Crows watched overhead
A promise found its harbor
An extra place set
I arrived at Botanist about fifteen minutes early.
(Okay, okay, after the rest of the day, I was expecting to get to the venue, a block away, via Singapore.)
The hostess offered me a choice.
I could wait at the bar, or I could browse their library of limited-edition Taschen books.
It was, I decided, perhaps a teeny tiny bit bougie.
Having successfully walked three-quarters of the way around the Fairmont Pacific Rim to find the entrance (a personal tradition at this point), I settled in to wait for my table.
Once seated (the only patron in the establishment), I watched the kitchen staff slowly arrive. They pulled down the heat lamps, suspended on long white coils from the ceiling. Polished the marble cold stations. Started the engines. I mean stoves. Sharpened the tweezers.
The evening was off to an excellent start.
Larry, my server, said he understood that I was recreating an anniversary trip H and I had planned years ago (but never quite managed to take). I showed him Herbert’s marble and about twenty minutes later he arrived with a small cradle they normally use to display very special wine corks from very special bottles at guests’ tables.
Not a grand gesture.
Not a performance.
Just a small acknowledgment that there was supposed to be someone else at the table.
Sometimes hospitality isn’t making someone feel special.
Sometimes it’s making someone feel accompanied.
Larry seated me at Table 31.
Best seat in the house.
A banquette directly facing the open kitchen.
Some people want the view.
I wanted the chefs.
The kitchen was a ballet.
The expediter somehow knew everything happening everywhere all at once. The sous chefs never seemed rushed. Jo, from Jakarta, appeared whenever he was needed. The dishwasher moved quietly through the choreography. And overseeing it all was the executive chef, originally from Birmingham, England.
The thing that struck me wasn’t discipline.
It was joy.
People respected her.
But more importantly, they seemed to genuinely like her.
And she seemed to genuinely like them.
I mean, amongst the barked orders and the “Yes, Chef!“s.
Three times during dinner she came over to chat.
Three.
And lest you think she was making the rounds of the dining room, she wasn’t.
She never visited another table.
Just Table 31.
Apparently there is something unmistakable about a woman sitting alone, watching the kitchen with the concentration normally reserved for playoff hockey.
But let’s talk about the food and the wine for a second.
I mean, it’s a restaurant after all.
The first wine was a sparkling wine made from Meunière that tasted of bruised apples and a touch of salt from the sea.
I slipped one of H’s marbles into the glass.
Jo had nearly cleared it away about two minutes earlier before realizing it wasn’t table clutter but, in fact, a marble.
When I explained, he looked horrified.
Later, when I dropped it into the champagne, I raised the glass toward him and winked.
He laughed.
One of the most beautiful dishes of the evening was a scallop.
And radishes.
They had been marinated in the same spicy preparation, creating an unexpected bridge between them. A tiny borage flower sat on top.
The dish looked like a flower.
It tasted like a conversation.
There were other dishes.
And other wines.
And lots of kitchen-watching (me).
Then came the chicken.
Now, don’t misunderstand me.
Everything was excellent.
But this was the dish that made me stop and pay attention.
Perfectly cooked chicken with impossibly crisp skin, morels, vegetables, broth, and enough depth to make me immediately understand why people remember certain dishes years later.
This was not the prettiest thing I ate.
It may have been the most satisfying.
The wine pairing provided one of the evening’s most interesting surprises.
Twice I found myself leaving wine in the glass.
The wines were perfectly good.
The pairings simply weren’t doing much for me.
The Somm appeared mildly distressed by this development.
I asked whether half pours were possible.
Apparently they were not.
Then came the wagyu.
The sommelier appeared carrying two wines.
One was the pairing he normally used.
The other was not.
The glasses were labeled simply “1” and “2.”
Wine #1 was a perfectly respectable Chianti.
Wine #2 stopped the conversation.
I was convinced it was Burgundy. It had what I privately call “Pinot bite.”
It wasn’t Burgundy.
It wasn’t even a Pinot. (So much for all that expensive Somm training I did – whut-WAHH)
It was a British Columbia Merlot.
A 2016 LaStella Maestoso.
With the wagyu it was transformative.
After that, I never touched Wine #1 again.
The Somm looked delighted — and relieved.
Near the end of the meal I asked Larry for a piece of paper and a pen.
What I received was a strip of receipt paper from the credit-card machine and Larry’s pen.
I wrote a note to the chef.
Not about the food.
About the team.
About the dishwasher.
About the sous chefs.
About the expediter.
About Jo.
About the way she had built a kitchen where people seemed to genuinely enjoy working together.
About how obvious it was that they respected her.
And how obvious it was that she respected them.
I hope, when she read it, it was aloud to the staff.
Because I wanted them to know that Table 31 noticed.
The expediter.
The dishwasher.
Jo.
The tiny adjustments.
The perfect timing.
All the hundreds of little things that add up to what people call hospitality.
The tiny things.
Which, of course, are really the big thing.
When the evening ended, Larry handed me a card.
Signed by everyone.
Every signature different.
Every person adding their own name.
(As if the signed anniversary card wasn’t enough, they tucked a bag of cookies into my hands for the walk back to the Pan Pacific.)
I had come expecting an excellent dinner.
And it was.
But that isn’t what I carried away.
What I carried away was the reminder that great hospitality isn’t really about luxury.
It’s about attention.
It’s about kindness.
It’s about making room for people.
For memories.
For stories.
For absent husbands represented by marbles.
For solo travelers recreating old promises.
For someone sitting at Table 31 watching the kitchen with far more fascination than dignity.
The food was wonderful.
The wine was memorable.
But what made the evening unforgettable was the people.
And for a few hours at least, they made room at the table for Herbert too.