Service, Please

Eli Goldstone waits table on her best customer. Illustration by Antoine Cossé.

Good morning and welcome to Vittles. In today’s newsletter, Eli Goldstone writes about being her son’s waiter.

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You want something. You are hungry. You don’t know what you want. For most diners, bread and a tiny round of yellow, sweating butter is welcome. It alleviates anxiety, signifies that the dining experience has begun and that, here, all will be well. But you are my two-year-old son and you don’t want bread. Don’t want butter. Unless you mistake it for cheese and then you will eat a thick slice and ask for more. More cheese. That’s butter, I say, kindly, but it does look like cheese, doesn’t it? We don’t normally eat butter like that but … I see the corners of your mouth turning down. Yes, why not. Bring him more of the cheese. You like the thick, colourful dinner candles. You want to hold the candles. Why wouldn’t you? They are waxy and the colour of boiled sweets, perfectly sized for a small palm. I regretfully decline. The candles were a recent extravagance and we have agreed to be judicious with them. Perhaps you would like something to drink? You want sparkling water in an espresso cup. The house speciality. You drink deeply and gesture with the cup. That’s spicy, you nod, smacking your lips. That’s spicy water.

Your tastes are conservative, a little pedestrian in fact. I hope you don’t think that I am judging you. I understand that crisps are delicious. That a spoonful of peanut butter has its charms. These are your preferences: things that are umami, that can be held in one hand. In the kitchen we prepare ‘fried balls’ and make grateful reference to customers shovelling them into their mouths to soothe bad attitudes. They often contain, and are adorned with, copious amounts of cheese from the side of the grater that resembles a brutally starlit sky. A powdered snowdrift of parmesan piled high above golden, mouth-blistering bites of (mainly) batter. This comfort is universally appealing. We feel adored and mollified when eating something lifted from hot fat. It is my job, we are both aware, to adore and mollify you.

I listen to your desires and honour them at times. At others I convince you otherwise. Trust me, I say. Who is in charge here? You, the person pointing at things and declaring no, no, no, yes, more, don’t like that, don’t want to try that? Mostly. The definition of a tricky customer. I prefer it when people allow themselves to be served without question, knowing that their joy is my ultimate goal, that if they just sit back and allow themselves to submit to ambience, conversation, then surprising pleasures will be afforded to them. Trust me. People think they know what they want but they have no idea. Anchoïade. Ceviche. In your case: anything that isn’t a rice cake. Trust me.

I admire solo diners as a rule but the truth is that the chemistry between us has to be right. There is pressure on the relationship. More than ever, I am in charge of vibes. I have noticed that appetite increases too in a social setting, that large groups tend to consume more, to sit for longer, obviously, but also to talk each other into another bite, another sip. A convivial atmosphere opens the stomach and the mind. Alone, we slip into habit and constraint. Just enough. No more. Sometimes not even enough: countless the past nights I have gone to bed hungry for want of a companion to eat with. You, similarly, are not a naturally independent diner. You get distracted, arching backwards to glimpse into the kitchen. Straining to catch my eye, an expectant smile. Your appetite for attention is greater than for nourishment. I get it, but I am busy. I am plating, carrying, stacking, making affirmative noises, suggesting, replacing dropped cutlery, wiping, sweeping, reminding you at all times that I am present, engaged, my voice a song, softly communicating to you: you matter, I see you, I’m here.

We both have to want to be here for this to work. If I am distracted, tired, if my mind is elsewhere, then you can tell. Your sweetness sours. You don’t want anything else. You want to leave the table. Familiarity is the problem here. A stranger is exciting and fun. I never have to be completely myself while I’m occupying the role of server. But, after so long of my waiting on you, you have seen me in weak moments. I have cried in front of you. You have made me cry, in fact, on days where I’ve been on my feet too long. I’m not just your server: I’m your therapist, I’m your clown. The boundaries between roles are becoming increasingly blurred. I have to admit now that I never loved having regulars for this reason. Give me a Rolodex of strangers passing through town, stopping for seafood and a carafe with ice at the tail end of summer. Intoxicating mutual novelty. They haven’t noticed how many times I say perfect, because they’ve never heard me say it before. You have heard it so many times that you start to repeat it back to me: perfect. I’m self-conscious. I start to question my motivation for insisting that everything is perfect.

Another preference emerges for prawns. Nuggets of pale flesh released from their carapaces and swimming in garlic, fragrant fat. When a bowl of them is placed in front of you, you gasp and say oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, over and over again, blaspheming for the first time. I hear this and am flooded with the feeling of success. To be overcome with anticipation!

Eating is so often an unwanted interruption to your schedule. And who among us hasn’t, when faint from hunger but focused on a specific task, eaten a handful of raisins and hoped for the best? You want to do important things: be a baby being chased by a monster who is going to eat the baby all up. Point at an airplane and propose that there is a dog in the airplane eating a pizza. Do a big, big jump. To sit and focus on a meal may seem like such frivolity to you. But may I impress upon you the interconnectedness of all things? Perhaps counting the green peas will help you see things in a different light. We can have fun here. We can look at each other through glassware and laugh, an inside joke that exists only at this table. Have you considered that the spaghetti is worms?

Often, while serving, I have existed on scraps. Sculptural knuckles of carrots julienned on the mandolin, fatty Marcona almonds glistening with salt, pickles alarming in their pink brine. Now: cold mushrooms. Half a fishfinger. Piles and piles of damp toast crusts. In this way our meals are shared even when I don’t sit down with you. I taste and adapt a curry, wonder about the texture of lime leaves and whether you found them off-putting. Would a chunk, a puree, a broth be more palatable? You don’t have the vocabulary to describe why something was revolting and I must simply interpret from the still-full bowl, the bits hurled to the floor, the particularly reviled thing that was chewed, spat out and then proffered to me. The thing that I opened my hand to take, for some reason. I try to understand, to not only be receptive to feedback but to pre-empt it. I try not to let you see my doubts about a plate as I am placing it in front of you. It is my job to make you trust me, to believe without question that what I offer is good.

I can be impatient, you can be insane, vice versa. What we agree on is that, from time to time, dessert is dinner. Sometimes dessert is everything. After long days of tired uncertainty we can come together over the reliable comfort of sugar. Your smile when you remember the existence of a hallowed food and can then cast the spell of naming it: chocolate cake.

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Credits

Eli Goldstone is a writer and screenwriter. Her debut novel Strange Heart Beating was published by Granta in 2017 and was the winner of a Betty Trask Award. Her essays have been published in the collections At The Pond (Daunt Books) and The Food Almanac (Pavilion), the Guardian, Granta, New Statesman, TLS, the Irish Times, and Prospect. Her screen credits include Cunk On Life and Cunk On Earth (BBC).

Antoine Cossé is a French illustrator and cartoonist living in London. He regularly contributes to The New York Times and The New Yorker, and his graphic novels are published internationally.

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