Dear Feastlings,
I’ve worked on New Year’s Eve every year since 1991, and what can I say? Of course it was different in 1991. But in 1991, we’d call our meat and produce purveyors the night before, and we’d order what we wanted, and it would arrive the next morning. Not that there wouldn’t be a glitch here and there, but we knew what to expect, and they knew what to expect of us, and we’d each end the transaction happy. Produce and meats and fish cost less than they did in the grocery store- it was wholesale, after all. And we could get what we wanted- if we wanted a banana, we ordered one. If we wanted a salmon, we ordered one. And the next day, one- banana or salmon- would arrive. We’d leave a message on a literal answering machine.
There was no online ordering, nor were the mistakes as grave. The people who worked in restaurants had been at it a while, and the people who worked at the distribution houses had worked there a while. Aging as I have in the industry, I feel myself becoming the cranky old chef that I’d seen as a youngster in the business. I heard stories of hours and heat and bullying that dwarfed my own experiences of hours and heat and bullying, and now my experiences dwarf those of the fledgling cooks under my own tutelage. I could order that lone banana, but now if you want less than five pounds, you’ll need to go to the store and get them yourself. I couldn’t accept a personal call on the restaurant phone, and now there’s scarcely an employee who’ll look up from the text or social media or game that they’ve got going on their own phone.
I don’t mention any of this for your pity; I mention it today because our New Year’s Eve menu has changed since I published it a few weeks ago:
The sea beans we were promised were unceremoniously dropped from our order with no more than a lipservice apology, and the lamb shanks came last-minute from a different purveyor because the inexperienced people whose job it was to prognosticate winter orders over there have yet to work a winter. The langoustines we’ve historically gotten in with nothing more than a phone call now no longer have an item number in our seafood purveyor’s inventory system. So we have a slightly different menu tomorrow, and it’s unlikely there’s room for many more guests anyhow, as we never went back to the number of tables and chairs we had before the pandemic anyhow. There are barstools that will die in my garage.
So we’ve added more pivots in a series of pivots that began five and a half years ago, spinning like ballerinas around the new restaurant industry, with novices coming out of the crevices, that constrains us to pivot again and again and again until we become a blur of tutus and sequins. Will we use up the other four and a half pounds of bananas? Maybe. Will we get langoustines? Nope. Will the guy whose job it is to follow through on the sea beans follow through on the sea beans? Not likely.
So the menu’s been adjusted, and we still hope to see those of you who’ve made a reservation tomorrow. I should note that, as in years past, Feast will serve our normal menu, seating until 2:00 pm, and then we’ll shut down for a couple of hours to retool the kitchen for our New Year’s Eve menu, and reopen at 4:00. Our last seating will be at 9:00, and we’ll encourage you to go on from there and have a lovely time ringing in 2026 with your loved ones while we race to be with our own.
We’ll rest up on January 1 and be back to normal hours come Friday the 2nd, and we’ll have our regular Saturday wine tasting at 2:00 on the 3rd.
Then we’ll change the menu up for the first Tuesday in January and kick 2026 off on the sixth with a new menu, which we’ll post over the weekend. On Wednesday the 14th, we’ll be hosting a dinner with Alex LaPierre of Borderlandia and Arielle DeSoucey of Civil Wines, in which Alex will talk about the history of the Basque influence in the Borderlands, Arielle will talk about the beverages of the Basque country and the Borderlands, and I’ll put together a dinner to make the occasion complete.
There’s still room for a dozen or so, so if the menu and the education hold appeal for you, give us a jingle at (520) 326-9363 and we’ll include you in the festivities.
And there’s more to come beyond that: you’ll meet winemakers from Copia and St. Innocent if you choose to, and you’ll experience the annual return of the lobster, corn and scallion bread pudding, and you’ll taste new dishes we’ve never made before, dishes yet to be dreamed up. We’ll behave as if things had never changed- our produce and proteins will have arrived uneventfully, and our cooks and dishwashers will show up as reliably as our banana and our salmon. We’ll fill your bellies with lobster bread pudding and you’ll retreat into comfort from the cruelties of the post-pandemic world.
And for a few brief moments, all will be right with the world- swords will be beaten into plowshares, kindness will sprout from the cracks in the sidewalk, and birds will chirp and bees will buzz, and we’ll all smile at one another. 2026 will be a kinder, better year.
With love and thanks for everything you managed in 2025,
Doug