The Raccoon Situation

Click here for the version of this that appeared in Good Beer Hunting.

It was early summer in 2008, and I was a 23-year-old sommelier at a fancy restaurant. We were gearing up for a busy Saturday evening.

After lineup I noticed my manager motioning for me to join him in the mezzanine above the dining room. He was waving his hand in short, urgent come-hither motions and inhaling rapidly, his eyes wide and crazy, his head whipping around, looking for something.

“What’s up Kay?” As I ascended the staircase I smelled bloated, dead bodies decomposing in locked cars on a freeway, abandoned in a nameless cataclysm. My nostrils flared defensively, making it worse- green, rotten slabs of meat braising in seafood restaurant summer dumpster juice. A warm, endless island of wet shit, melting and swirling into an ocean of burning poison. It was horrifying sensory data to ingest in a steakhouse, to the tune of Frank Sinatra, among tables of pressed white linens and crystal stemware. To date, it is the clearest most picturesque smell memory of death I possess. The icy tingle of panic had started in the periphery of my brain, and I fought back the urge to puke on the carpet.

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet

Through his teeth Kay said, “A fucking raccoon died in the wall.” It was never clear to me how he knew it was a raccoon, but there was no time to wonder: the dead raccoon smell was fully compromising every table in the mezzanine. We had over 300 covers on the books, and if we didn’t seat the tables, the wait would grow interminably long. Impatient regulars would riot, and tear us limb from limb. They freak out when we don’t have Duckhorn “Three Palms” Merlot in stock, or when we forget to offer them a black napkin for their eveningwear. So there was no way this didn’t involve me getting screamed at by a pediatric surgeon who desperately needed a beefy, winey escape from his 16 hour workday bringing sick children back from the edge of death, and occasionally failing.

a pawn and a king

I was very young at this point in my life and definitely not fit to solve complex, bizzare problems like this. Kay was using every muscle in his face to frown. He was staring INTO the wall, looking beyond the drywall and support beams and (I believe this) actually looking at the stupid, dead raccoon, with the kind of astral plane third eye that only a fully panicked restaurant manager on duty has the power to summon. I felt it too, the hate emanating from Kay towards our furry little Icarus: chasing a bug in our walls until his hubris cost him everything. Now they were our problem. No, before you think it, there was not a drop of air freshener in the building. Suddenly it came to him and he blurted, “GET ME A TRAY JACK” and he flew down the stairs, three at a time, bounding towards the kitchen.

I've been up and down and over and out

With shaking hands I assembled the tray jack while Kay came back with a portable propane burner. “I’ll be right back”, he practically jumped the whole flight of stairs. Based on the evidence so far it seemed he was going to make tableside bananas foster. In the empty mezzanine. As an offering to our dead raccoon? I was completely lost.

and I know one thing

As a large party walked in, Kay did the thing that I only now know how to do- turn off the subroutine that transmits your emotions to your face, and instead pull on a mask of calm, collected sanity. “Welcome back folks! Happy Birthday!” His pace slowed just enough to imply that he was not proceeding directly towards an emergency with a block of butter and a deli container of a mysterious substance.

We do this every day, by the way- something is always going horribly wrong, and we are joyfully carrying on our conversation about your fishing trip in the Ozarks while a bartender whispers in my ear that cobras are coming out of the toilets and the hand sinks are slowly filling with blood. I can think of few other industries that teach us how to stare unflinching, directly into the eyes of chaos without blinking.

each time I find myself

Kay put his mis-en-place on the guerdon behind him and lit up the portable burner on top of the tray jack. Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he set the burner on high, and set a non-stick pan on top of it.

“Kay what the hell are you doing? And how do I help?”

He took out the brick of butter, unwrapped it and dropped it into the pan. It glided across the hot pan quickly, beginning to bubble and brown.

laying flat on my face

“This is an old trick I learned from years of working in an Italian restaurant!” He opened up a pint container to reveal the secret ingredient: finely chopped fresh garlic. The butter was now a pool, and he inverted the container. For a blink of an eye it clung to its container.

“Works every time!”

As I watched the garlic fall in slow motion, I had several questions, but the big ones were, what exactly is this a trick for, and what does it succeed in doing every time? Surely he wasn’t talking about a trick Italian restaurants use to make dead animal smells go away, right? This isn’t a problem that Italian joints deal with disproportionately- animals crawling into the walls to die… right??

The garlic hit the pan and hissed violently.

I just pick myself up and get

It took one heartbeat for the smell explosion to reach me- a golden brown, buttery wave of hot umami rolled over me and enveloped me in its oily embrace. To this day the memory of it still makes my eyes water with that far-away feeling of a beautiful, tender moment. It was a moment of feeling completely safe and content. It was so much more than a smell- Kay had cast a powerful enchantment that I watched pour down the stairs and flow in real time across the main dining room, striking each guest in waves as the mushroom cloud of pure flavor swept across their bodies.

One by one, their conversations dwindled and smiles crept across their faces. They started looking around for the source of this feeling, but Kay was actually fully hidden from line of sight in the mezzanine. The music got louder, the light got dimmer but warmer. Any fake smiles fully transformed into genuine, crinkle-at-the-corner-of-the-eyes grins. Then we heard them say it one way or another:

“Something smells amazing!”  “Wow, I am starving.” “They’re cooking something tasty somewhere!”

Kay’s garlic hex seized the room and we were transported to a restaurant that was just a little bit better. Our food was great, the wine list ranneth over, but this was that extra something. This was the smell of the 70 year old Italian maitre’d that remembers your name and knows to cue the bar to start shaking that massive dirty vodka martini just the way you like it. It smelled like that little two top being whisked out of nowhere so that you and yours can have a front row seat to watch Old Blues Eyes or some analog thereof croon in a just-smoky-enough room. Like we were a part of something big, even though it was just a few hundred people. It was the union of people that wanted to be taken care of, and people that wanted to take care of someone.

Back in the race

I wheeled back to Kay, and I took a deep breath. The nightmarish raccoon corpse smell was gone- all that remained was our garlicky celebration of life.

“It’s working.” I yelped. “It works!”

Kay looked me in the eyes, grabbed the pan, and swiftly tossed the hot garlic in the air, never breaking eye contact. It landed neatly back into the pan. He smiled, soothed as the encore rose up like a typhoon to re-baste every guest.

“Every time.” He reminded me.

That’s life!

Another beat elapsed. “So… what are you gonna do with all this cooked garlic?”

“No fucking idea. Just stand here and enjoy it for a second longer.”

In that moment I felt bad for hating the raccoon so much. The garlic made our pulse stabilize, our fists unclench, and we could see that the raccoon wasn’t trying to ruin our lives. This was no kamikaze mission; they probably just saw something shiny. It’s the kind of trouble I would be in danger of getting into. I’m grateful nobody builds traps with nice half bottles of amontillado to lure me- it would be easy to kill me. I would be the one stinking up someone else’s Saturday night.

In the privacy of my own thoughts, I dedicated this dinner service to the raccoon. I made a note that everyone here was secretly celebrating a raccoon wake, and raising a glass to that crazy fuck. Here’s to you- long dead trash panda: may you find all the unsecured dumpsters full of fresh produce, discarded by some wasteful line cooks in the sky. I ate a piece of rock lobster tail off of a dirty plate in your honor that night.

There was probably someone in the restaurant that didn’t enjoy the smell of garlic. That evening, they had the good sense to shut their mouths, as they knew in their hearts that they were wrong.

…

While all bars and restaurants are shut down to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, I know I speak for my service industry brethren when I say we find ourselves fantasizing about even the weirdest, worst nights of service in our lives. We would give anything to be quadruple sat with no support. To watch a ticket printer screech out eighteen feet of food tickets for a solid ninety seconds, all with dietary restrictions, poorly worded by weeded servers at the POS. I would give anything to argue with someone about how absinthe does not actually make you hallucinate, a conversation I once tired of.

I think of the garlic raccoon as one of the psychotic, joyful moments I miss right now that I am unable to work the floor of Public Services or Penny Quarter. Fortunately I’ve grown a lot as an operator since the night of the garlic raccoon, and enjoy the company of many seasoned badasses as business partners and coworkers today. I am a little more ready for every curveball I receive, and am far less likely to fry garlic as a solution to a problem.

There are lots of service industry professionals metaphorically frying garlic in the middle of this catastrophe right now. As one of them, allow me to confirm that global virus pandemics are not covered in standard hospitality training. We know how to do all kinds of things in service of your big night. But we have no idea how to survive, financially or emotionally, when our purpose has been taken by a necessary shutdown of our businesses. 

If you feel like helping, there are several things you can do to help us.

1. SPEAK UP ON OUR BEHALF

Fill out the following google document and mail it (electronically, physically, ideally both) to your representatives and senators. Economic aid packages being crafted right now disproportionately serve industries that can afford lobbyists, and corporations that already have political clout. Please consider speaking up for yourself, or if you’re not it the industry- speak up for those of us who struggle to make our voices heard.

CLICK HERE FOR LETTER TEMPLATE

2. INVITE OTHERS TO SPEAK UP

Share the methods of communication you used with other people on social media. Tell them during your now frequent evening face time sessions with everyone. Spreading the word to others is an important part of this.

3. CONTINUE TO SUPPORT SMALL BARS, RESTAURANTS, AND RETAILERS

If you have the ability to purchase to go or delivery items from the small businesses you used to frequent, KEEP DOING IT! Maybe they’re asking for donations for their staff in the event they cannot open at all- put something in their tip jar if they’ve touched your life in a meaningful way.

4. TELL YOUR STORY

If you have a good story about a bar or restaurant, share it. Guests and staff are both currently deprived of the experience of dining and drinking out. Remind people why it matters emotionally (not just that it represents 15 million people and a real chunk of the US economy).

5. FRY SOME GARLIC

It works. Everytime.