Free High Season by Jim Hearn Page B

up the Wall in Bhujangasana.
    â€˜Jesse, what petits fours have you got?’ Scotty barks into the kitchen.
    â€˜Chocolates,’ Jesse answers.
    â€˜That’s it?’ Scotty demands.
    â€˜Fifteen years . . .’ I start mimicking Vinnie.
    â€˜It’s been an unbroken chain for fifteen years until you got here, Jesse,’ Scotty finishes.
    â€˜Unbroken, strong!’ I add.
    â€˜Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ Jesse says wearily, like he doesn’t give a fuck.
    â€˜You turn up at Rae’s and the fucking petit four chain breaks,’ Scotty continues in perfect Vinnie-speak as he scrapes off dirty plates and stacks them, ever higher, in the waiters’ station.
    â€˜We haven’t run out—there’s chocolates,’ Soda chimes in.
    â€˜Well, get the fucking things,’ Scotty tells them. ‘The girls are having a coffee and then they’re going. They want to be out in fifteen minutes.’
    And as Scotty disappears from the kitchen, you can sense his frustration at not having raised Vinnie on the phone. And it is unusual that Vinnie hasn’t answered his mobile all day. His timing is usually impeccable, turning up at the exact moment someone starts mimicking him or just as a chef sits down to eat something after fifteen hours on their feet. And when he does arrive, right at the moment Scotty raises a beer to his lips, just after the restaurant has cleared out, he’ll immediately start pointing out everything that’s wrong with the restaurant by ringing out a list of all the things that need to happen—now! Vinnie knows the danger of tired bodies slowing down. It’s like all he ever sees is the lack of value in someone moving at anything less than his or her most efficient speed. For Vinnie, anything other than intense focus and complete application is a cop out and it shouldn’t matter that you’ve just worked a triple shift non-stop. That level of commitment can be very inspiring. And it’s in demanding nothing less than the very best from his staff that Vinnie is able to maintain the lifestyle he has become accustomed to.
    Soda passes the handmade chocolates through to the bar, where Sammy the barman ferrets them away into the back of the wine fridge. The petits fours are the equivalent of gold in the bar, particularly during the high season when the time it takes chefs to set the chocolate moulds, make the fillings and pour the casings is time that could be spent on a whole lot more pressing things.

11
    I was excited at the start of the Pasta Man. The idea of being my own boss, working my own hours and reaping whatever rewards I could from my efforts was something I was eager to set in train.
    Initially I spent hours just hanging around inside the shop with the lights out, working out what I was going to do with the space. There were limitations; I had to work with the existing equipment but that was all top quality anyhow. I began to see what colours might work and how a blackboard menu could function. This wasn’t a restaurant; it was a cafe with a coffee machine and fresh pasta for sale as well as cooked pasta meals in a separate heated bain-marie.
    It was the time of Interview magazine and I had a subscription because I thought it was about the coolest thing on Planet Earth. I got to cutting out pictures and pasting them up on the walls, drawing inspiration from its photographs and from the busy street outside. There was a seat out front which I painted the same colours as the shop to bring something from the outside in. I employed an Italian girl who was going to university and lived down the road. She was an artist and good with colours and ideas and people and . . . like me, not so good with drugs. But in the early days, I didn’t care about that. This was the opportunity I had been waiting for and I was determined to make each step a winner by taking everything I knew about hospitality and pouring it into this