of making a restaurant anything but wonderful-looking. It had the feel of the original Jack's but, as with each of the spinoffs, there was a vague regional atmosphere to it. Jack was never quite able to put his finger on how she managed this. Tonight, he suspected, it was the flowers and the pastel colors that somehow gave the restaurant a slightly Southern feel.
The employees were all in place, as was the complicated management structure unique to the restaurant business. They'd found the morning manager at a local bed-and-breakfast that had recently been sold. The night manager was Bella, from the Miami Jack's. A treasure. Jack had no reservations about leaving everything in her capable hands. The chef was solid. He'd been the sous chef in the Chicago Jack's and was more than ready to step up to his own kitchen. He was not intimidated by running a large staff and he seemed to be a good manager as well as a genuine talent. The assistant manager, the beverage manager, and the special-events manager were all young and relatively inexperienced but were clearly gems. Jack did not like maitre d's and he never had one in any of his restaurants. He thought of maitre d's as money-grubbing bodyguards, imperious and bribable. Instead, he had what he called anchors, and they ran the front of the restaurant – they knew how to juggle the seating, the overbooking, the walk-ins, and they knew how to deal with the extreme anxiety that came with dictating the flow of the restaurant on a nightly basis. Jack and Caroline took particular care when hiring anchors. These people had to be smart, they had to have pride, they had to be driven to make people happy. A restaurant's reputation was based on its staff's interaction with its customers. And not just at the top. That's why, for the new place, they had also hired servers and bussers who were all experienced, all happy to have stepped up in class and even happier to have an employer who provided health insurance. Watching them all prepare now – vacuuming, buffing the tables, folding the napkins, cleaning menus, testing the volume of the jazz that would be playing over the speakers throughout the evening – Jack was pleased and proud. Caroline seemed to have done an extraordinary job in this area. He ran down his usual list, tried to find anything that was missing, that wasn't being done. He couldn't come up with one thing.
5 p.m.
They had their first staff meeting.
'I just want to run over a few things,' Jack began, 'before Chef Dave serves the staff dinner, which I happened to take a taste of and I can assure you that it's not too shabby.' That drew a few nods of approval. 'We've got a few VIPs coming tonight. They will need some special service and attention but what I want to stress is that Jack's reputation is not based on the way we treat our VIPs. It's based on the way we treat our regular customers. Tonight, for instance, the tables outside will be for noninvited guests; we're nothing if not democratic. It's a gorgeous night and my guess is we'll have a huge crowd using the patio, not just for dinner but as a bar area. I want the same attention paid to those customers as you'll be paying to the mayor, the governor, and the other guys who, I promise, will be seriously under-tipping you.' That got more than a few nods. It got knowing murmurs and chuckles. Jack thanked everyone for all their hard work, then Caroline said a few words. She told them that she'd just made a deal with the best local cleaner, so they shouldn't be overly concerned with stains on their uniform jackets. She discussed a minor problem they were having with space for the dry storage and one of the three cold rooms. And announced that they would all have to be trained in CPR over the next few months. They were shown how best to utilize the mirrors that were strategically placed around the room – under-the-table sex was always the most common distraction that had to be monitored – and they all knew to look for the criers, the drunks, and the yellers. They were also shown the high-profile tables, the visible ones for the VIPs who wanted to flaunt their success, and the two tables in the back for any VIPs who didn't want to be noticed.
When it was over, Chef Dave and the servers brought out the food. Staff dinner was that night's special. Jack took a bite and it was delicious, but even after all the times he'd been through this, he was too nervous to eat. He did notice, with a smile, that Caroline helped herself to seconds.
5:30 p.m.
Caroline sat down with the two anchors to go over the seating for the night. There would be different pressures and problems tonight. There were no dinner walk-ins or late reservations since everyone inside was an invited guest. Still, seating was tricky. The governor and the mayor obviously had to have key tables. As did several of the local businessmen. A few politicians were coming up from Washington and Jack knew that the Washington Post restaurant critic had wangled an invitation and was going to be attending, using one of the five pseudonyms she'd been known to use and that had been circulated on the Internet to local restaurant personnel. The chef came out of the kitchen to discuss with the anchors how best to handle the critic. He agreed to make two of everything that the critic ordered as well as two of everything that anyone at the critic's table ordered, just in case something went wrong in the preparation of one of the dishes. The anchor instructed the wait staff as to exactly where the critic would be seated and the bussers were told to make sure there were no cracks or imperfections in any of the plates used for her meal. Then they went over the notation system for the lineup at the door. The lineup – the list of who was dining that night, along with the table arrangements – was used to determine who would sit where and what special attention had to be paid to whom. Caroline went over the system used at all the other Jack's around the country: when anyone called to make a reservation, his or her name was immediately placed into the computer. Any information that could be ascertained, either on the first visit or any future visits, would also be entered. Relevant data would then be put into the lineup, in the area known as the Guest Detail Sheet. Caroline ticked off the information she considered important to note for the GDS: the diner's job, if interesting or special; if the customer was a regular (here or at any of the other Jack's around the country – easy to find out because the database was cross-referenced for all the restaurants); regular dining companions; type of wine preferred; time restrictions; any personal relations with the staff. Tonight, in Charlottesville, the most interesting bit of personal service needed was that a congressman was coming down from D.C. His wife was short and she'd requested that a cushion be placed on her seat so she'd look taller. But it had to be discreet. No one was to know she was sitting on something that would add a couple of inches to her height.
The front-of-the-restaurant staff did not seem particularly rattled by Caroline's last-minute summary. When it was over, the mood was surprisingly calm and Jack felt that yet another piece of the puzzle had slipped perfectly into place.
6:20 p.m.
Jack and Caroline went to the private upstairs office, a small room with a computer and a leather couch, and a large window that overlooked the front of the brick-lined mall. While they were in town, it was theirs. When they were away, it was to be used by the two site managers. At the restaurant in New York, Jack had a closed-circuit camera installed downstairs in the dining room. The monitor was in the office. From there he could observe the entire scene, watch both customers and employees to make sure everything was going smoothly. Caroline had dissuaded him from doing that here. The place was too small, she'd said. They couldn't see anything from upstairs that they couldn't see downstairs. As he eased down onto the small love-seat-sized sofa, he missed having the monitor. He felt edgy, as if one small detail was missing. He tried to picture the downstairs in his mind, to visualize what was nagging at him…
'Shit,' Jack said. 'I forgot to talk to Emile about pouring the wine. Bella said that he seemed to be a little slow.'
'Relax,' Caroline said. 'It can wait a few minutes. Talk to him when we go down. And it's not a tragedy if Emile's a little slow. People do pour their own wine.'
'Not at Jack's,' he told her.
'No,' she said. 'Not at Jack's.' With an affectionate smile, she said, 'Will you allow me to pour for you?'
'Yes,' he said. 'I think that's allowable.'
She popped open a bottle of Dom Perignon that she'd put on ice several hours earlier. They clinked glasses, each took a sip.
'It's not fair, you know,' Jack said.
'What?' she asked.
'There's something on your mind.'
