He rubbed his forehead. “I’m done for the day. Those office workers ate all my rolls.”
“You have a few minutes to hang out before you go?” asked Paige.
Brad glanced at Lindsay and shrugged. “All right.”
“I just came here to work outside of my house today,” said Lindsay. “Corporate meetings at theForumall week, so they’re using the work area for that.”
Brad sat in the chair next to Lindsay. “What are you working on?”
“I’m editing reviews from the freelancers who work for me. A ton of new restaurants have opened this summer.”
“Anything exciting?”
Lindsay pointed at her laptop. “There’s a new place on Montague near the courthouses in Brooklyn Heights that my reviewer says is wonderful. Modern Thai food. And the reviewer is good. Her descriptions of noodles and curry made my mouth water.”
A small calico cat wandered over to the table and rubbed against Brad’s leg. “Don’t get any ideas, cat,” said Brad. He leaned down to pet the cat’s head. “I already have one of you at home.”
“That’s Jane,” said Paige. “She’s a package deal with Rochester over there.” She pointed to a black cat who was lounging on the arm of one of the couches, his eyes narrowed to slits as he stared at their table. “They seem to have bonded.”
“I see what you did there with the names,” said Brad.
“We got Jane, Rochester, St. John, and Mrs. Fairfax from a shelter about three weeks ago.”
Brad laughed. “Clever.”
“I try.”
“You’ve readJane Eyre?” Lindsay asked.
“I’ve seen the movie with Michael Fassbender.” Brad shrugged. “So… I assume you heard Pepper closed.”
“I did,” said Lindsay. “I felt a little guilty about it. But one of the chefs who filmedMystery Mealwith me pointed out that celebrity restaurants tend not to do very well in the boroughs. Although he gave Pepper six months, and it ended up being two.”
Brad gave her a long look. “Just yesterday, I was thinking about what I’d do with the space.”
That surprised Lindsay, but she was conscious of Paige and Evan sitting there, so she just said, “What would you do?”
Brad smiled. “I looked in the window. It’s a pretty big dining area. That gray they painted everything is not very warm or inviting, so I’d redecorate, obviously. Then make it a midprice family restaurant to appeal to the stroller crowd.”
Lindsay laughed. “How fun would it be to design a kids’ menu?”
“Josh and I went out for sushi the other night,” said Paige, “and there was a family with a toddler sitting at the next table. The kid ate California rolls like they were a thing kids normally eat. It was wild.”
Kid-friendly sushi rolls would be a fun challenge. Maybe grilled shrimp or tuna with tempura flakes. Things with texture and flavor but not spice.
Lindsay’s brain hadn’t run with ideas like this in a while. It was fun to engage with it again.
“I see the wheels turning,” said Evan. “You’re imagining whatyouwould do with the space, aren’t you, Lindsay?”
“Yes. Brad’s on the money with a family restaurant. I was just trying to decide what I’d put on the menu. You could have something eclectic. Classic American stuff like burgers and mac and cheese, but then maybe you add fish tacos and sushi rolls and pot stickers and integrate everything so there are lot of options but maybe similar flavor profiles. Not, like, ten pages of diner menu options, but a dozen or so entrées that would appeal to a lot of diners.”
“Youhavegiven this a lot of thought,” said Brad.
“Some, yeah.”
“Too bad we don’t have the money to buy the space.”
Lindsay couldn’t tell if he was being serious. Given that she was a writer who until a couple of months ago had been making a living by the word, no, she didn’t have the money to finance a restaurant. Nor was she that confident in her abilities to run one. She could cook, but a lot of her restaurant experience was more theoretical than practical. So she’d been thinking about it, but it was a fantasy, not something real.
