Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

Author:Ina Garten [Garten, Ina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2024-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Anna and her Frittata recipe from The Loaves and Fishes Cookbook

The Loaves and Fishes Cookbook by Anna Pump

Photograph by Tom Eckerle

Tokyo, How Hard Could That Be?

The new Barefoot Contessa was four thousand square feet, which was almost ten times the size of the old store! Wonderful in some ways, challenging in others. I remember reading an article about how people congregate, learning that they do exactly the opposite of what you’d expect. If two friends run into each other on a busy street, you’d think they would duck into a quiet alcove to talk. Instead, they move right in the middle of a crowd, because people want to be with other people. Therefore, I always felt that a store should be slightly smaller than you’d expect so it always feels busy, no matter how many people are shopping. Now I had taken on a much larger store, and I was worried that no matter how many people were in it, it would feel empty. I needed to figure out how to give the store a buzz, make it feel crowded yet intimate and with lots of energy. People wouldn’t be aware of why it felt good to be there, but they would be drawn to the store because it just felt like a happy place.

I divided the space into sections to re-create the shopping experience I loved at Faneuil Hall in Boston. When customers walked in the front door of my new store, they’d enter a vibrant food emporium. Barefoot Contessa would be the “anchor,” with our bakery ovens and bread-making counter, the “Sandwich Box” (coffee and croissants in the morning, sandwiches and picnic baskets at lunch), and refrigerator cases filled with prepared foods. I leased the rest of the space to my favorite food boutiques: a farm stand stocked with produce, Votucci’s fresh pasta and sauces, David’s Cookies pumping sugar into the air, and Sweet Temptations candies and ice cream.

Sarah, who knew how to do everything at this point, became manager of the store, and Martine, who had worked for me the previous summer, was the head chef. Later, I encouraged Martine to set up Ribs! Ribs! Ribs!, a rotisserie with racks of sizzling chickens, just like in France, plus barbecue ribs, so she could learn about running her own business. My little sorority of workers exploded into a staff of thirty, then fifty, most of them teenagers. The new Barefoot was crazy busy from the very first day, with lines everywhere, even when we stayed open until midnight on weekends.

I hired Martine’s friend Hunt MacWilliams to work at the bakery counter, and he kept us howling with his funny stories, especially one about the time he measured Cary Grant for new pants (he was a teenager working at a Westhampton men’s shop) but had absolutely no idea who the incredibly famous actor was. The joke was on Hunt at Barefoot Contessa when a customer came in and said he wanted lox.

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