a free lunch was a perk of my meagre wage, and I soon discovered that’s an up-side like getting a ride on an inflatable slide if your plane crashes.
What really sticks in the craw is that, due to a combination of confused pensioners, masochists, students attracted by the early bird ‘toofer’ deal, and out of towners, That’s Amore! turns a profit.
The owner, a really grouchy man known only as ‘Beaky’, claims Mediterranean heritage ‘on my mama’s side’ but looks and sounds totally Sheffield. He comes in every so often to swill the grappa and empty the till, and is happy to let it lurch onward with Tony as de facto boss.
Tony, a wiry chain smoker with a wispy mullet, is tolerable if you handle him right, meaning, accept his word is God, ignore the lechery and remind yourself it’s getting paid that matters.
Tonight isn’t too busy, and after bussing the mains to the lucky recipients, I sip a glass of water and check my frazzled reflection in the stainless steel of the Gaggia machine.
A call from across the room.
‘Excuse me? Excuse me …!’
I assemble my features into a neutral-interested expression as Mr Keith beckons me over, even though I know exactly what’s coming. He picks up his fork and drops it back down into the congealed, grout-coloured sludge of the carbonara.
‘This is inedible.’
‘I am sorry. What’s wrong with it?’
‘What’s right with it? It tastes like feet. It’s lukewarm.’
‘Would you like something else?’
‘Well, no. I chose carbonara as that was the dish I wanted to eat. I’d like this, please, but edible.’
I open and close my mouth as I don’t know what the fix for that is other than firing Tony, changing every supplier and razing That’s Amore! to the ground.
‘It’s obviously been sat around while you made my wife’s risotto.’
I’d make no such wild guesses, as the truth is bound to be worse.
‘Shall I get the kitchen to make you another?’
‘Yes, please,’ the man says, handing it up to me.
I explain the situation to Tony, who never seems to mind customers saying his cooking is rank. I wish he would take it personally, standards might improve.
He takes a catering bag of parmesan shavings out, flings some more on to the dish, stirs it around and puts it in the microwave for two minutes. It pings, and he pulls it out.
‘Count to fifty and give him this. The mouth will taste what the mind is told to,’ he taps his forehead. I can’t help think if it was that easy, That’s Amore! would have a Michelin star instead of a single star rating average on TripAdvisor.
Thing is, I’d argue with Tony he should whip up a replacement, but it’ll be just as bad as this one.
I sag with embarrassment. My life so far feels like one long exercise in blunting my nerve endings.
Having waited a short while to reinforce the illusion, I march the offending pasta through the swing doors.
‘Here you are, sir,’ I say, doing the Basil Fawlty-ish grit-simper again as I set it down, ‘I do apologise.’
The man stares at the plate and I’m very grateful for the distraction of an elderly couple in the doorway who need greeting and seating.
With crushing inevitability, as soon as I’ve done this, Mr Keith beckons me back. I have to leave. I have to leave. Just get past this month’s rent first. And booking that week in Crete with Robin, if I can persuade him to it.
‘This is the same dish. As in the one I sent back.’
‘Oh, no?’ I pantomime surprise, shaking my head emphatically, ‘I asked the chef to replace it.’
‘It’s the same plate.’ The man points to a nick in the patterned china. ‘That was there before.’
‘Uhm … he maybe did a new carbonara and used the same plate?’
‘He made another lot of food, scraped the old pasta into the bin, washed the plate, dried it, and re-used it? Why wouldn’t you use a different plate? Are you short on plates?’
The whole restaurant is listening. I have nothing to say.
‘Let’s be hard-nosed realists. This is the last one, reheated.’
‘I’m sure the chef cooked another one.’
‘Are you? Did you see him do it?’
The customer might be right, but right now I still hate him.
‘I didn’t, but … I’m sure he did.’
‘Get him out here.’
‘What?’
‘Get the chef out here to explain himself.’
‘Oh … he’s very busy at the stove at the moment.’
‘No doubt, given his odd propensity for doing the washing up at the same time.’
My grit-simper has gone full Joker rictus.
‘I will wait here until he has a few minutes free to talk me through why I have been served the same sub-par sloppy glooch and lied to about it.’
Glooch. Good word. Just my luck to get the articulate kind of hostile patron.
I head back into the kitchen and say to Tony: ‘He wants to speak to you. The man with the carbonara. He says he can see it’s the same one as it’s on the same plate.’
Tony is in the middle of frying a duck breast, turning it with tongs. I say duck. If any pet shops have been burgled recently, it could be parrot.
‘What? Tell him to piss off, who is he, Detective …’ he pauses, ‘… Plate?’
In a battle of wits between Detective Plate and Tony, my money is on the former.
‘You’re the serving staff, deal with it. Not my area.’
‘You gave me the same dish! What am I supposed to do when he can tell?!’
‘Charm him. That’s what you’re meant to be, isn’t it? Charming,’ he looks me up and down, in challenge.
Classic Tony: packing passive aggression, workplace bullying and leering sexism into one instruction.
‘I can’t tell him his own eyes aren’t working! We should’ve switched the plates.’
‘Fuck a duck,’ Tony says, taking a tea towel over his shoulder and throwing it down. ‘Fuck this duck, it’ll be carbon.’
Complaining
