I have two girls working for me. They handle concessions. They both want to take over the world. The problem is, they just got started. They hate each other and they hate me. They haven’t figured out how to hate me together, which is good. And it hasn’t dawned on either of them how to actually make a sandwich. Once they figure it out, I’m toast.
One of them came to talk about 'branding.' I told her that I hate that word. I told her to substitute the word ‘reputation.’ She looked at me like I was a dunce. I explained to her that a sandwich is eaten one person at a time and that you have to make each person want more than one sandwich. Think content, I told her; style will take care of itself. Besides, style is not your strong suit. Boy, was she pissed. I’m sure I should have said: “play to your strengths.” It was a failure of tact, which makes everybody suffer.
The other one wanted to tell me how to truck cheese. She just read an article on line somewhere and she was crazed – times and temps, air pressure, crust, shelf life. She was shouting at me. At first I was amazed and then, as she kept talking, my mind started to wander from the certainty of cheese to her contempt for me. She was talking to me like I was two years old and knew nothing of cheese. I wanted to throw a tantrum. I am cheese. I know where in Caserta to go on Christmas but here in town I get my cheese from one guy, who delivers, and if he dropped dead I know where I’d go next. In fact, I might go there sooner than later. One thing is for sure. Cheese is not a problem. And that’s what I said, perhaps too loudly.
Neither one is talking to me, but neither to each other. Every time one gets an idea, the other accuses the first of stealing her idea. I’ve explained my belief that ideas are useless. It’s all in the making. They have some crazy sandwiches in Hanoi, but I couldn’t deliver them here. Besides, people aren’t calling me up looking for a duck slider or soft-shelled crab on a bun. Roast pork is more like it, with some tooth to the bread. Rare roast beef, mortadella, the stuff we know. I once had a cook in Milan tell me: This recipe is 1000 years old. Who am I to change it? My father made it for 70 years. I’d rather spend my life perfecting it.
I told this to the girls. One said that it sounded boring; the chef must be boring, likewise his restaurant. The other one agreed. In a rare moment of harmony, they trashed a thousand years and a family’s pride. I was worried that it might interfere with the normal work flow, but the next day they were back to suspecting each other’s motives as they filed their inventory sheets, which is the good thing about doing inventory, it keeps everyone quiet.
