kitchen had fallen into total chaos.
“Lowell,” I shouted, “tell everyone we're out of lobster. We can't grill them fast enough.”
“But what about table five?” he asked frantically. “They order three lobsters!”
“Lowell,” I repeated in a panic, “
please.
Just tell them I'm sorry. We can't handle it.”
Bob came skidding into the kitchen to return a tuna and a tenderloin. “These are both supposed to be rare,” he said, looking at Shabby, who was manning the grill. “They're completely cooked through.”
“Shabby,” I explained, “when the order says rare, you hardly cook it at all.”
“But Mel,” he said, “I cook the steak till it have no more blood. And you can't send out raw tuna.”
“Shabby, you do know what
rare
means, right?” As the words came out of my mouth I wished I had stopped myself. The devastated look on Shabby's face went right to my heart.
“Yeah, butâ”
“Shabby, it's too crazy to talk about it now. Let's redo these orders together and get the people some dinner, okay?”
“You gonna send it out raw?” he asked, staring at me.
The kitchen was beastly hot, but as soon as we opened the back door, all the order slips flew around the room and out of sight. I was flat on my stomach searching under the stove for the last missing order when Garrilin announced, “Mel, I outta dumplings. Where the rest be?”
“The rest? You served
all
those dumplings?”
Before I could solve the dumpling crisis, Shabby said, “Mel, I flip the tuna below. The one above not ready yet. I think this one rare now. You want me to put it on the plate?”
“That would be great,” I said. “Just put a flat layer of orzo down first like I've been doing all night.”
“Cool,” he said.
As I showed Ozzie how to make more dumplings, I saw Shabby's plate of tuna heading out the door. The fish was perched atop a veritable mountain of orzo, reminding me of Cora Lee's mound of rice and peasâenough to serve a family of four. I let it go and knew there were training days ahead. “Ahh-la-la,” Ozzie said. “Ahh-la-la,” a term he had apparently picked up from working under the French chef in the Malliouhana kitchen.
“Hey, Mel,” Bug said halfway through the evening, “them people really likes the food. These plates comin' back so clean, I don' need to wash 'em.”
“If we could only keep up, I'd be a lot happier,” I said.
The scene in the dining room was frenzied as well. Bob loved talking with the guests and had a difficult time pulling himself away when the waiters needed help. Everyone wanted to know where we were from, what we had done before, and how we ended up in Anguilla. The wine list also required Bob's attention, and several tables wanted to discuss specific vineyards and grape varieties at length. He had difficulty cutting short a debate over the virtues of Oregon Pinot Noirs versus Burgundies and could have talked for hours about why American vintners insist on making chardonnay so oaky. Alwyn whispered in his ear, “Bob, the people at table two leave.”
“They left? Without eating?” Bob asked.
Alwyn shook his head. “Yeah, man, they just leave. They say nobody take their order.”
That night in bed, Bob and I went over the evening's events and talked about ways to improve. Just as we were falling asleep, I flung off the covers and screamed, “Get out of bed!” Something was tickling my foot.
Bob leapt up with a jolt and saw a centipede making its way across the sheets, completely ignoring our antics. Its hundred little legs wormed slowly along until Bob's shoe stopped it dead in its tracks. We'd seen them before, along with scorpions and a host of other little creatures, but never before had one joined us in bed. We religiously checked shoes each morningâthese bugs love to hide in the cool toe of a sneakerâbut the bed was different, a real intrusion. We spent a restless night, waking to every little noise, and called the exterminator first thing in the morning.
I learned a lot about fish in those early weeks. I discovered the difference between black grouper and gray grouper, yellowtail snapper and red snapper, which fish needed to be scaled and which skinned. A favorite throughout the Caribbean is a fish called wahoo. Bob heard they're great fighting fish to catch, and we concluded their name came about because the only thing you can do is yell “Wahoo!” when one takes your line.
Cleve introduced us to our first wahoo. The last time I had seen a fish of that size was at an aquarium. He came in the kitchen through the back door and placed the whole fishâmaybe forty or fifty poundsâon a table with a loud thud.
“Cleve, it's giant,” I said, eyeing the large gray head, not knowing if I had it in me to turn it into dinner. I paid Cleve in cash and continued staring at the fish. It was over four feet long and resembled a torpedo.
Shabby arrived a few minutes later, impressed with the delivery. “Mel, that a beautiful wahoo. Can I cut it up?”
“I was hoping you'd say that,” I said with a big sigh of relief. Shabby assumed the fish-cutting responsibility from that day forward. I took over once he presented me with manageable fillets. We made a good team.
The dining room started to run more smoothly, though we still had our problems. One evening Bob came into the kitchen during dinner to ask me if I had taken a reservation for six people under the name of Gucci.
“Yes,” I said. “I think it was for eight o'clock.”
“Well,” he added, “did you take one for Lucci as well?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Lowell seated a table of six half an hour ago whose name is Lucci. They speak Italianâno English at all. When they said their name, Lowell assumed it was Gucci, since it was so close.”
“Yeah. So?”
“The Guccis are now standing in the bar waiting for their table, and I don't have room for another six.
They
speak English quite well and have made it clear that they will tell the concierge at Cap Juluca how poorly they've been treated. Mr. Gucci is pounding furiously on the bar and yelling about our terrible service.”
Bob was beside himself. “Luccis. Guccis,” he said. “When the second one called, we must have thought it was the first one reconfirming. Who would think we'd have two Italian tables of six with such similar names on the same night? What should I do?”
Bug answered before I got a chance. “Tell one of 'em they can come in here and eat with us. We don' care if they Succi, Mucci, or whatever. Tell 'em we likes Italians back here in the kitchen. We set up a table right here nex' to me.”
Just looking at Bug made us laugh. He had soapsuds up to his elbows and was wearing shorts and black leather dress shoes. He continued to sing a little tune about the Guccis and the Luccis while he washed the piles of dirty dishes. Bob left to deal with the situation with a fresh outlook, trying to keep the Gucci/Lucci crisis in perspective. Mr. Gucci stormed out of the restaurant. Bob looked at Lowell and said, “I don't think the Guccis will be back, do you?”
“No, man,” Lowell answered. “They ain' havin' a good night a 'tall.”
Our St. Martin suppliers were not working out as well as planned. The patois there, a mixture of French, Dutch, and Caribbean, was much more difficult to interpret than the Anguillian version, which was at least based on English. We ordered 250 pounds of flour and received 2,500 insteadâperfect if we were opening a bakery. I ordered a case of radishes and received twelve radicchio. Sun-dried tomatoes were missing from an order and replaced with pink ice cream cones. We were also at the mercy of Mother Nature: The
Lady Odessa
stopped running for three days in a row because of a ground sea.
“Sorry,” they said. “The waves are too rough to cross the channel.”
No one was able to define the term
ground sea,
but it is an oddity that seafarers must know in their souls. It was an underwater storm that assaulted the beach in front of the restaurant. The noise was deafening as ten-foot waves crashed against the sand, drowning out all conversation in the dining room. Yet the sky overhead was clear and blue, and relaxed island pelicans stood patiently on the rocks, backs to the wind, waiting for the sea to calm down so they could resume fishing.
The customers loved it. At Cap Juluca the waves crashed right through Pimms, and the beach bar floor was covered with water. Malliouhana's dining room, perched on its promontory, was dry but dramatic as enormous swells collided with the craggy rocks below. With each crash salt spray was propelled into the air, sometimes soaring over the roof, creating a curtain of color as the sun's rays rainbowed through the airborne water. Guests sat for hours mesmerized by the show. Meanwhile, we were out of almost everything on the menu. The seven-mile passage between Anguilla and St. Martin became impassable.
We hadn't seen Thomas in days. He had become a regular part of our day, arriving barefoot and salty from the sea with his burlap bag of squirming lobsters. During a ground sea it was impossible for him to go out and pull up his traps. “This ground sea,” he said, “she gonna mash up my pots. It'll take days to fix 'em up again.”
“How long do these ground seas last?” Bob asked Rupert, the captain of the
Lady Odessa.
“Usually a couple a days,” he answered as the two stared across the channel to St. Martin. “A week at the most.”
“A week!” Bob said. “We'll be out of food and closed in a week. What am I going to feed my customers?”
“I'm
already
out of business,” Rupert said. “My boat ain' makin' no money tie up out there. We always get a couple a ground seas in December. This one early, though; she a bad one.”
They both scowled at the waves as the
Lady Odessa,
firmly tethered in place, rode up and down, rocking with the swells. The taxi driver tree shaded a lineup of unhappy men, and even the domino table sat idle; the ground sea had put a temporary stop to everyone's business, and spirits were low. Bob scoured the stores, gathering scraps for our empty walk-in coolerâa head of lettuce here, a few tomatoes there. He returned with a backseat full of food but only half the shopping list crossed off. “Shiitake mushrooms are not an Anguillian staple,” he declared crossly while unloading the car.
We watched the unrelenting surf at Meads Bay; it was awesome, formidable, and showed no signs of subsiding. The waves roared so loudly it was difficult to speak. “We won't have anything to serve in two more days,” I yelled. “We'll just have to close.”
Three days later the waves returned to normal, the sky never once hinting that we'd had bad weather. The underwater storm had come and gone. We had hidden our regular menus at the restaurant and managed to eke out enough specials to remain open until the
Lady Odessa
and ferryboats were running again.
I went back to see George, the chef at Cap Juluca, who suggested I call his supplier in Miami if I wanted a more reliable source of food. “They can get anything,” he said, “but it's expensiveâeverything comes by air. But man, when you get a ground sea, you don't need to worry.”
Expensive was an understatement. Tourists continually asked why prices in Anguilla are so high. If they spent only one week trying to supply a restaurant, they'd understand immediately. Our menu prices had to go up as soon as we made the switch to Miami, with freight costs of over a dollar a pound and duty reaching astronomical numbers. The freight wasn't bad with expensive items such as veal chops, but for a fifty-pound bag of potatoes that cost $11 in Miami, it was another story. Add $50 in freight, plus the duty, and that bag of potatoes costs $70. But the accessibility of ingredients improved drastically; shiitake mushrooms, fresh herbs, raspberries, spring roll wrappers, and all those other hard-to-find items came with
relatively
little hassle.
Calculating how much to order was the hard part. We needed a crystal ball. We had to guess how many dinners would be served and which menu items would be the most popular. One night practically everyone in the restaurant ordered veal chops. That left us with too much snapper and tuna, which had to be thrown away. Two nights later, having loaded up on veal chops, we had a run on lobster. Trying to predict the future, I made daily lists and faxed them to Miami.