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Tim Gaiser, Master Sommelier

The Stuff of Dreams

3/18/2022

8 Comments

 
Picture
Leonora Carrington: And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur 1953
The restaurant business. You may leave it at some point, but it never leaves you. And working in the business for any length of time will inevitably curse you for life with restaurant nightmares. Most of them have to do with being in the weeds—overwhelmed—sometimes to the extent that there is no hope, much less survival. I’ve had more than my share of restaurant nightmares over the years. I still do. But one of them was particularly malicious because it added an element of performance anxiety from my years of playing the trumpet.

The dream took place at Bix restaurant in the City. The scene was a variation of the very first Labor Day Sunday night I worked solo behind the bar there, which can be only described as an utter disaster. The restaurant had only been open for a couple of months at the time, and the press—all very positive—had started to achieve critical mass. Add to that the fact that it was a holiday weekend with a lot of people in the city. Finally, for whatever reason, we were understaffed for a typical Sunday night.

The dream took full advantage of what was one of the worst shifts behind a bar I would ever experience. Mind you, at the time I was an exceptionally fast service bartender and could keep up with just about anything. I could get weeded--but rarely ever overwhelmed.

In the dream, I was working the shift with another bartender. He and I enjoyed a pre-shift Fernet behind the bar as per usual. Then the evening started start off slowly. Everything was just ducky. But in no time we got slammed with a tsunami of people, and in short order we were both completely screwed. In the middle of it, a couple sitting at the bar waiting for their table ordered a bottle of Champagne from me. I think it was a bottle of Bollinger Grande Année. I quickly opened and served it to them and then put the bottle in my ice at the service end. I then raced off trying to put out various fires while the service register printer was out of control spitting out cocktail tickets like a cartoon.

At some point I went to pour more Champagne for the couple and the bottle was gone. I had a moment of utter panic thinking I had poured the rest of the bottle off for an order of house sparkling wine by the glass. I was stunned. It was like one of those wildlife shows on TV where the wildebeest is at the water hole and suddenly a crocodile the size of Buick rises up out of the water and takes it down. At that moment I looked down to the end of the bar only to see the other bartender about to go under for the last time too. Suddenly, he raced up to me and said something like, “Aren’t you supposed to go on now? Don’t you have to play?” I looked at him completely mystified.

Instead of answering, he pointed to the backbar which had somehow transformed into floor-to-ceiling black curtains. When I finally found the part in the curtains and opened it, there was a stage with an audience of hundreds of people staring at me. I looked over to see a grand piano with a woman wearing a formal black dress seated and also looking at me. She was irritated and pointing to her watch. Next to the piano was a music stand and a chair with my C-trumpet on it. I walked over to the stand much like the aforementioned wildebeest and picked up my trumpet. Suddenly, I realized there was no mouthpiece in my horn. And there was no music on the stand. Then I realized I hadn’t touched the horn for over six years. How could I possibly play anything? I looked out at the audience and then back at the woman at the piano. The silence was menacing. At this point I woke up in a sweat with my heart racing.
​
The restaurant business. You may leave it, but it never leaves you. 
8 Comments
Mark Dorsey
3/18/2022 04:12:31 pm

You might appreciate the variation on the theme that I experienced. As we all do, I have had my share of restaurant dreams and nightmares and for some reason they all seem to mishmash architectural details and characters from multiple venues. The sudden appearance of rooms I have never seen before feature prominently as well.
So I was truly rattled when I went to meet a friend at a restaurant in New York City and it looked like the Cypress Club - but not quite. It had bulbous copper pieces, rich maroon velvet curtains, pendulous light fixtures and bright purple accents - all of the elements we know so well but placed in a blender and reassembled in a different order. Luckily, I was wide awake and asked the hostess if by any chance the restaurant was designed by Jordan Moser. And it turns out it was. But it made for a rather unnerving evening to be enveloped in an environment that was so familiar and so strange all at once.

Reply
Tim Gaiser
3/19/2022 07:45:29 am

Mark, thanks for reading. Good to hear from you. Yes, the Cypress Club decor--and Joran Mozier's style--is definitely the stuff of dreams or nightmares. Lots of memories from CP--some of them pretty crazy. Cheers!

Reply
Jim Fassold
3/19/2022 06:48:32 am

Oh, Tim. This one cut deep. I wake up in a cold sweat several times a year. A mashup of Masa's and Zuni. Bar not prepped, 3 deep plus service tickets, no ice. I finally get ice -- and promptly break a glass in it. My heart is racing just thinking of it. Thanks a lot, pal.

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Tim Gaiser
3/19/2022 07:46:20 am

Jim, thanks reading. Sorry to trigger the restaurant trauma response. Hope it's temporary.

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Paul Wagner
3/19/2022 07:16:46 am

Sounds like you need to play more music to me...

Reply
Tim Gaiser
3/19/2022 07:46:59 am

Paul, with regard to actually playing again, I hear the sound of hell freezing over...

Reply
Eddie Osterland link
12/12/2022 04:25:57 pm

Hey Tim,

This reminded me of my only attempt at winemaking...

I was 22 and working in Honolulu as the "wine steward" at the Top of the Ilikai restaurant when, one night the maitre'd approached me 15 minutes before the restaurant opened and said "there's a liquor convention in town and we have a party from a company named Heublein who has booked most of the restaurant tonight and they want to drink Lancer's."
I said oh really? I only have stocked 8 bottles of Lancers for tonight so, we don't have enough Lancers to cover them. The maitre'd said go down to our other bars and restaurants and ask them to give you all that they have. I did that and most of them said No way, that's one of our biggest sellers !
I returned to the 30th floor and being a 60's radical, I decided to get creative. I had the waiters serve the group the 8 bottles of Lancers we had and when they returned to the service bar I refilled their bottles with a concoction I was mixing up from every bottle of pink wine that we had...some I recall were: Almaden Grenache Rose, Weibel Crackling Rose, Chauvenet Red Cap sparkling wine, Cold Duck (for needed color) Nectarose, Tavel Rose and, of course Mateus.

I managed to serve everyone my blend and no one said anything about the quality of the wine!

That evening spirited me to begin seriously studying wine because almost no one knew anything about wine in 1968 (myself included)

Reply
Tim Gaiser
12/13/2022 06:39:51 am

Eddie, brilliant story with many subtexts! And I remember Lancer's well from my college days. Cheers!

Reply



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