“I had a day,” I say, dropping my jacket over a chair.
“I sensed a disturbance,” he replies calmly. “The atmosphere has been testy since approximately six o’clock.”
“You’re burning onions,” I say. “That’s not the atmosphere, that’s dinner.”
“They’re caramelising with intent,” he says. “Please don’t rush them.”
Rupert is an artist. He paints, sculpts, and once spent a month creating an installation entirely out of takeaway menus and existential despair. He is also, tragically, a part time waiter.
That is how we met.
He applied for a job at the restaurant. I hired him. I regretted it almost immediately. Rupert is an amazing human being but a catastrophic waiter. Not malicious. Not lazy. Just constitutionally incapable of remembering orders, carrying plates without commentary, or refraining from telling customers how their energy might affect the meal.
For the sake of our friendship, Rupert no longer works for me.
“What has befallen you,” he asks now, stirring with unnecessary flourish, “that you arrive home vibrating with suppressed violence?”
I drop my bag onto the chair and pull the folded newspaper from my jacket. “Read this.”
He takes it with both hands, as if handling something sacred, and clears his throat.
“Ah,” he says, immediately slipping into performance mode. “The Last Bite.Carlisle's infamous restaurant review.”
He reads aloud, voice smooth and sonorous.
La Cucina di Rosa promises rustic Italian comfort but delivers something closer to polite disappointment. The tomato sauce, intended to be the heart of the dish, lacks depth and body, leaving the pasta swimming in what can only be described as a watery afterthought.
He pauses, eyes flicking up to me. “Watery,” he repeats softly. “A bold choice of word.”
He continues.
While the setting is warm and the service earnest, one hopes the kitchen will find its footing before the novelty of a new opening wears thin.
Rupert lowers the paper slowly. “Well,” he says. “That is… unsparing.”
“It’s lazy,” I snap. “She ordered one dish.”
“One dish,” he echoes. “A minimalist approach.”
“I went to see her,” I admit, reluctantly.
His eyebrow lifts. “You went to the newspaper.”
“Yes.”
“To confront a critic.”
“Yes.”
He sets the paper down with exaggerated care. “Tom.”
“She called my Nonna’s sauce watery.”
Rupert exhales slowly, like a man preparing to deliver bad news in a drawing room.
“And what, pray tell,” he says, “did you hope to achieve by presenting yourself in person to the keeper of public opinion.”
I hadn’t thought it through. I’d seen the word watery in print and something in me had snapped. Pride, mostly. The part of me that still hears my grandmother’s voice every time that sauce hits the pan.
