24 Comments
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Tara Penry's avatar

Delicious. Extravagant. Thank you for the secret passage through the back door to the invisible spot behind the potted fern, where I'm standing very still, inhaling the privileged spices and watching the line of heat vibrate between the smart staff and the tippling clientele. It's dizzying. How to come back to plain earth?

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<Mary L. Tabor>'s avatar

Tara, your comment captures all--beautifully written.

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Lor's avatar

“…and the command of details lent us an illusory, brief edge-of-table power. We could explain both with words and subtle hand movements how the parts and techniques comprised the sublime culinary whole – gesticulating “smoothing” and “sprinkling” and “gently folding” like auditioning hand models.”

Olfactory senses on overload. Even the nocturnal bouquet of expensive perfumes permeates the air.

Writing so descriptive it’s palpable. I’m in the theatre , watching the movie . Pass the popcorn.

(P.S. On a personal note ,thank you for letting me in the side door…)

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Adam Nathan's avatar

I can't believe I let so much time pass here. It's been a massive catch-up to get through so many wonderful comments! Apologies for the delay.

Someone else, btw, liked this paragraph, too. Yay, me.

There were, no doubt, expensive perfumes on expensive plastic surgery.

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Lor's avatar

Seriously! Never feel like you have to apologize. Who has time for writing, comments and, LIFE.

PS. I think the new DMs is a lousy idea. Letting people send you personal messages seems a great path to ‘time sucking’ agony.

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Ben Wakeman's avatar

Tara said it well. This is delicious and extravagant writing Adam. It does not surprise me at all that you were a waiter at such a restaurant and I sense that’s where the first shoots of your gift for exquisite detail poked through the soil. Bravo on this first piece in your great love story.

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Adam Nathan's avatar

Thanks, Ben. (Weird, I'm having deja vu just now. No, really. 😀) However, I can't remember what I wrote the last time so it is of very little help to me.

Pages and pages of this thrown out, btw, for what that's worth. I had to climb Mt. Discard to get here.

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Susie Mawhinney's avatar

I’ve just stepped into another dimension so far removed from my own, but damn I want more! Hooked!

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Adam Nathan's avatar

Ha! Thanks, Susie. May I hold up my end of the bargain here. 😀

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Susie Mawhinney's avatar

Je suis sans doute! BTW, on the other subject - all is sorted !

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Kimberly Warner's avatar

“We could explain both with words and subtle hand movements how the parts and techniques comprised the sublime culinary whole – gesticulating “smoothing” and “sprinkling” and “gently folding” like auditioning hand models.” Sublime. Decadent. I’m hungry.

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Adam Nathan's avatar

Thanks, Kimberly! Imagine hand movement with raised thumb and clenched fingers, but not one that you would use at a table at Maple Drive. 🤣

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Rona Maynard's avatar

There’s so much to savor in this essay, I won’t try to do a Tara Penry. So I’ll single out one detail: how you dropped your position as a waiter into the middle of the piece instead of telling the reader up top how you acquired your panoramic view—from space, it would seem— of this glittering enterprise. In my enthrallment, I didn’t think to ask, “Who is telling this story?” You handed the revelation to me on its tray, like an amuse-bouche I wasn’t expecting. Much hangs on this detail. You took the storytelling road less traveled, a breathtaking choice

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Adam Nathan's avatar

❤️ You got it, Rona. That was the click of the lock for me writing it. You can’t imagine the plates of uneaten sentences that went into the bin in that piece, but that decision I trusted. It created the whole voice. Obviously I felt it before in someone else’s story, but the surprise of a narrator’s identity has a kind of godlike authority. “And so we begin our tale in my kingdom…”

Movies do this all the time and it never grows old. “Oh my god! He’s the dog! He’s the dog.”

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Chloe Hope's avatar

Genius foundation for meeting Mel, I’m so looking forward to the rest. David also just gave me all his Spago stories, so thank you for prompting that

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Adam Nathan's avatar

Spago was the big rival that Maple Drive never surpassed, but probably stole some business from early on. For about a year the restaurant was pretty amazing. Oddly enough, it was best pre-Grammys and Oscars.

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Chloe Hope's avatar

Remind me to one day tell you about the Grammys party that David got fired for throwing

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Songs That Saved Your Life's avatar

You had me at Dudley Moore playing a white piano.

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Adam Nathan's avatar

He was crazy talented and a showman. (And not a bad restaurateur)

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Donna McArthur's avatar

Brilliant. I too have worked service in some great restaurants and am familiar with that invisible line from the table to the kitchen. It was always difficult to walk if you knew the message you were delivering was going to be poorly received so working in an establishment that was open to all requests would have been refreshing (I'm not saying easy!).

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Adam Nathan's avatar

The customer was always right. The messenger less so. 😂

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Donna McArthur's avatar

Right!!

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Julie Gabrielli's avatar

Riveting. Felt like I was there. Your command of details is so entertaining. Besides “ walking her miniature dog collection,” my favorites are “adrenaline burst of flame from a sauté pan; the gravel buzz of metal scooping into crushed ice” - never has that ice-scoop sound been better described. 🙃🧊

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Tara Penry's avatar

Agreed! I heard and felt those lines, too!

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