Chapter 3 #2
He’d definitely noticed every single shortcut they’d taken.
Shortcuts he’d never permit in any of the other family restaurants.
“We’re doing just fine here. Winter’s just a hard time, and that’s—”
“That’s not why,” Luca said, cutting Enzo off, ruthlessly. At first he’d been strangely hesitant to involve himself, but now that he saw the breadth of what had been done—or not done—he couldn’t help himself. “The bakery down the street is thriving. I saw a line out of the door.”
“Oh, Oliver,” Enzo said bitterly.
“Who’s Oliver?”
“Oliver owns the bakery,” Giana explained.
“Ah,” Luca said. Unclear as to why Enzo was so bitter about the man, except that maybe it was because his business was so much more successful. “The point remains. He’s busy. You’re not.”
“How do we fix it?” Giana asked, wringing her hands together.
Luca, who was equally annoyed at her and at himself, and for the exact same reason—for letting things get this bad—cleared his throat. “I need to do some more research. Can I sit at one of the tables? Observe a regular service?”
Enzo and Giana exchanged glances, pinging Luca’s bullshit meter even more.
“Of course,” Giana finally said.
An hour and a half later, he realized why she’d been so uneasy.
In ninety minutes since Enzo had flipped the open sign, they’d had exactly one customer, a gruff older man in a worn-out Durham Bulls ball cap, who’d ordered a meatball sub, exchanged the bare minimum of words with Enzo, and had grabbed his sandwich to go with a can of Coke from the drink fridge, and left.
Luca was wishing he’d brought his laptop, because at least he could’ve done work while waiting for anyone to come in.
Finally, Giana emerged from the kitchen. She had a sheepish, ashamed look in her eyes as she carried out a plate to Luca.
“Meatball sub?” she asked. “Feel free to grab a drink from the case if you’d like.”
He’d intended to taste the food, of course, but he’d hoped to slip in his order so Giana didn’t know the food was for him.
He wanted exactly what everyone else got.
But he supposed, getting up, stretching as he walked to the case, he was getting what everyone else was getting.
Store-bought bread, and frozen-then-thawed sauce and meatballs.
Luca didn’t think he had the most discerning palate in the world.
That was his brother, Marco, who was an incredible chef, and who managed the steakhouse so he could stretch his wings a bit.
But he knew Nonna’s red sauce recipe like the back of his hand—it was a Moretti tradition to learn it when your hand was just strong enough and your arm just long enough to use the wooden spoon to stir the sauce in the big pot—and he recognized it, of course.
The sweetness of the tomatoes was dulled though. Artificial, he realized. They weren’t using the same tomatoes he made sure to always import from Italy. They’d added sugar in compensation, but it wasn’t the same.
He could taste the difference on his tongue.
The mozzarella and provolone layering the meatballs weren’t right either. Cheap quality, and a bit rubbery.
He wasn’t even going to talk about how wrong the bread was.
Nonna’s meatballs and sauce only belonged on freshly baked bread.
If Giana and Enzo weren’t going to bake it, then maybe he could get bread from this Oliver guy, who owned the bakery.
Something to look into.
He bit into the sandwich, his teeth sinking into the meatball, and it probably wouldn’t be immediately recognizable to anyone else, but he tasted the freezer on it. The lack of freshness in the meat. How it had been fresh, and then frozen.
Disappointing.
It was a fine sandwich. Just fine, though.
Not Nonna’s quality.
He ate it though, because he wasn’t going to throw food away, even food that was just fine.
The lunch “rush” came and went.
Two more people showed up. One person got the chopped salad. Another an order of the eggplant parm to go.
Three people, even in this small town, in early March, on a Wednesday, was pathetic. He understood now why they were struggling.
“It’s usually better than this,” Giana said—Giana lied—as she approached Luca’s table to pick up his plate. It was so empty in the restaurant she should’ve whisked it away the moment he was finished. Nobody wanted to come in and sit down around dirty dishes.
Luca added another mental note to the other hundred he’d made today already.
“Is it, though?” Luca questioned.
The mediocrity of this establishment coupled with the fact that his Nonna’s name was above the door had dismissed the last of his awkwardness about setting them on a better course.
And if they couldn’t, if they wouldn’t make the changes required to turn this business around, then he would rather they closed.
Which, he had to assume, was a possibility, considering the desperation in Giana’s eyes, and three people who had come in for lunch today.
Giana sighed. “No,” she admitted. She settled in the chair opposite his. “Things were going alright until I semiretired. My back can’t take the work anymore, but then Enzo . . .well, he wasn’t particularly interested in the business.”
The business you started for him, Luca thought, frowning.
“He’s an artist, you see,” Giana said. “On the side, of course.”
“He drew the menu,” Luca observed, realization dawning.
“Yes, he did. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
It was. The only wonderful thing about this place.
“But then business went bad, or went worse, I suppose, and I came back to help him. And now,” she said, her whole face brightening, “you will fix us right up, and everything will be beautiful again. Just like it should be.”
“Ah,” Luca said noncommittally. He didn’t want to tell his aunt it was clear—to him, at least—that Enzo had little to zero interest in the family business, and even if Luca did manage to fix Giana and Enzo’s problems, it would take a long time to win over the town’s trust again.
This was not a matter of simple solutions, easily executable.
“How long are you planning to stay?” Giana asked.
Part of Luca wanted to say he’d be out on the first plane in the morning, because fixing the deli was impossible.
Or not that fixing it was impossible, but so time consuming and difficult he wasn’t sure that either of them would commit to it.
But Nonna hadn’t taught him the fundamentals of owning a restaurant—owning one of the Moretti family restaurants—only to have him shirk his responsibilities now.
“A few weeks,” Luca said. “Maybe a month.”
“That long?” Giana sounded dismayed. “But we have the same menu! The same recipes! Maybe what we need,” she continued, forging ahead before Luca could broach the subject of how the menu and the recipes were executed, “is more publicity. There’s a big festival in town, happening in a few weeks.
The Sweethearts Festival. Maybe we could apply to be a vendor there, get some attention. ”
Luca ignored the ridiculous name of the festival.
He wondered if they decked it out as his bed-and-breakfast was—all in pink and red and white, like a too-sweet bakery cake.
Instead, he hummed under his breath. Everyone said he was so mean and grumpy, and maybe he could be, but if he truly was, down to the core, as relentless as everyone accused him of being, surely he would be more eager to tell Giana all about her problems.
But she looked so hopeful, he couldn’t let her continue on like this, believing in miracles when he knew the solutions to the problems were going to be so hard: tearing everything down and starting over again.
“Not until we’re confident we can turn things around. That the product we’re delivering is better,” Luca said gently. Probably more gently than anyone in his family believed he was capable of. Gabe, especially.
Giana recoiled. “The product is better? The product is better? We use the same recipes! Nicoletta gave them to me. I follow them to the letter. There’s nothing wrong with our product.
Enzo warned me you’d come here and try to change everything to fix it, but maybe it’s not as broken as we think it is.
” She threw him a hard look. “Maybe you’re inflexible, believe nobody can do it as right as you, just like everyone says. ”
It wasn’t a surprise. Luca told himself it was not a surprise.
Still, it stung.
“I . . .” Luca considered explaining, in detail, how that was not true.
How it wasn’t that he believed his way was the only right way, though he did believe that, but that nobody else believed they were doing it right either, because three customers did not a business make, but then he shut his mouth.
There was no point in arguing.
Tonight, he would put together a plan. He would email it over. He would come back tomorrow, and see what Giana had to say. If his reception was as cold as her glare right now, he would just go.
Tell Mama that he tried and Giana was doomed to fail.
That maybe it was better this way, anyway, because she was growing older, and the work was hard, and Enzo was either incapable of or uninterested in continuing the family tradition.
He couldn’t make people change, unless they wanted to.
He stood. “Thanks for the sandwich,” he said stiffly.
She looked at him in surprise, like she hadn’t expected him to be insulted at her words.
Okay, maybe he could be a bit of an asshole, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel things.
He still goddamn felt them; he’d just gotten far too good at ignoring the pain.
“Oh.” Giana hesitated. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
Her jaw fell open. No doubt she’d been expecting that he’d leave in a huff. Fly off and tell Nicoletta the whole thing was useless.
But Nonna’s was still emblazoned above the doorway, so he couldn’t let it go.
Not without at least trying to live up to her memory.