He appears momentarily caught off guard…possibly even slightly shamed? It doesn’t last. “There are hundreds of Radhyas in this city who could churn out competent food.” Josh wipes his hand on a towel. He stares down at Ari, that know-it-all look in his eye. “I’m not going to argue with someone whose great culinary achievement is microwaving a corn dog.”
There’s a moment where nothing happens. She doesn’t blink or flinch or even breathe. Ari recognizes the look on his face. He thinks he’s won.
So it’s not a surprise that he doesn’t see what’s coming next, when in one swift motion, she grabs the remains of her whiskey sour from the bar and splashes it on his chefs whites and the lower half of his face.
Josh wipes his chin with his rolled-up sleeve.
Ari sets the empty glass on the bar with a hard thunk, blows her bangs off her forehead, and marches out.
She’s definitely had better things in her mouth, anyway.
3
THIS ISN’T HOW JOSH HAD planned to spend New Year’s Eve. If he had to rank the various options, attending a party thrown by his sister’s college T.A. wouldn’t have made the list.
Plan A: a quiet dinner with Sophie, not anywhere too obvious. One of the places on her To Try spreadsheet. Returning home just before midnight, they would have watched New Year’s fireworks from the balcony of his apartment, flutes of 2006 Clos Lanson Blanc de Blancs Brut in hand.
But Sophie decided to stay in Vancouver, leaving Josh with a serviceable plan B: a recipe for cassoulet that takes eight hours to cook and a Gil Evans album spinning on his turntable. He could use the break after spending every waking hour of the last three months meticulously planning a “reimagining” of Brodsky’s and fending off well-meaning people wanting to reminisce at him about Danny.
Josh’s father passed away unexpectedly in the fall, leaving the deli in the hands of his family.
At first, Josh had wanted nothing to do with it. But his mother, Abby, an intimidatingly high-powered real estate broker, was dead set against selling the building. In her opinion, it was the perfect time for her son to make good on the vague promise he made when he’d entered the Culinary Institute. And while Josh never had any intention of griddling blintzes on a flattop, it wasn’t as if his twenty-one-year-old sister, Briar, could be entrusted to manage Brodsky’s.
So Josh reconsidered. The space itself had potential. It could be the perfect canvas for his culinary vision…with some cosmetic changes. He hired an interior designer to transform Danny’s cluttered deli into a minimalist white box, banishing the yellowed wall décor and aged kitchen equipment to the cellar. According to Abby, it’s “an unsubtle nod to his unexplored grief over his father’s death.”
But it’s also a good strategic decision. For at least twenty years, Brodsky’s business model revolved around indulging visitors from Omaha or Cleveland or Munich with a false sense of old New York nostalgia. Josh had watched seemingly permanent neighborhood establishments like Odessa Restaurant, Gem Spa, and Angelica Kitchen struggle for survival in the face of rising rents and shrinking profit margins. The Brod is the perfect pivot to take a barely profitable tourist trap into the echelons of fine dining.
His vision for “The Brod” includes a tasting menu designed to complement a list of natural wines. The dishes feature lacto-fermented vegetables—a tip of the hat to the kosher dill pickles for which Brodsky’s was famed.
Over the past few months, Josh had been so preoccupied with the Brod, he’d missed his sister’s birthday dinner （to be fair, it was a big ask to schlep all the way out to Fort Greene） and her apartment-warming party （he’d ordered her a very tasteful wood and marble cheeseboard from a listicle in Architectural Digest）。 Briar, therefore, would not accept “at home alone with a classic French stew and the Twilight Zone marathon” as a reason to turn down an invitation on a national holiday.
For most people, a party thrown by their former teaching assistant would mean a dozen bitter, insufferable grad students sitting on the floor of a dingy walk-up apartment, serving themselves from half-empty bottles of cheap wine. In Briar’s world, it means an outrageously expensive Uber trip to a warehouse in Long Island City that someone had converted to a six-bedroom live/work space “after a successful crowdfunding campaign.”
“Taran has a huge network,” Briar explains as they climb out of the Uber. “Plus a lot of them are influencers. Exactly who you want taking selfies at The Brod. Now, when we get in there, if I do this”—she squeezes the bridge of her nose—“it means, pretend you don’t know me. And I will not be sharing a car back to Manhattan with you. I heard Nicholas Braun might be at this party.”