Special of the Day by Elaine Fox

Author:Elaine Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061752650
Publisher: HarperCollins

They were slammed.

From the moment Sir Nigel opened the doors that night, people streamed in. Apparently word had gotten out that the three-star chef from New York’s La Finesse had come to Alexandria and all the Washingtonian foodies pounced on it, exclaiming to each other how lucky and/or prescient they were to have gotten a jump on the culinary scene by being there the first night.

They were standing two deep at the bar as Steve’s gaze raked the crowd, searching for the tiny blonde woman who had ordered the Amaretto sour.

“Amaretto?” a dark-suited, power-tied man of about fifty called.

Steve caught his eye and held up the drink. The man nodded, indicating the top of a blonde head at his side, hidden by the crowd.

“Seven twenty,” Steve said, over the head of the white-haired gentleman on a barstool in front of him.

Without batting an eye, the suited man handed him a fifty.

Considering nobody was supposed to know the restaurant even existed yet, Steve was amazed by the sheer numbers of people here, not to mention amused by their ease with the high prices of the drinks. At Charters it had taken several hours of drinking for people to get so free with their credit cards. Here they didn’t bat an eye at paying nine bucks for a martini.

And still they kept coming through the door. Even the unflappable Sir Nigel looked a little hot under the collar. Steve caught him glancing out the door to the street at one point as if there might be a bus unloading somewhere nearby.

Rita, George and Pat, expecting an easy opening night, were flying wild-eyed through the double doors from the kitchen with plates of exquisitely presented food, looking as if they were having to negotiate an obstacle course with their mother’s best china on their heads.

Steve himself was kept hopping by such orders as Pink Ladies and Green Turtles, drinks he’d almost never gotten orders for at Charters that now he had to wrack his brain to remember how to make. He’d even had to look surreptitiously at the dusty bartender’s manual under the register at one point to figure out what the hell a Queen’s Park Swizzle was.

Catering to an older crowd was definitely different from the burger-and-beer stuff he’d been doing for Charters. Back then, the most complicated drinks he’d had to produce were six different kinds of margaritas and the latest craze in shooters, neither of which required much presentation.

Mixed in with all the crazy drink drinkers were also a host of fine-wine fanciers. Each wanted to know the years and varietals of every offering they had by the glass, not to mention “how it was.” Full-bodied? Fruity? Lots of tannins?

Steve started out saying things like “robust” and “oak-y,” and eventually branched out into “a little floral” for the cheaper labels to a “hint of blackberry”—or lingonberry or chocolate or whatever—for the more expensive ones.

It seemed to be working. Everyone liked what they were drinking and nobody had looked at him yet and repeated, “Lingonberry!”

About half past nine, P.

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