Seedling 17: Melody, Maker
‘Mate, I don’t even understand what you’re laughing at’.
Bud was wiping down side plates at the kitchen pass as I fobbed in. Marcos and Luca - one of the bartenders, a swaggering kid from Calabria - were hovering around him, in stitches.
‘Look, Bud - look, there, closer’. Luca was holding the calculator from the computer console.
‘Bob?’, Bud replied, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Bud, it is ‘boob’’. Luca began laughing again.
The runner gave me a knowing stare as I passed by the three of them.
‘No, Luca, you’ve written ‘Bob’ on the calculator, not ‘boob’. Boob has two zeros’.
Marcos slapped Luca wide on the shoulder ‘Stronzo! I told you it two zeros!’
I crossed behind the bar and pulled all the stainless steel wine chillers from under the dry sinks; they need to be wiped down before each shift with glass cleaner, part of the opening sidework. Eoin and Kamil would be doing their re-stock from lunch service, right about now, two stories down. Mike was the other somm on duty with me, tonight - which meant the sidework was all mine. And that’s fine, not just because he’s my boss, but because he’s got important shit to do and I can handle opening sidework on my own.
‘Oh hey, Paul’.
Oliver crossed into the bar with a clear pyrex container of what looked to be simple syrup and confected blood oranges.
‘New cocktail’?
‘Uh, dunno. More of an experiment, at this point. Melody wants to change up the drinks list, but that was Erich’s domain, not mine. Not really sure what I’m doing on this one’. He laughed.
Oliver was the assistant head bartender to Erich’s head bartender and I was working with him a bit more often since the bar was suddenly ‘understaffed’. Young, bright, easygoing - good-looking, too. Tall, very slim, blue eyes, shaggy brown hair that looked professionally tousled, and a sort of classic English foppy schoolboy meme. He also refused to wear the giant Leatherface apron Erich wore during service - said he felt ‘ridiculous’. Of course, without it, he was dressed almost identical to me. And that’s bad enough.
I’d assumed he would move up and take over, but when I’d asked him, last week, he didn’t mince words.
No, nope, absolutely not. Mike and Melody sat me down and I said I wasn’t interested. Told them I had too much going on in my personal life’.
‘Oh, okay?’ He could probably sense my confusion because moving to head bartender meant a considerable pay rise.
‘Truth is, Paul’, he lowered his voice as he leaned over the bar’, I can’t handle these Italians. I just can’t. It’s too much stress’.
Oliver wasn’t being some Brexit-brained nationalist or anything of that sort, just conveying a practical factor in his turning down the promotion. And it was a legitimate reason; it wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard this, before. Erich had bitched about ‘my Italians’ ad nauseum before leaving. Mostly he whinged about them going to the toilet every hour on the hour and calling in sick after drunken nights out. At the time, I more or less backed the Italians up, saying to Erich, ‘Given they’re being paid peanuts in a service job, I don’t know that they’re wrong’. Personally, when I look back on the blood and tears I’ve expended on restaurant work with little to show for it - no respect, no thanks, no loyalty - I regret an awful lot of what I’ve given. Erich had little patience for my diplomatic take, and as far as Oliver - looked like he had a real grasp on what being Head Bartender would mean - and wasn’t about to expend the type blood and tears I’d naively done, in the past.
‘You were a bartender, right?’
I looked up from my Windowlene. ‘Yeah, why?’.
‘Suppose you were asked to make a cocktail with fresh rhubarb. What would be your approach?’
‘Is this a ‘Sorrel Vert’ situation?”
George laughed, ‘why, yes, it is. How did you know?’
‘Had a feeling’.
‘She did ask me if there was any way I could use black garlic on the bar’.
I put down the wine chiller. ‘Now you’re fucking with me’.
‘I wish I was’.
Seedling has a relationship with a biodynamic farm in Shropshire called ‘Sorrel Vert’. The produce is known for being spectacular as well as spectacularly expensive. Recently, Melody saw Sorrel Vert showing up on Instagram, selling their produce wholesale at some street markets in London. She nearly lost her mind - furious that her precious, darling little secret was out and that if other restaurants took product, Seedling would seem less special by proxy. So, she’s apparently signed them to an exclusivity deal with the restaurant at an exorbitant cost. That’s word on the street. The catch is that we have to take everything they produce, obviously. Otherwise, it’s binned. This being winter, it’s rhubarb that needs utilised across all departments. And, black garlic, apparently, as well.
Both Oliver and I turned towards the computer station and the garden beyond. Jean’s tall leather boots klopped against the hardwood, drawing our attention. Behind her were Melody and a rather glum looking Tonya, human resources director.
‘Looks like it’s true,’ said Oliver.
‘What’s that?’
‘Tonya is out’.
‘So….what? They’ll have nobody doing HR for the entire restaurant?’
Oliver started gingerly pouring the simple syrup into plastic squeeze bottles used for cocktails. ‘I think they expect each department to do it all, now. Not just the face-to-face hiring processes but payroll, staff relations, holidays, tronc, benefits….’ He trailed off.
Seems to me this might be a bigger problem than ‘the Italians’. Maybe Oliver was holding out on me.
*
‘What are you talking about?’
Renee cocked her head and stuck one hand into her apron pocket.
‘I’m just saying, it’s Melody’s joint, she can do what she wants. Not a lot we can do if she sacks HR, willy-nilly’.
Renee let out a sharp laugh. ‘You think this is Melody’s restaurant?’
I didn’t really know how to respond to that. Isn’t it? I just cocked my own head and looked back at Renee.
‘Paul, Melody is the head chef - the face of Seedling, yeah, but she has no stake. She’s an employee, just like you and me. Difference is she’s paid a quarter million a year and I have to share my tips with dumb and dumber, over there’.
She nodded towards Luca and Marcos, still fiddling around with the calculator.
‘Where is everyone? Briefing was supposed to start seven minutes ago’.
I looked around the dining room. None of what Renee had just said made any real sense to me. And it wasn’t just the Melody media machine - every review, every press kit; the online videos, Melody’s cookbooks - her latest named after Seedling itself - it was everything.
The soft gunmetal blue fabric that covered the far banquets - courtesy of Melody’s cousin, hired as Seedling’s interior designer. The garden’s motif - the same woman who did Melody’s home garden in Highgate. The modern dropped light fixtures running up and down the dining room in two stately rows - selected by Melody after she saw them in a Paris hotel she frequents. The whimsical calligraphy used in menus, business cards, the website - from a typesetter Melody used for her treacly, precious annual Christmas cards. The water glasses - oh my GOD, the water glasses - recycled from bottles and an incongruent nod to sustainability in a restaurant that looks more Marie Antoinette than Marie Kondo. Each is ‘individually crafted and unique’, meaning they have tiny faults and imbalances, often toppling over when you try to refill them in the middle of dinner service and creating water-logged crises in the heat of a rush. Plus, of course, the uniforms - put together by a West End theatrical costume designer Melody met one night at one of Nigella Lawson’s swish dinner parties..
And then there’s the staffing - Jean, Melody’s dear friend, put her hospitality consultancy on hold to come in and help launch the restaurant. Patrick and Violet, two sous chefs that Melody brought along from Grange House. That once surly, now smiley American pastry chef - hand-selected and visa-sponsored by Melody, nicked from an iconic Bay Area bistro. She’d also poached Diana from a famous restaurant just up Holborn - dark mahogany and leather clad booths, a real ‘man’s man’ type of place fashioned for hard-nosed lunchtime business deals and cirrhosis of the liver. Diana and her wiles were supposed to lure them to the nascent Seedling, but I don’t think I’d seen the sort skulking about this bright palace of pastels, pink-tiled toilets and scattered oyster shell artwork. With stripey-rodeo clowns at the helm....
If Melody is not the owner of Seedling then why is it a living monument to her tastes and desires?
‘BRIEFING’.
Omar practically shouted it, as if we were scattered throughout the thirty-two boroughs of London and hadn’t been standing listlessly around the computer station the last ten minutes wondering if any manager was showing up for briefing, in the first place.
‘What are those?’ Vera pointed to a large cardboard box Omar had in his arms.
‘Lemons’, he replied drily, and slammed them down on the console.