The Inquisitive Eater: The Service Issue by inquisitiveeater

THE INQUISITIVE EATER

Editor-in-chief

madison ford

deputy editors

Ashley-Anna Aboreden, Brianna Lopez

fiction editor

Hannah Berman

non-fiction editors

shelby mcDonald, christine ro

poetry editor

Kat Schmidt

art and print design

madison ford

special thanks

John Reed

lori lynn turner

contributors

casey adrian is a writer and social science researcher, currently pursuing a Master of Social Work at Binghamton University. His academic and creative work focus on young love, sexual politics, and the bittersweet taste of heartbreak. When he is not writing or researching, he is moonlighting as a waiter. Casey lives in Upstate New York and can be found at caseyadrian.com. This is his debut short story publication.

nikki palladino, a full-time copywriter, enrolled in the graduate writing studies program at Saint Joseph’s University to write about her passions, food and wine. She has worked as a sommelier on the floors of Lupa and Oceana in Manhattan and also, as the program coordinator for the Wine Studies Program at The International Culinary Center. Her creative nonfiction explores the culture and personality of the wine and hospitality industries and she’s currently at work on a young adult novel about a first-gen Italian American teen with a passion for pastry arts. Follow her @nikki_pall.

vanessa ogle is a poet, writer, and educator. Her poetry has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The 2River View, and elsewhere. She received her BA from Stony Brook University and her MFA from Hunter College. In addition to her writing career, she has worked in a variety of restaurants and fast food establishments and has written about class issues and her experience in those industries for The Nation and elsewhere.

Marisol Aveline Delarosa writes nonfiction and fiction, and she is a first-year student in the Creative Writing MFA program at The New School. She is a New Yorker but hopes to also have a home in Barcelona someday. Marisol has been selling alcohol for over two decades and currently runs the only real bar left in the Meatpacking District. You can find more of her work at www.thisisnotcake.com.

Evan Kanouse is a writer, artist, and educator. He is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at The New School. He has studied and written about belief systems in education (M.Ed. Educational Leadership, Boston College. M.A. Religious Studies, Fordham University. B.A. Religion, Bard College). He lives in southern Connecticut, where he works at an N-12 independent school and is co-founder of Outbox, a non-profit organization dedicated to LGBTQ-inclusive education.

Letter from the Editors

ON SERVICE

In the Inquisitive Eater’s inaugural special issue, our contributors take on a weighty theme: service. Our relationship to the food service industry can bear so many developmental milestones and societal interludes. This landscape is the scene of first jobs, second jobs, lifestyles, communities, addiction, direction, misdirection; it supports first dates and caffeine habits and those who’ve had the kind of day where making a meal for themselves seems an impossible task; it is a stage in which one can try to impress or be made to feel inferior, whether in back of house, front of house, or at the table.

Like so many creatives, the editors of Inquisitive Eater have worked in a number of service industry roles to help support our lives and aspirations. In this way, the artist’s life is often entangled with a life of service. It is a path that offers strange hours and new characters and hard work and wages that might pay the rent but never seem quite enough for financial

unburdening. In service you establish inexplicable bonds with coworkers, and work double shifts in your dreams, and field an onslaught of human behavior that can elicit sentiments of endearment or disdain in an instant.

Mulling over service seems to be a growing part of the zeitgeist. Shows like The Bear have garnered a voracious fandom where the dysfunctions of restaurant operations have been romanticized despite its apt portrayal of physical and mental unrest; yes chef is thrown around in home kitchens and social media sketches as something humorous, something sexy. The proliferation of tipping prompts at checkout is eliciting a building ire from the American public that is pushing us to question the blurry guidelines of who we tip and how much. In many US cities, a staffing shortage of service industry jobs has lingered since the pandemic.

Societal roles which for so long got drowned out within the hum of daily life are vibrating at a frequency that demands attention.

The stories, poetics, and pressing questions of service are brought into conversation with one another in this Service Issue. Casey Adrian brings into focus how a passion for service and its rhythms can come at the cost of personal relationships. Sommelier Nikki Palladino breaks down the implications of an unapproachable wine list. Evan Kanouse’s piece explores service as a stabilizing force in the face of personal demons. Vanessa Ogle captures a melancholic monotony in her poem, and Marisol Aveline Delarosa tackles the slippery beast that is tipping culture.

We see this issue as the start of many more wonderful investigations to come: when it comes to the way we eat, the way we drink, there is a lot to unwrap. But for now, we welcome you to embrace the slowness and chaos of this holiday week with some tasty food writing. We hope you leave uncomfortably full.

Best,

Madison Ford, Brianna Lopez, and the editors of the Inquisitive Eater

FICTION

Something to Drink

CASEY ADRIAN

All of our food is grown, raised, and caught Upstate,” Terrence said. He and his trainee walked out of the cooler—tubs of sliced lemons in their arms, stocking the dining room for dinner service. The heart of the kitchen was loud with the churning sounds of machinery, the fine chopping of parsley, deep sinks filling with ice and cold water. A chef scraped the grill with a bent spatula, digging up black soot and smelling of smoke. “The eggs and the beef are from local farms; the fish are caught in the lakes. Our produce is grown nearby.” They turned into the kitchen alley. Terrence emptied lemon wedges into a silver pan—seeds and juice splashing against stainless steel countertops and forming sour puddles. The sight of the yellow fruit made the trainee’s mouth jolt, bringing her tongue to life. “The shellfish are from New England,” he admitted. “But Chef can’t go without mussels.”

It was a Saturday night, the first of June, and it was humid. Terrence was sure that it was going to be busy. By seven o’clock, the bar would run out of fresh mint and they would have to start improvising; all of the lake trout would be gone by sunset and Chef would begin shouting and cursing

in frustration, dripping sweat from her brow and onto the tile; the kitchen would become tense and booming and airless; the dining room would fill with patient bodies, breathing in each other’s heavy air, talking of trivial and faraway things. Terrence’s joints would stiffen by the end of the night. He would be dry-swallowing painkillers in any inconsequential moment of freetime.

But being busy was good. A busy Saturday meant that there would be lots of distractions to center his mind. The young servers, like ballerinas falling from their pointe shoes, would become flustered by their full sections and give a table to him. He would welcome six or seven parties at once—welcoming six or seven gratuities. A bounty of cash would grow in his pocket, allowing him to splurge on a bottle of post-shift rosé.

His life was full of these contradictions: he wanted Saturday to be both busy and slow; the grapefruit margarita was bitter and tart; he loved serving and he hated it; he missed Hudson and wanted him dead. Maybe these contradictions came with age. Maybe he was a contradictory person. Either way, he felt those busy nights in his bones.

At The Anchor, the first of June marked the resurrection of the summer menu. It was Terrence’s thirty-eighth June at the restaurant.

“I’m drowning.” One of the younger servers grabbed Terrence’s arm, churning the black sleeve of his dress shirt like a pepper grinder. He was standing at a P.O.S. in the dining room, sending drinks to the bar. His trainee loomed beside him like a shadow. “Can you greet Table 14? Or take them? I don’t care. I’m going to kill that new hostess.”

As he expected, it would be his seventh table. He agreed.

In fleeting moments of tenderness, Terrence saw himself in the new servers. He saw himself when they came drifting into the restaurant in their clean, black clothes. He remembered fumbling with corkscrews—when a glass of water would slip from his hand and onto the tile. He was especially reminded of himself when they came as he had: in a pair.

“My boyfriend and I got hired together,” the trainee said. She was pretty and clearskinned and went to one of the colleges in town. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-one, claiming to have service experience from a restaurant back home, wherever that was. “He’s training as a barback.”

Terrence was always amused when a couple got hired together. He watched how they engaged with each other, asking their partner for special favors and treating these tasks with a particular seriousness. He could always tell when they had been fighting or fucking before a shift—how they saw each other in the

black uniforms of The Anchor versus the colorful clothes of the real world.

“Try to keep your work lives and personal lives separate,” he said to the trainee. He rolled the sentiment in a fine coat of sugar, not taking his eyes from the screen.

“We will. It helps that he’s behind the bar and I’m on the floor, I guess.” She took a sharp breath, matching the surrounding sounds of silverware. “It’s exciting to be here together, though. I never want to leave his side and now I don’t have to.”

“Just make sure that you know what you want.”

She nodded without knowing what he meant.

He finished at the P.O.S. and turned toward the bar.

“To work here, you’ll need to know how to eat seasonally.” Terrence and the trainee approached the service corner, scanning the counter for their drinks. He was always walking just a few steps in front of her. “For example, on the first of June—the first day of the summer menu—I would never recommend the mussels. It’s too early in the season and too close to their spawning.”

“Spawning?”

“When they release their eggs. It weakens them. They start to smell rancid.”

From across the counter, the new barback approached Terrence’s trainee. “How are you doing out there, babe?” He used tattooed forearms to pop the cap from a bottle of ale. It was the color of gold, crisp and malted, breathing citrus fumes.

“Trying my best.”

“I’m sure you’re doing great. You look

gorgeous on the floor.”

She rolled her eyes, morphing into something playful and coy. “You look hot behind the bar.”

Terrence snatched the sweaty bottle from the boy’s hands. A fragmented memory of his youth dripped down his throat and he swallowed it away. “The galley needs ice,” he barked.

He looked back at the girl beside him. “Table 43 must be in the window. Let’s go.”

“Do you know the wine list?” They entered the kitchen alley. It was busy with backwaiters.

Intensity spilled from the line and engulfed the space in a steady hum. Seared fish and charcoal pierced through the watery air. They tucked themselves into a back corner, speaking quietly. The energy was too fragile and sanctified; it could easily have been thrown off by such conversations.

The trainee thought of the wine list. She tried to center herself in the strange sea of noise and scent. Her senses were being provoked and her synapses had trouble keeping up. She couldn’t overlook Terrence’s snarling. “More or less.”

“What would you pair with the blackened trout?”

She hung in the air, her mouth ajar.

From the window, the expo started shouting. “Runner, Table 43!”

“A dry riesling,” Terrence answered for her. “The acid counteracts the spice. You don’t want anything with oak.” He swatted at the backwaiters so that he could grab the tray.

When Terrence and Hudson started at The Anchor—back when their skin was

elastic, dotted with dimples and acne scars—they had been the same way. The wine list was not yet scripture. The grilled bass was not a glorious relic of the lake, but something to be chewed quickly and chased with beer. But Terrence stayed up at night to study. He laid cardstock pages and half-empty bottles on the bedroom floor, straining to distinguish one cabernet from another. He mapped the anatomy of the tongue. He dreamt of oysters and woke in a milky haze.

Hudson, on the other hand, was the kind of boy who ate fast food in the driver’s seat. He drank his coffee with three spoonfuls of sugar. He never cared for a hit of adrenaline or a complex taste. During the rush of service, Hudson longed for a corporate career, a tidy cubicle with a framed photo of his family.

“I just wish that you would take this place more seriously,” Terrence said once. “You need to learn this stuff.” They were standing in the same, private corner of the alley. Hudson, for the third time that week, had misplaced an order, and Chef screamed and threw a pan in response, calling him all kinds of names.

Hudson unrolled some noise from his throat. “And you need to lighten up.” He motioned around the kitchen, all of its cathedral glory. “This whole place,” he gestured, “is just a means to an end.”

“To me, it’s more than that.”

“It can’t last forever. You can’t work here for the rest of your life.” A backwaiter brushed past Hudson’s shoulder. He lowered his voice, but the sentiment stayed the same—his tone like the snapped sound of a rubber band. “How

can you settle down in a place like this?”

Terrence and his trainee dropped the food at Table 43. A filet mignon, tender and bloody and blue rare. Landlocked salmon, baked with brown sugar and served with steak fries. Angel hair pasta with steamed clams.

When they left the table, the trainee turned over her shoulder, balancing a tray of bread plates in shaky hands. She was unpolished, Terrence knew, but she had potential. He could tell by the look in her eye. “How long have you been working here?”

“Almost forty years.”

She turned from the tray for just a second. “Wow.” She couldn’t have imagined the passing of four decades; it existed in her mind only as a hypothetical. “You must be happy here.”

It wasn’t as simple as that. There were parts of it that had never grown old: the fast and abundant money, the food, the mind-erasing stampede of service—all of the things which he loved at the beginning and continued to love until the end. It was a rush that he couldn’t have found anywhere else. It was an addiction that he had never seemed to shake. His old friends had pills and powders. Terrence had this. Instead, he simply nodded, saying, “I am.”

Table 14 was occupied by four guests—a middle-aged couple and two teen boys. “I’ll get them drinks,” he told the girl. “Go empty your tray and check the kitchen for food.”

The trainee did as she was instructed. Terrence was certain that she would drop the tray, shove the dishes in front of a new,

flat-lipped dishwasher, and meet her lover behind the bar. Maybe she would tell her boyfriend that Terrence scared her. Maybe they would sneak a shot of rum. Maybe, only under the dim, revealing light of the restaurant—a fantastical force that stripped all pretenses away—she would discover her lover’s first flaw.

Terrence took a breath and approached the table of four. It was no different than any other night; he had done this dance a thousand times.

“Good evening, everyone.”

At one point in time, Terrence thought that he and Hudson could make it work. He lied to himself, saying that they could understand each other in spite of their differences—in spite of Hudson’s hatred of service, his immature palate, his lust for stability. But when Hudson gave his resignation from The Anchor, so too did he pack his bags and leave Terrence’s world altogether. “We want different things,” he said. “And you’ll always be loyal to that restaurant.”

In the sore and surreal years that followed their split, the boys grew in their own directions. They picked up the shattered pieces of their lives, stitching them together into different shapes, something new but vaguely familiar. Hudson got his desk job, his tie laced tightly around his neck each morning, returned to his new home at five o’clock each evening. Terrence heard through the grapevine—a vine of Concord, tart and strong—that he was doing well.

And Terrence, in those early years of his new life, did well also. He became the sounds and scents of The Anchor. He

tasted subtle flavors that he’d always been told about but had never experienced for himself. “I get it now,” Terrence, one night, said to no one in particular—holding the stem of a wine glass between two fingers. A bead of chardonnay collected on his bottom lip. For the first time, he realized what it meant for a wine to be buttery. “I understand what they mean.”

From Table 14, Hudson looked up at Terrence. The skin on his face had ripened, fine lines spreading around his lips. His hair sprouted gray like weeds in a garden. He wore the same cologne.

“Terrence,” he breathed.

A world of memories unleashed themselves from Terrence’s chest, banging against the surface of his skin. They showed themselves in the goosebumps on his neck.

“There’s no way that it’s really you.” Hudson was smiling. He looked like he may stand to hug Terrence, but he did not.

“It’s me.” Terrence became conscious of his hands.

“How have you been?”

Some small and dormant part of Terrence, some sensitive spot on the back of his tongue, wanted to say all kinds of things. Wanted to shatter glass on the floor and stomp it into the carpet. Wanted to swing his arms and be dragged into the kitchen by the younger, more naive servers—ones with young hands and muscles and fantasies like he once had, who would reconvene in the beer cooler to snort white powder and mock his pain. He wanted to make a fist-shaped hole in the kitchen wall. He wanted to scream and sob and ask questions and demand

answers.

But Terrence had grown up. Granted, he thought that he was grown back then— back when he knew the taste of Hudson’s mouth. Now, though, he was old enough to settle this leftover part of himself. “I’ve been good,” Terrence said. “Really good, actually.”

The man beside Hudson had clean fingernails and straight teeth. The boys at the opposite end of the table were scruffyhaired and fat-cheeked—the strong bones of someone raised on whole milk and full nights of sleep. “This is my family,” Hudson said. Terrence imagined that they lived in a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, a family dog that they took on walks each morning, a glass of boxed wine each night. He imagined that their family photo was framed on Hudson’s desk. “Everyone, this is Terrence.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” his husband said. His sons, in their adolescent shrill, said the same. The boys smiled at Terrence and Terrence smiled back. They were so young, unaware of Terrence’s mark on their father’s history. Maybe his husband was unaware also.

“All these years and you’re still here.” Hudson’s smile was unwavering. It was like a song that Terrence had long forgotten. Terrence, though he always assumed the worst at times like this, knew that it was sincere. “I knew that you’d stick around.”

“It’s never grown old,” Terrence said. “I’m the head server now.”

In a few minutes, Hudson would order the fish and chips. He would ask for his water to be flat. Terrence would offer the oysters as an appetizer, thinking

that something might have changed in him, and Hudson and his family would refuse. They would order the mussels, instead. Hudson knew nothing about their spawning. He would never learn these things, and that was okay.

It was not yet seven o’clock, but, around him, the restaurant was beginning to move at that pace. It was drippy and conniving in this way—the way a trickle transforms into a flash flood. A crowd of guests had begun gathering in the lobby. Soon, they’d be out of the lake trout.

Terrence wondered if Hudson noticed the vertical line between his brows or the way that his knuckles had swollen—if Hudson could feel the constant, dull ache in the small of Terrence’s back.

“The head server,” Hudson echoed. “I’m happy for you.”

Terrence smiled. He and Hudson had made their choices. They found their loves, they ran to them, and they wound up in different places. “I’m happy for you, as well,” he said. He felt good knowing that he meant it.

He removed the black book from his apron pocket. Receipts and loose bills tried to pull themselves from the plastic binding. Terrence clicked the trigger of a pen. Around him, the restaurant was alive. “Can I show you the wine list?”

The New Approachable Wine List

NIKKI PALLADINO

Master Sommelier Rajat Parr, writes in Secrets of the Sommeliers: “What you love to drink is never better than when it’s drunk with what you love to eat.” I’m almost a pro at coursing out a meal, but before I studied wine, I didn’t know how to pair what was on my plate with what could be poured in my glass. For sommeliers, like myself, developing that kind of knowledge base can be a full-time job. And it is.

Wine mastery goes beyond the palate though: the most successful sommeliers can communicate and curate an experience that is both approachable, yet elevated for guests dining in a restaurant. And, as the profession works to become even more relatable, wine lists present sommeliers with an opportunity to celebrate terroir and to feature wines with different liquid legacies, without pretension, leading to more education, translation, and inclusion, when it comes to talking about wine. Who doesn’t want to course out a full meal without having to rely on tech at a table?

Before I trained with master sommeliers, who taught me how to pronounce Châteauneuf-du-Pape and spot

Sangiovese in a blind tasting, I poured over descriptions of wine labels in wine shops and at wine tastings. I didn’t want wine lists to all look Tuscan to me. My dad is from Italy.

Wine lists are, by their very nature, vital to how sommeliers drive and sustain profits for a restaurant. They help wine professionals justify the cost of adding selections to the cellar if guests dining at their places of business purchase bottles. But multiple factors often drive guests’ decisions to make a purchase or not. And typically, this comes down to the approachability of a wine list and the restaurant’s sommelier, by extension.

During the French Renaissance, being a sommelier was a badge of honor. As Karen MacNeil writes in The Wine Bible, a sommelier (so-mel-YAY), was entrusted with a lord or king’s life; the tradition of tasting wine before serving it was about survival.

If you’ve ever nosed a cork-tainted wine, then you know the dank, wooly, wet smell and gnarly, even metallic taste. Unfortunately, too many people don’t know how to recognize cork taint and continue to drink a bottle of wine that’s

“off.” Whenever possible, sommeliers try to prevent this through proper wine storage, which is key to a wine’s survival.

On the Upper West Side, close to Shakespeare & Co., there used to be this cozy French eatery that I liked to frequent because it offered obscure BTGs (by the glass), think Ugni Blanc , and delicious French onion soup. After I completed Intensive Sommelier Training at the International Culinary Center, I remember it registering one night that all the wine bottles at this place were stored upright on the wall, and it was really stressing me out. Maybe that’s why it closed. No, seriously.

Wines must be “sound” to make it through a meal. That’s where the French café might’ve missed the mark. Their wines weren’t being stored horizontally, without exposure to light or significant temperature changes. My guess is that many of its bottles were sent back because they were corked. So much goes into preserving a wine program at a restaurant. It’s why there’s a higher markup in restaurants than retail. There’s more overhead.

In addition to selecting wines and spirits, sommeliers, or beverage directors with sommeliers reporting to them, running wine programs must track and trace inventory. This includes different types of glassware for beverage service, mix-ins for cocktails and mocktails and miscellaneous wine opening and chilling apparatus like corkscrews, serviettes and wine buckets.

Sommeliers also schedule tasting appointments with distributors and

producers. And afterward, plead with beverage directors or managers to bring in the wines from the tasting appointments, promising to move the inventory because they’re different from the wines that are already on the list. It’s a hard sell. It’s a lot of pressure. But we do it because we try to make room for lesser- known wine regions and wine producers to earn a spot where they’ve always belonged: featured on a wine list. •

In March of this year, Wine Spectator interviewed Amy Racine, sommelier at Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s restaurant at Lincoln Center, about how to curate a wine list for Tatiana, a groundbreaking AfroCaribbean concept. Here’s part of Racine’s response:

[The chef, bartender, and cocktail director, and myself] … all from totally different backgrounds, ethnicities, races, genders. We represent a very positive change in the hospitality and beverage industry.… I thought, what if we did a minority-and-women-focused wine list? Let’s represent producers that are breaking boundaries. We looked for as many of those producers as we could and also selected wines that best pair with African-diasporic cuisine (influenced heavily by Caribbean and West African cooking).

In that same article, Racine references Foradori, a family-run winery in TrentinoAlto Adige, close to the Austrian border. Three decades ago, after the unexpected death of her father, Elisabetta Foradori returned to her family’s estate to care

for the vines. She could’ve chased market trends, like vintners in Tuscany, who famously ripped up their Sangiovese to plant international varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon. But instead, she focused on cultivating local grapes. 1 Namely, Nosiola, Pinot Bianco, and a relative of Syrah, known as Teroldego. Both are richly flavored and intensely fruit-forward. But who would know that grape by name and feel confident ordering it if they saw it for the first time on a wine list?

That’s where Sommeliers shine. With hours of self-study and tasting practice under our belts, it’s gratifying to suggest a new wine to someone, especially when we think they’ll love it, but only if they’re willing to engage with us. But some guests just prefer to scroll through their Vivino app.

Someone in New York City declined my suggestions once, in favor of using their phone. I’ve got to believe realtors encounter a similar apprehension from buyers or sellers preferring FSBO (for sale by owner) transactions. With unfettered access to the internet and no one to guide you, what could go wrong?

A lot, especially when it comes to matching food and wine in a way that’s appetizing without missing the mark.

Secrets of Sommeliers, which won a James Beard Award for Beverage, includes many useful quotes, including this one: “The process of narrowing down a pairing involves both trial and error and good taste.” And sommeliers are advanced tasters, at least when compared to nonindustry professionals.

While we don’t want to overcomplicate

a pairing, we also don’t want to see a meal overwhelmed by the wrong wine. So, we make a point of knowing how the five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami and a wine’s structure (e.g., racy [acidic] or round [oaked]) contribute to what a guest will experience on their palate with their meal selection. As far as I know, apps like Vivino don’t provide that level of service. It’s job security for now.

Although there’s always the possibility that diners can encounter a wine snob on the job, often, sommeliers are motivated by driving an experience and not just a sale. The best philosophy I’ve encountered to date when it comes to selecting pairings comes from Secrets of the Sommeliers: “Light reds [are] great with fish, and richer whites can pair with certain meats. White wines with a touch of green in them— Albariños, Sancerres, some Greek whites— are usually good paired with green foods like salads and vegetables.” I’d even add Vermentino, Grüner Veltliner, and Pinot Grigio to that list.

But how can we serve guests if they aren’t inclined to engage with us? We can appeal to them through a wine list.

Food writer Sara Dickerman says, “Menus are a literature of control. Menu language, with its hyphens, quotation marks, and random outbursts of foreign words, serve less to describe food than to manage your expectations.”

When creating or editing wine lists, sommeliers make choices. I take the view that wine lists represent texts or tools that the public needs to be able to engage with in order to advance rhetorical action, based on an essay I read in grad school

titled, “Ecological, Pedagogical, Public Rhetoric,” co-written by Nathaniel A. Rivers and Ryan P. Weber.

In practice, if a guest orders a cocktail in lieu of a bottle of wine or, worse, takes to social media to tell their followers just how unsavory they found the whole process of navigating the wine list—a true story revealed later in this essay—it’s a missed opportunity for a sale, yes, but also for a wine professional to practice engaging public rhetoric pedagogy.

While to some, wine lists may seem like nothing more than “mundane documents,” according to Rivers and Weber, they help to “mold human behavior.” They have the potential to drive sales and interest in wine or to turn people off completely. Take the following observation: “Sometimes when customers open a wine list and find a lot of verbiage on the page, they don’t want to deal with it,” says Nicole Burke, chef/ owner Burke & Black. “But then when a list is just that—a list—and there is nothing to guide [guests], they similarly don’t want to look at it.”

•

Before the wine buyer’s revolution, after the mid-2000s, an industry-wide shift to stop arranging wine lists by bin numbers, producers, and prices but little else, a lot of sommeliers stocked cellars based on their desire to get a taste of celebrated Burgundies or rarer wines, rather than appeal to their guests’ particular wine preferences. 2 However, that changed when people like Paul Grieco at Terroir, Belinda Chang at The Modern, and Carlton McCoy at Element 47, a few years after that, reinterpreted the content and tone of

wine lists so that the form and function, as well as its creator, could take on a whole new (creative) rhetorical discourse.

The wine programs they took over, and wine programs at famous restaurants elsewhere, mostly touted Chardonnays and Cabernets made almost exclusively in Burgundy and Napa. But with these sommeliers at the helm, their wine lists featured Rieslings made in Germany and Austria, Nebbiolos produced in Piedmont, and Cabernets, Syrahs, and Pinot Noirs from the U.S.

As Parr writes in Secrets of the Sommeliers , “Good lists also have diversity. The best wine directors have a democratic sense, wanting everyone to love wine as much as they do, so they will make sure to stock their list with lots of styles at lots of different prices.”

One of my favorite examples of this is Seasons 52, which offers fifty-two wines by the glass. The BTG list is a joy to navigate. White wines feature prominently at the top, all arranged by varietal (e.g., Sparkling, Sauvignon Blanc, Rosé, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio), even including a section for “Interesting Whites.”

I like the idea of “interesting” styles because there are popular varietals being made in unusual places, like the Napa Valley. One of my favorite wineries, Matthiasson, produces Ribolla Gialla, an Italian varietal, in the southern part of Napa Valley. They’re serious vintners making serious wine in a place seriously obsessed with Bordeaux varietals. “Interesting” to say the least. Although they’re not presently on the BTG list,

Seasons 52 is featuring Band of Vintners— wine that’s made and priced fairly by industry vets. That’s why I’ve got a hunch that the beverage directors at Seasons rotated through bottles of Matthiasson at one time or another.

I mention Matthiasson, the husbandand-wife winegrowing and winemaking team, here because they are opening doors with their internship program which provides entry for women into the farming side of their business; their involvement with the Two Eighty Project empowers anyone and everyone to learn how to make, manage, teach, and sell wine. It’s all part of how they run their business. They’re regenerative farmers. I think you might even be able to taste their thoughtful philosophy.

On a list Ribolla Gialla might not mean anything to the average wine drinker, but it does to me. I got to visit the Matthiasson’s yellow house and taste their wines under a fig tree, after I passed my Certified exam in 2018, through the Court of Master Sommeliers. The following spring, I had the privilege of tasting Laura Felluga’s family’s Ribolla Gialla while working for Lidia Bastianich’s hospitality group and later attending Vinitaly in Verona. I mention that here because if I said that to someone out of context, I would probably sound like a wine snob.

Sommeliers get a lot of scrutiny. We deserve some of it, especially the Washington Post coverage back in 2020 from Dave McIntyre, decrying restaurant wine lists that intimidate “even the dining pros.” As McIntyre writes:

The language of wine can be intimidating.

Wine lovers have our own vocabulary, complete with foreign words that can be difficult to pronounce.… All this leads to the stereotype of the wine snob lording knowledge over the rest of the world. And of course, there’s the snooty sommelier who intimidates diners with an impenetrable list and an imposing demeanor. Most sommeliers I’ve met here in Washington and elsewhere take great pains to dispel that stereotype, but the negative image seems to be alive and well.

The article then references Helen Rosner, famed food writer for the New Yorker. And her now famous X (formerly Twitter) rant:

I am an actual professional restaurant eater and I still have no … clue which of the many many words on a wine list is the one word I’m supposed to say to indicate that this is the wine I want a glass of.

Judging by Rosner’s tweet and McIntyre’s motivation to write the article, the snooty sommelier stereotype still exists.

But our profession is and deserves to be distinguished. Not because of Wine Spectator’s acclaimed Restaurant Awards program, now entering its 43rd year or due to coveted titles Wine Enthusiast bestows on a “Sommelier/Beverage Director of the Year.” (Fun fact: Seasons 52 boasts a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence.)

Setting aside the fact that healthy disagreement exists within the industry about who can refer to themself as a sommelier, (I’m partial to the idea that you can call yourself a Sommelier, even if you

no longer work on the floor of a restaurant) our profession deserves more praise than Twitter punishment because our job is to do more than sell: it is to educate.

That’s why I think the food and wine writing category has become so popular in the last four decades. But some bad press is good, especially if it forces people in the industry to pay attention to and reshape our approach to our rhetorical activity. Other press is just in bad taste.

If there’s a takeaway from Helen Rosner’s criticisms about unreadable wine lists, let it be, as Rivers and Weber write, that we bring together “disconnected threads.” Let the “we” be the wine industry and let us take our menus (e.g., mundane documents), snobs (e.g., interpersonal networks), exclusionary hiring practices (e.g., rhetorical moves and countermoves), and grapple with this “messy ecology of public discourse.” We and you deserve so much more than Sip. Swirl. Repeat.

1. Louis/Dressner Selections, “An Interview with Elisabetta Foradori,” https://louisdressner.com/articles/aninterview-with-elisabetta-foradori.

2. Sciaretta, Gillian. “Biography of a Wine List,” Wine Spectator, 31 Aug. 2018, pp. 63.

House Special

VANESSA OGLE

Life screams at you like the vacuum sucking up beer caps. Where are you going? Back to stacking place mats, paper napkins, and the half-and-half, which looks a whole lot bigger through the fisheye of the water glass that has become the vivarium of your life: It whispers now. Should you tell them it costs $10.99 to stare out opposite windows and fight over the tip? You bring ketchup even though he has soup and your eyes are as bored as your brain, as your body, energy used up on the customers who think a few crinkled ones mean something more than the mindnumbing—something. Maybe if you keep moving the boss won’t notice you forgot your name tag, those slanted stickers, faded, cracked, make it harder to pretend you’ll ever have enough air to do more than breathe.

Just the Tip

WHY GOING OUT SHOULDN’T HURT AT ALL

MARISOL AVELINE DELAROSA

Ijust walked out of the wine shop across the street from my apartment building and I tipped the salesperson for my purchase. You might be wondering if that is something you’re supposed to be doing as well. Don’t worry. It’s not at all normal behavior. But, if you know me, you know that I consider myself someone who tips well and frequently. More so, I tend to tip people who don’t expect it or even ask for it. So, to a large population of Americans, I am part of the problem.

We are currently experiencing a cultural phenomenon of tipping fatigue. There is a pervasive sense of confusion about when or if to tip and how much that seems to be exacerbated as more shops and stores have changed to point-of-sale systems that utilize a touch screen for you to pay. As we quickly eschew paper money and plastic credit cards and become a society of fully digital capitalists, we seem to be signaling a desire for a system that is fast and thoughtless. Who has time to count out bills or open their wallet? Let me just tap my phone screen at another screen to make this payment!

What’s causing a lot of the anxiety is that most of these touch screen

interactions end with a request for us to leave a gratuity, causing an unpleasant interruption in our forward motion at the register. We’ve all seen it. Someone’s finger hesitates over which percentage square to choose while they debate how much tip, if anything, to leave. Maybe they are worried the barista will switch their drink to decaf if they don’t leave at least 20 percent. Meanwhile, the person behind them is getting antsy because they just want to order their oat milk latte and leave, too. It’s making people wonder about the necessity of the tip.

New York Magazine had an issue recently devoted to these questions of proper societal behavior in our current cultural zeitgeist. The cover page boasts the absurd question, “Is Everyone Tipping 25% on Bottled Water?” The author outlines what they believe should be norms as far as tipping. This includes: 20–25 percent at restaurants, at least 20 percent to baristas, $5 or 20 percent (whichever is highest) to food delivery drivers (more in bad weather), etc. The outgoing message of the article seemed to be that 20 percent or more for any kind of a service is a safe zone to exist in if you

aren’t entirely sure what to do.

But encountering a touch screen that requests a tip every time you make a purchase at retail stores or delis is causing a backlash among consumers who feel pressured to spend more money during a time when everything is already more expensive. Unfortunately, those in the service industry are suffering the most as consumers push back against this forced system of generosity that some people think may be unwarranted. So why, then, do I continue to participate in a system that has its origins in American slavery1 and potentially perpetuates an imperfect means of wage distribution?

Because the world can be a better place if you do it right.

•

I tipped the guy at the wine shop because I know him. There are two guys who work there that I know. They are sweet, slightly nerdy Gen Zers with wardrobes styled directly from Beacon’s Closet. Let’s call them Scott and Ian. Scott and Ian used to be regulars at a pop-up restaurant I helped manage that served smashed-patty burgers and craft cocktails. The restaurant was adjacent to the bar I run, and my business partner and I offered the space to our chef so he could try to generate some additional revenue for us.

Scott and Ian frequented the restaurant because it was close to the wine shop and one of the bartenders, Craig, was a real cocktail nerd, which they appreciated. About once a week, I would see them bellied up to the bar enjoying a New York Sour or some other bespoke concoction that Craig would manufacture for them.

They became regulars. Regulars are the lifeblood of a good bar. You need them to create your vibe. Like good lighting and music, the right regulars make a place feel more inviting and encourage other people to drink. When you achieve the status of regular at a bar, you can receive certain perks. I used to tell Craig to give Scott and Ian drinks from me whenever I saw them, and they would in turn leave Craig a generous tip.

As regulars, they saved some money because they didn’t have to pay for the drinks, just the tip.

For the equivalent cost of the ingredients for two cocktails, I was able to make three people happy: two customers (because they were getting free drinks) and the bartender (because he made more of a tip producing two drinks than he would have if the guys had had to pay for them). Even more, Scott and Ian would now be more likely to continue to return (and maintain their status as regulars) which is good for the business. It’s a win-win-win.

This rewards structure that exists within the tipping system is known as the buyback. If you are a regular at a bar or if you are a brand-new customer and you have had two or three drinks and tipped a reasonable amount each time, you may find yourself in a buyback situation. In both of these cases, because of the economy of retail purchasing, many bars permit their staff to reward you with a free drink, food item, or even a round of shots. It’s like a punch card you didn’t know you had. This flexibility to give away product is contingent on a system that puts tipped wage earners in direct control of

their earning potential. There is a sense of authority over one’s domain when you are empowered to invest in customers by giving them an unexpected freebie and trusting they’ll return the generosity. And don’t we all feel a bit special when we get an unsolicited shot of chilled tequila?

I tip Scott and Ian to continue to pay that kindness forward and to remind them of the good experience they had drinking at my bar. But, more than that, they are regulars in my life now. Whenever I walk by the wine shop, I wave at the window in case one of them is working. And I do walk by at least once a day because the wine shop is directly across the street from my apartment building. When I go in, they always recommend wines that I enjoy because they know my taste, and I’m always happy to see them around the neighborhood.

Scott and Ian are part of the mosaic of my block. They are like Mr. Cheng at the laundromat who folds my fitted sheets better than I ever could and my deli guy, Emiliano, who always tells me, No trabajes tanto! when I stop in for oat milk and bottled water. I always tell Emiliano he’s the one that shouldn’t work so hard. They are my community of regulars.

And since you are wondering, I tip 50 percent on my laundry drop-offs and I always leave the change when I buy something at the deli. No cambia, gracias, I say, and stuff a few dollars and some coins in the plastic cup by the register. It’s easier than taking out my wallet again and it makes the kind woman at the register smile. Emiliano will shout to me from behind the deli counter: Cuidate, mami!

Neither of these practices is normal or expected. It is customary to tip 20 percent to the people who do your laundry (and $5–$10 to the person delivering it to you depending on how far they have to travel to bring it to you). It is not customary to tip the guy at the deli unless he made you a sandwich or did anything else that requires him to put on gloves and use a slicer or flat top grill. So, why do I do it?

It’s less out of an expectation of a tangible return on the investment of the extra dollars, and more as a recognition of their significance in the machinations of my city existence. If I learned anything during the months of pandemic lockdown it is that any small bit of kindness to your neighbors can have meaning beyond what you may ever know. And kindness is certainly something in constant need of replenishing. But my life is made better by it as well.

I tip the laundry guys excessively because they always prioritize my laundry when they are busy even though I tell them they don’t have to. And they greet me warmly every time I stop by, with a chorus of “Ahh! It’s Marisol!” Also, they had a terrible fire a year ago and had to shut down for several months to repair the damage. There was a handwritten sign in the window (next to the picture of the laughing Buddha) that thanked us for our support when they reopen. I actually have laundry machines in my building, so I don’t need to use their service. But I want Mr. Cheng to have a successful business and, frankly, I am a little lazy. So, I drop off my clothes and tip too much. Every Christmas, they put a card in my bundle

of clean clothes with a handwritten note thanking me for my kindness.

I tip Emiliano at the deli because he works seven days a week and has never greeted me with anything except genuine friendliness. When I forgot my wallet and my phone one time, he didn’t hesitate to let me take my Girl Dinner bag of popcorn and a peanut butter Kind Bar and pay him later. Leaving a few dollars of my change from our weekly transactions does not probably make a huge difference to his overall income, but it doesn’t hurt. And it’s my way of showing him that I respect and appreciate him as a human being.

•

Yes, it’s true that the system of tipping is a legacy of slavery in America and effectively justifies paying a population of already disadvantaged people a wage even lower than the legal minimum (which, if we’re all being honest, is not a living wage). I am not debating any of that.

As someone who has derived over two decades of personal income either directly from tips or from running a business that employs tipped workers, I feel particularly qualified to provide my perspective of the advantageous side of a tipping industry. I also firmly believe that tipping culture has spiraled out of control and the people suffering the most from this are those who deserve the dominion that a tipping system can provide. By this I mean those who provide a direct service, specifically bartenders and servers. Even before the iPad touch screens became so ubiquitous, tipping put service industry staff in frustrating situations.

Once, I witnessed a particularly

annoying interaction between a bartender named Ladell and a customer whom I gleaned was on holiday from the UK.

“Oh, mate, I’m sorry,” he said to Ladell without making eye contact, “You know we don’t tip where I’m from.” The man then scribbled his signature on a receipt for the three lagers poured for him and didn’t write in an amount on the tip line. To Ladell’s credit, he just smiled and ended the conversation there.

Unfortunately for this man, I have a terrible habit of not being able to stop myself from talking shit. It’s one of the perks of being the boss in a business. There’s no one to scold you when you’re being a bit goading.

“Hey, sorry!” I chirped. “Quick question.”

Lager man wrapped his long, bony fingers around his pints as he prepared to pivot away from me in his bright white trainers.

“You have been to the States before, right?” I asked in my politest tone.

“Yeah, loads of times.”

“So, you do know that it is customary to tip here. Even if you don’t do it back home. Right?”

Before he could interrupt, I continued, “I’m just saying. It’s totally fine. Like, don’t worry about this check.” I motioned to the tipless receipt in the clipboard on the bar. “But just in case you wonder why you might not get the friendliest reception from other servers or bartenders while you’re here, it’s because it is pretty common knowledge that we tip here.”

“Well, you lot should pay your staff better. Why’s it my responsibility?”

“Ohhh,” I said, “So, by not tipping this

person who is just doing his job, you are effectively casting a vote to ignite some sort of infrastructural shift in the American service industry economy? Is that it?”

He stared blankly at me.

“Cool, cool, cool. Anyway, enjoy your beers. Cheers!”

Ladell turned to me and laughed as the man walked away unbothered.

I smirked at Ladell. “Too much?”

Conversely, on another occasion, I was in line behind a woman at the juice bar near my apartment. The woman had just purchased a bottled green juice, the liquid fixer for all pseudo-healthy adults. I watched as she tapped her phone against the blue rectangular touch screen to pay for the drink.

Five prompts popped up in white square letters reading, “5 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent, Other, No Tip.”

The woman growled. “Ugh, this is so stupid. I’m not tipping on this.” Her voice pitched up and she knitted her brow at the stoic young man on the other side of the counter. He didn’t respond.

The woman whipped her head toward me, searching for any ally in the moment as she clutched her prepackaged bottle of juice.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want,” I said plainly while willing her to leave so I could order an acai bowl and get on with my life.

After placing my order, I said thank you, tipped 25 percent, smiled, and stepped off the line quickly.

I do not blame the woman for not wanting to tip. To my mind, it wasn’t necessary. The worker didn’t execute

an individualized service during their transaction. They didn’t gather the different ingredients, blend the juice, and pour it into a container. There was not a direct service provided, so she didn’t need to acknowledge the effort with a gratuity. But she also didn’t have to make a snide comment to the worker. Using the moment to chastise a stranger over something that they cannot change about their job—a job they are just doing to earn a living—is pointless, rude, and achieves nothing. •

The reason so many people have worked as bartenders or servers in New York City and other major metropolitan areas (and, frankly, loads of smaller cities and towns) is that it’s generally thought of as a fun job where you can make a lot of money. Yes, the tipped-employee system used to permit managers to pay their workers far below minimum wage. That is no longer the case in many states. In New York City, for example, businesses with food service workers are now allowed to take what is called a “tip credit.” The current tip credit rate ($5.00) permits employers to pay tipped wage earners $10.00/hour (which is $5.00 below minimum wage). If the employee does not make at least $5.00/hour in tips per hour, the employer is required to pay them the difference. On its face, that may seem like a bum deal. However, most businesses do not have to take advantage of this tip credit because most tipped employees make far more than $5.00/hour in tips at bars and restaurants in New York City. As an example, my employees make an

average of anywhere from $30–$60 plus per hour in tips and we pay the full-time workers $15/hour on top of that. Before taxes, bartenders and servers can make $50,000–$80,000 a year, and most of them work less than thirty-five hours per week and have three days off per week.

To my mind, bartenders and servers absolutely deserve to make a base salary of at least $50,000 annually. But for a bar to pay its staff that amount, the business model would have to alter drastically. Conservatively, this could mean increasing payroll by three times the current amount, which means unless the cost of goods meaningfully decreases (a certain impossibility in our constant state of inflation), we would have to significantly raise prices for the consumer. A $15 cocktail would be closer to $40.

I’m sure you see how that is unreasonable. Enter, the tip. •

So what are you paying for by tipping?

We all learned during the pandemic that you can drink at home. You don’t need to spend $15 plus tax and tip on a cocktail. People go to bars to be around other people and to potentially make some bad decisions that lead to unexpected adventure. We go to commiserate with friends and/or strangers about whatever bullshit is bothering us on a given day. Sometimes, we go to meet new people. Often, we go to be somewhere besides home or work so we can sip on a perfectly poured Manhattan and just be.

Bartenders and servers facilitate all of that. Not only do they have to provide you with food and drink in a timely and

enjoyable manner, but they also have to negotiate hundreds if not thousands of social and psychological maneuvers. They talk to people who want attention and give space to people who want to be left alone. They profile every person they encounter to determine what kind of day they are having and respond accordingly. They also monitor situations for potential distress, answer millions of questions, engage, entertain, and counsel—their customers and their coworkers.

As a bartender, I’ve had to participate in conversations about the weather, the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar, and the merits of Nancy Meyers’s film oeuvre, and detail my favorite goals by Lionel Messi. All in one day. Imagine if most of your day was spent at a cocktail party where you were expected to be the driving engine of conversation for eightto-ten hours while remembering hundreds of different drink and food orders and executing physically demanding labor.

Ten hours on your feet carrying trays full of plates and glasses, hauling buckets of ice up and down stairs, balancing martini glasses while navigating through crowds of drunk people with no concept of personal space, shaking a margarita with one hand and stirring a Manhattan with the other. And doing it all while smiling and doing math in your head. It’s exhausting. Add to that the constant expectation to participate in the lives of strangers. I’ve helped customers set up wedding proposals, advised single guys on the best photos for their dating profiles, and flirted with regulars to improve their chances with the dates they bring to the

bar.

It’s not all fun, though. An unfortunate and all too often by-product of too much alcohol can also be extremely belligerent behavior. Bartenders and servers put their safety at risk when someone gets aggressive. It was not so long ago that there were videos popping up every day on our social media feeds where restaurant workers were being physically assaulted for trying to get customers to comply with mandatory masking regulations. Even before the pandemic, service industry workers experienced workplace violence. I once had a saltshaker thrown at the back of my head because I wouldn’t seat two people at a table for six. I’ve had drinks thrown at me, and I’ve been spit on, screamed at, and vomited on by more drunk people than I care to remember.

It’s not just about making drinks and serving food. It is work that merits that 20 percent and then some. •

The most salient advice I garnered from that New York magazine article is: “The higher your level of disposable income, the more generous you ought to be.”

And this is the primary reason why I strive to be someone who tips too much and in unexpected situations. I am by no means wealthy, but as a childless woman who has never been married and recently paid off all her student loans, I am comfortable. And, beyond the obvious reason that it is just the right thing to do, I firmly believe in my ability to be a vessel of wealth distribution.

If everyone aspired to aggressive generosity, it could potentially shift

the gap of income disparity. Obviously, more important changes, such as taxing billionaires proportional to their wealth, are more significant and we should definitely strive toward and vote to enact such measures. However, in your own universe, if you are able to and if everyone participates, you can potentially impact someone else’s life in a small way monetarily and a larger way humanely. It could change the day of your weary bartender who is brought to tears by an unruly customer. You can validate someone’s humanity with a kind word and an appropriate tip. All with just a few extra dollars on the round of High Noon hard seltzers you buy for you and your friends at a club.

For my part, I will continue to Johnny Appleseed my disposable income throughout the streets of New York and hope that it makes a difference in someone else’s happiness, if not their livelihood. Even if it’s just for a moment of unexpected gratification. It doesn’t hurt.

1. Read more about this legacy: Rund Abdelfatah et al., “The Land of the Free,” NPR, March 25, 2021, https://www.npr. org/2021/03/22/980047710/the-landof-the-fee.

FICTION

Tough Bite

EVAN KANOUSE

The tip of Angela Kane’s cigarette flickers as she dusts the stoop outside Kline. She savors a deep inhale as she bends down and takes a seat. Her nicotine breath becomes entangled with the sun’s golden rays. Fatigue drapes over her with each languid puff, weariness etched across her reflection in the dining hall’s tall windows. Poplar leaves beside the pathway are fluttering upward, their branches all bent to one side.

Perched at the entrance, students ebb and flow. The lunchtime hustle and bustle has finally hushed, granting her a few stolen minutes of quiet. When Angie returns, she’ll swipe their cards, collect their cash, and send them on their way. While others cocoon themselves in thick winter jackets, Angie, with her one free hand, unbuttons her jacket, crumbs tumbling from her crimson exterior. A bronze-colored name tag adorns her right breast. Daylight falls into her as unto the night dew which lingered on thin blades of grass nearby. Puddles cradle small craters of wet: memories of rain, still on the surface.

She has dealt with marriages that had grown dull, the sudden arrival of illness, the intransigence of memory, swells

of desire, weather-beaten friends and inadvertent intimacies, the will to change and the inability to change. So she takes fifteen and lights a cigarette.

She lets the new warmth of April settle in like a whisper or a secret. Spring unfurls slow and quiet along the shoreline of the Hudson. She could wait: she had waited, the unhurried pace of the seasons no match to Angie’s fifty-nine years in this town, a quarter of which she spent in this place. Miniscule buds on the trees accompanied precocious students’ big-worded conversations: “Sartre,” “Heidegger,” “panopticism.” Their nervous energy can be unsettling, like a bum knee and an eight-hour shift. She gently taps her cigarette, watching her breath curl up beside her. She taps her knee—slowly, methodically—as a therapist had once instructed.

You get used to things, she thinks, without getting used to things.

Angie runs her nails—a deep shade of purple, trimmed down to her fingertips— through her thin blond hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ears. Eyeliner and mascara conspire to create the illusion of eyes deep as weather. Dark folds linger beneath, immune to attempts

at camouflage. A metallic cross drapes beneath a plump flap of excess skin which blends together her throat and her neck.

Easily afraid, always unsettled: she carries something that cannot be set down. Angie is severe, salty, proud, opinionated, and physically imposing (or at least she sees herself that way). She inspires fear and muted amusement from the students, who smile at her tenderhearted but comically incapable warmth. Inside, she is surging with feeling—fear; full and complicated love for her son and sometimes, her ex-husbands; tidal anger. The consequence of looking inward for so many years is her trademark lack of insight; she has the sensitivity of a tuning fork, and so she’s hardened herself against too much sensation.

Amidst the brisk student traffic, Angie takes another deep inhale. She has gotten used to the various bodies which run in parallel orbit around the college. Tweedclad college professors, preoccupied and condescending; undergraduates, transient, anxious and absentminded and sometimes unexpectedly, unbelievably kind. Maintenance, B&G, Dining: all caught in the velocity of it all, continuously pulled inward. She observed their comings and goings; the students’ wide-eyed wonder in their freshman year, the pontifical wisdom they wore with honor as they walked with their diploma and she prepared lunch. Angie is glad to have landed here. From crafting aircraft breaks to house cleaning and babysitting—it is this role that unexpectedly emerged from the shadows that clung to her. The rhythm of the job became magnetic: the aroma

of simmering macaroni, the familiar beep of the register which preserved her sanity (that fragile thing). She resisted the tides that swept others away: the changes, the new jobs, the prospect of something better. Hope was a cancer, she thought, and she didn’t want it.

By thirty-two, Angie was married and had a daughter. Balancing the demands of work, motherhood, and her illness presented a challenge. Her first husband— and later, her second—didn’t understand. Relationships crumbled as swiftly as they formed, often when she found herself unable to step beyond her own doorstep, consumed by the paralyzing fear that gripped her. The simple act of grocery shopping became an insurmountable weight, and the mere thought of leaving her home sent her off-kilter.

It was like drowning in cobwebs, she thought, whose sticky maze was spinning about her. A darkness rumbled through her, her soul suffocating in tar. Every heartbeat felt like a seismic tremor that reverberated through the body. This turmoil again and again sent her adrift, tethered only to relentless worry. To come up for air seemed impossible.

There were days when it was excruciating. Years that seemed perennially rough. Unyielding. Blinding. Something passed over her, like a shadow crossing in front of the sun. Angie’s trepidation was a relentless specter, shrouding her in suffocating panic. She evaded anything that threatened to unleash her fear: public transportation, open spaces, closed spaces, standing in line, bustling crowds, empty rooms—

everything, really. Angie’s anxiety held her in a relentless pull and cast a shadow over every move. She sought refuge at home, life remained stable even as it seemed to suffocate her.

It began in the high school at the end of a corridor, that central artery of the arts and sciences and P.E. During a mundane social studies lesson, an insidious panic emerged that constricted Angie’s breath. She felt the stain of some sadness make its way through her. A perceptive teacher sensed her unease and probed with a question, setting off a fire somewhere deep down within. She sought refuge in the girls’ restroom, where Angie huddled in a ball on cold tile, encircled by concerned onlookers who called for help.

The sequence repeated itself the following day and the next again. She withdrew two months shy of graduation. Her sanctuary became the confines of her home, where stepping outside was laden with dread. A profound worry took root, coercing her into a life of confinement and self-imposed exile. Within the walls she knew best was a fortress, or a jail cell.

Outside, Angie’s fear held her with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean. Meadows green and bright with sunshine; rivulets of melted snow that ran down craggy mountains, glittering like silver chains; revelations and memories; concrete walls and so many futures—all suddenly beyond her grasp. Time passed and Angie boiled under the surface. Clenched, off balance, prickly. As if pickled in a jar. Some days she shook as though an electric current ran through her.

I can do better, Angie thought. Look, she

said, look how I want to live, look how I want to hold on. It was criminal to look out on all that color, all that joy in a world of sadness and misfortune, and not do better.

In due time she began to patch herself up, to walk down the street again. She found herself learning all the intimate ways that history works itself in, navigating tumultuous swings of antidepressants, experimental treatments, and other drugs. At times, she was a distant, shrouded planet, cloaked in the darkness of side effects and unrest, orbiting her own vexations. At others, her thoughts were a suffocating void where the weight of anxiety bore down upon her. Thinking became an elusive feat; every breath seemed a struggle as she gasped for a smoother, more gentle surface. Eventually, a faint glimmer eventually began to pierce the darkness. It was like moving into a pocket of warm air. Gradually, the feeling began to wane, and when it returned, it did so only with a dull, medicated intensity. Shattered fragments of life unearthed themselves, and one by one, she picked them up.

As Angie reached smoother shores, she summoned the courage to attend an interview at the local liberal arts college. They were hiring a part-timer for the kitchen, and she made the leap. At first, she was terrified of the power of her wish— to have an anchor, something to hold onto, outside home—but with time, her nerves receded. Soon, the bustling dining hall, initially foreign territory, began its transformation into her daily routine, an extension of home.

The place etched its mark on Angie, where she served up routine as the temperamental chefs did meals. She found comfort in the predictable cadence of the job and in the occasional mischief of its occupants. One year, food fights were a daily ritual. Her eyes widened as she caught the sight of a student dashing through the hallway, stark naked. Another, she discovered a pig’s head in the servery. She loved complaining over roast beef and cigarettes almost as much as she loved the antics themselves.

The flow of life gave rise to good days and bad. Through routine, she navigated her little revolutions. When the sun shone, she smiled. Occasionally, her anxiety welled and turned into anger. Inside she was a tempest, a storm brewing as pent-up frustrations flashed—often unexpectedly—at minor figures, when no one could save the students who faltered, forgot their cards, or fell a few dollars short. Students glimpsed her moods, knew when the lights flickered and it was time to rush off. Sometimes even she was dizzy, spinning through the vastness of her emotions, their origin hidden behind the clouds.

Her lighter flicks on and off again as she lights another cigarette. Angie chews on her reflection: a solitary figure on a stoop, another cigarette smoldering between her thick fingers, trying to make her way and still reduced to a crawl. Doubt takes hold, as it often does, and she wonders if something is perhaps just inherently defective about Angela Kane, why this burden has fallen squarely upon her shoulders. Her notes half-broken, limbs

creaking in resistance; weight stuck like a dense blanket of snow. A life churning with static. Doctors, lovers, kids and friends: they all seem to slip away through the cracks, out of grasp.

She thinks about that lost decade, when her world was confined to four walls. It’s gone now, those years swept up with the wind. Life, it seems, has always been like this: never easy. The dread stings as it finds the surface. For Angie time is as big and round as the sky, and to try to make sense of it is like trying to make sense of music and God and why the ocean is so deep. Long ago Angie had known not to try to make sense of these things, the way other people tried to.

Dinner’s prospects—like the fate of most things—are slim. Typically, the dining hall staff could bring home leftovers, those odds and ends that couldn’t find a place in tomorrow’s reheated menu or the dank basement’s cavernous refrigerators. She’d grown accustomed to TV dinners and the warmth of sloppy seconds. The fare, dripping with its fat and oil, is simple and familiar. But as she rests her wrist on her knee, the thought of lugging a hefty shopping bag feels like a recipe for pain. Her mind scans her freezer at home, its snowy insides with frostbitten meats and containers of pre-seasoned vegetables.

One more cigarette before she heads back in.

Angie’s always loved food: eating it, cooking it, smelling it, the last bite and the first. All facts laid bare, she just likes it, plain and simple. Perhaps in some other life, it would transport her back to some idyllic childhood, to simpler times

that she could keep close. Everyone has one: an illicit affair, a shoe collection, a drinking habit, a full refrigerator. A thread that keeps you connected to the rhythm of life. Three meals, sometimes four: they anchor her. A refuge, where past and future fade out of the foreground and the present moment becomes some kind of relief. Fork in hand, she has control. As the food descends and kindles in her stomach, it fuels the fire, banishing the chill of frigid nights and enveloping her in the heat of summer mornings.

Those bites, the swallow, the exhale of a single drag. They’re hers.

Back in her one-bedroom in Tivoli, Angie stays busy. Her curtains sway gently in the breeze, every stitch her own. Amid snapshots of her daughter, her granddaughter, a dog long dead and buried, it’s every bit a gallery of those soft spots that still remain. It’s really all there is to life, she thinks, those photographs caught in the amber of the moment: family and nature, desire and death, stories made from love and joy and scratch. At night, the television flickers to life, casting its warm, mind-numbing glow across the room. Golden Girls. I Love Lucy. When she reaches an end, she just turns back the clock, rewinds and restarts the series over again. A lifeline to something continuous—that, even in the stillness of this small and lonely place, life continues in its beautiful and gut-wrenching hue.

Nights always close with The Andy Griffith Show because it reminds Angie of her father, whose time was cut short when Angie was twelve. She can still recall the mornings he’d return home

from the bakery at the A&P, wet flour and an aroma of freshly baked bread clinging to his clothes. In the kitchen he’d craft velvety mashed potatoes, rich gravy, pork tenderloin in the oven. Flavors all so familiar.

Overnight, he vanished. In the quiet corners of her mind, Angie navigates her past, retracing the blurred lines between what was and what might have been. In the presence of revolving colleagues and each year’s fresh batch of young faces, she shares his stories: how her father, Richie, toiled as a pinsetter at a bowling alley when he was six; the night he gifted her mother a golden necklace and she threw it in the river; when she was little and they sat on milk crates and collected coal along the Hudson line, and they were happy.

Their shared moments exist together in delicate layers, like sponge cake or lasagna, fragile images sketched in parchment. A phantom crafted from loose threads of memory. She was so young when he left that Angie wonders whether she created him herself, whether any of what she tells is really true; whether her father is really just a tapestry of fragments and emotions that have emerged from the ether; the strokes of his existence, a dance of light and shadow.

Angie stamps out the memory, the longing, the fear, the butt of her cigarette, and heads back in.

The Inquisitive Eater: The Service Issue