There had been complications during my tenure as GM at an Italian joint in Dorchester. A two fold disaster, mine and theirs, called Tavolo. Chris the owner and the executive chef, now wanted me fired after about a year of being their personal axe man. I heard it from the lips of my friend who had been in talks with Chris to become my replacement. He wanted her in and me out. Please stall him, I asked her, buy me some time. I can do that, she said.

Most hard times in life can be looked back upon with a certain shrugging of the shoulders and you remember the fun, not the despair. Not so with Tavolo. Chills shoot up my spine when I recall working there. If I could offer myself one grain of empathy I would say there had to be some sort of self flagellation involved. An aimless time in life where I had fallen off the tower into the moat and now made friends in the swamp with the frogs. Frogs can make good friends too.

Tavolo was located on the ground floor of this fancy developer dude’s building. A place with upscale, low income, and section 8 all located under the same roof but with different entrances. This way, the sleazy developer could get taxpayer money to help shell out for his fake human resources projects. Tavolo was part of that facade. It was slow and made no money which made my job as GM impossible due to the revolving door of servers that quit and were also fired. Someone always had a problem, the owner, the developer, the owners deranged wife, so on and so forth. I had to fire many friends over the course of my time there. I was also in a long relationship on the rocks. That didnt help my mood. I stood at the podium every night gazing into the infinity of what my life had become since moving to Boston and at 7 p.m. sharp, instead of dealing with my feelings, I began drinking. Slow at first. Red wine on the rocks in the summer months. Then, chilled Jim Beam just to take the sting of the job away. The time I administered my medication became 6 p.m., then 5…thats usually how it works when youre in a full depression. When the winter came it got worse. After the break up, I had no car and took the bus into Ashmont Station. The 21 across town from Jamaica Plain through what the locals like to call Murderpan, a poor black neighborhood known for numerous stabbing, gunshots, that sort of fun. Most times I was the only white guy on the bus. Fine with me. I liked being the pariah. I also liked being an outcast, I had been one most of my life so why change?

The worst part? People would ask Chris how to pronounce the name and he would mouth it out for them incorrectly, saying Ta-va-lo instead of Ta-vo-lo. Long A, short O, medium O. I had taken two years of Italian in college during my Italian phase and hearing him butcher the language killed me a little each time the words came out of his mouth. O, I would think to my self. O, you idiot. There is a goddam O smack dab in the middle of the word. He had already spread his corruption far and wide, however, and everyone employed there as well as the local regulars all mispronounced the name because of him. This could have been one reason, among many, as to why he hated my guts. I refused to mispronounce Tavolo, even after his many subsequent attempted corrections.

The move to Boston from New York had been spurred by my slow mental breakdown living in Astoria, Queens. Car alarms all night. Not so bad if the windows were closed but we had no air conditioning and had to open the windows at night for fresh air and during the winter as well because it was also too hot then. We shared a thermostat in the hallway with our across the hall neighbor, Olga, who claimed her place was too cold. In the middle of the night I would go out there and turn the thermostat down, go back inside my place and watch through the door security eye as she came out and turned it right back up. The time of night didnt matter, she was right back out there. I confronted her after a long string of sleeplessness. Me in my boxers, she in her nightie. The two of us arguing out in the hallway about being too cold and too hot. This continued for an entire winter, neither of us willing to relent.

Anyway, that was Queens. A concrete jungle of noise and frustration. When I had the moving van all packed up and we were on our way, the instant we crossed the threshold away from New York into Connecticut, I waved my middle finger out the window as a goodbye.

Boston, however, became one shit job after the other as I sought to find purchase in a confusing world. This was the beginning of 2010. I worked all sorts of crap jobs before landing at Tavolo where I was paid well but miserable. The CDC (chef de cuisine) was a legendary nutcase. Wide eyes from people at the mention of his name typically with them shocked he was still alive. A first generation kid from Azorean natives who was the baby of ten kids. Yes you read that right. Tall and whip thin and prone to melting down at the drop of a hat. The progenitor of the martini shot. Yes, walking into a bar, ordering a martini, and downing it in one go. No big deal? We are not talking about the 5.5 ounce coupes martinis are poured into these days. His realm of debauchery was the late nineties and early two thousands where they still free poured goblet sized versions of the vaunted drink. Chef N had chilled out a bit since those days, gotten married to a short woman he was terrified of, but he had that look, the thousand yard stare of a man who had been in some sort of secret war only with himself and whatever monstrous events had occurred in his childhood. Being the youngest of ten I can only assume he had to fend for himself. He repeated certain mantras often, with the term key part the most used in his short play list, which he used as punctuation to drive home a point. You see, yes, key part, we will send the first course at 8:15 and then, key part, we will fire the second course immediately, key part.

A key part of my own twisted M.O. back then was to tell shit managers why they were shit. This didnt fly well with Chef N and immediately after he and I had it out one stressful night, I knew my goose was cooked. It may have been me telling him part of the lack of business was due to him being such a psycho and having me fire people all the time, or maybe it was me calling him an asshole. He thanked me for my honesty but I knew he would go right to Chris and report, as the two were buxom buddies. There is one thing worse than an idiot, and that is a kiss ass but the two usually go hand in hand.

Chris had been the legendary chef of a place called Icarus in Boston proper and when he moved to Ashmont Hill, the posh section of Dorchester, he put roots down and before being involved in Tavolo, bought a fixer upper restaurant called The Ashmont Grill. Across the street from the red line horror Ashmont Station, a T stop known to be soaked in blood every couple weeks from a shooting or stabbing. Great place to commute to.

After a shift at Tavolo, I would often trek up to The Ashmont Grill, just a quick two block jaunt at night through an area known for surprise violence and death. No matter. I had lived in New York for five years and perfected the art of looking like someone you didnt want to mug. Not because I was tough or anything silly like that, no, it was because I looked like I had no money, which was true. That was my sleight of hand–looking like some poor slob not worth the effort or jail time. It worked.

The GM at Ashmont, Tara, was a good friend to me during these times. A Dorchester native and first generation child from working class Irish parents, she was as tough as they came and ruled the restaurant with an iron fist. When I arrived and sat at the bar there was always a smile, a fresh cold draft beer, and some tender advice from her.

-First off, she said one night, you have to get yourself a fucking phone. Do you want everyone pissed off at you all the time? Get your head out of your ass.

Ugh. Yeah, believe it or not, in 2011 and early 2012 I had lived without a cell phone. Quite freeing to me, but not to anyone else involved in my life, especially my despotic bosses who often wanted to contact me on my days off. I loved it, Tara thought my time at Tavolo had turned me insane.

-I dont know what to do anymore, I said more than once.

-Come work here, she said.

-What about Chris?

-I can handle Daddy.

Daddy they called him. But the moniker, despite its paternal standings gave the man no power in his own restaurant which explained why he was such a dick to me over at Tavolo. Tara and the others, notably, the lead server whose nickname was The Barracuda, another Irish woman with the most beautiful piercing blue eyes I had ever seen, who took zero shit, and the bar manager, Andrew, a short, bald Sicilian who, after I had quaffed a couple of beers, often asked me over to his place to check out his outdoor shower on his rooftop balcony.

-I have poppers, he would say.

At the time, I had no idea what a popper was. After his advances, I would respectfully decline and years later use google and find out that a popper was Amyl Nitrate, an important ingredient in reducing angina (chest pain) as well as causing a number of interesting effects such as flushing of the face and neck, dizziness, headache, rapid heart rate, relaxation of muscles, and increased sexual arousal.

Andrew, The Barracuda, and Tara ruled the Ashmont Grill together. Each had worked there for over a decade. Andrew and Tara behind the bar, and The Barracuda stalking the shallows of the floor. The restaurant was busy and thriving. The food, the drinks, nothing to write home about, but the charm, oh the charm, the spectacle, the attention to your personal life, it was all there, especially in the vein of how to best tease you. This, above all, was what the Ashmont crew had over everyone else. West coasters know nothing of this, what Andrew once confided in me as, The way to keep them coming back.

-Be mean, he said. Best way to make regulars. But in a certain, elusive way so as to trick then into thinking it isnt happening to them.

I had my friend, the new GM, stall Chris until the opening came and then that was it. Sayonara, Tavolo. Stay tuned for subsequent posts concerning both restaurants…

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