Dear Feastlings,
As far as the pivoting goes, I’m personally disappointed that it’s entered the lexicon. A number of you wrote back yesterday to confirm that no, it’s not just me- that we’re all exhausted and sad, though I will say that people as a whole seemed less afraid in their replies than they have over the past few months. That said, I also heard from more than one person that they’re either sick of the pivoting, sick of the term pivoting, or both.
I know I’m weary both of being constrained by circumstance to do it and of hearing about it. Long before i set foot in Feat this morning, I got a call from the guy who fixes and maintains our refrigerators, saying he had a used one he could sell me to replace the one that apparently died a silent death last night, along with all the food inside it. Or at least maybe it was silent. If a refrigerator dies in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The restaurateur’s koan. In the midst of it came the email and phone call from our distributor friends explaining the transatlantic difficulties involved in getting wines here for the Last Sunday tasting sixteen days from now. And so we pivot. Fast. Or fast relative to transatlantic shipping, anyway. And we cross our fingers that the seafood that just came in the back door includes all the branzino that we special ordered for tomorrow’s Ferragosto menu (sorry, procrastinators, the order cutoff for Ferragosto was yesterday- you know, so that we could make sure we had enough branzino.) If there’s anything left over, we’ll let you know, but for now, we’re hoping for the best and focusing on pivoting for our Last Sunday of the month tasting.
I will say this, though: while I thought the frenzied pivoting we’ve been doing made me feel like a whirling Dervish, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I haven’t seen serenity like this since long before the pandemic began, so I thought I’d share it with you:
I may well watch it again just to calm my jangly nerves.
Meanwhile, today is dedicated to putting together wine orders from last week’s wine tastings and finishing the prepwork for tomorrow’s Ferragosto menu. Then comes tomorrow’s wine tasting, which you CAN still order. Here’s what that tasting is all about:
And you can always order from the regular menu, which looks like this.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spin in circles and, like the guy in the video says, be abstracted from earthly things. I’d really like to be abstracted from earthly things right now. Have a good day, everyone.
Your abstracted friend,
Doug