Page 7 of Don't You Forget About Me
He takes a catering bag of parmesan shavings out, flings some more on to the dish, stirs it around and puts it in the microwave for two minutes. It pings, and he pulls it out.
‘Count to fifty and give him this. The mouth will taste what the mind is told to,’ he taps his forehead. I can’t help think if it was that easy, That’s Amore! would have a Michelin star instead of a single star rating average on TripAdvisor.
Thing is, I’d argue with Tony he should whip up a replacement, but it’ll be just as bad as this one.
I sag with embarrassment. My life so far feels like one long exercise in blunting my nerve endings.
Having waited a short while to reinforce the illusion, I march the offending pasta through the swing doors.
‘Here you are, sir,’ I say, doing the Basil Fawlty-ish grit-simper again as I set it down, ‘I do apologise.’
The man stares at the plate and I’m very grateful for the distraction of an elderly couple in the doorway who need greeting and seating.
With crushing inevitability, as soon as I’ve done this, Mr Keith beckons me back. I have to leave. I have to leave. Just get past this month’s rent first. And booking that week in Crete with Robin, if I can persuade him to it.
‘This is the same dish. As in the one I sent back.’
‘Oh, no?’ I pantomime surprise, shaking my head emphatically, ‘I asked the chef to replace it.’
‘It’s the same plate.’ The man points to a nick in the patterned china. ‘That was there before.’
‘Uhm … he maybe did a new carbonara and used the same plate?’
‘He made another lot of food, scraped the old pasta into the bin, washed the plate, dried it, and re-used it? Why wouldn’t you use a different plate? Are you short on plates?’
The whole restaurant is listening. I have nothing to say.
‘Let’s be hard-nosed realists. This is the last one, reheated.’
‘I’m sure the chef cooked another one.’
‘Are you? Did you see him do it?’
The customer might be right, but right now I still hate him.
‘I didn’t, but … I’m sure he did.’
‘Get him out here.’
‘What?’
‘Get the chef out here to explain himself.’
‘Oh … he’s very busy at the stove at the moment.’
‘No doubt, given his odd propensity for doing the washing up at the same time.’
My grit-simper has gone full Joker rictus.
‘I will wait here until he has a few minutes free to talk me through why I have been served the same sub-par sloppy glooch and lied to about it.’
Glooch. Good word. Just my luck to get the articulate kind of hostile patron.
I head back into the kitchen and say to Tony: ‘He wants to speak to you. The man with the carbonara. He says he can see it’s the same one as it’s on the same plate.’
Tony is in the middle of frying a duck breast, turning it with tongs. I say duck. If any pet shops have been burgled recently, it could be parrot.
‘What? Tell him to piss off, who is he, Detective …’ he pauses, ‘… Plate?’
