Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

This one, especially, took a village.

I could never have written this book without the support of the restaurant community on Nantucket.

Robert Sarkisian, H.H. at 21 Federal, talked with me for hours, fed me, allowed me to work during Christmas Stroll 2002, and gave me access to his staff, all of whom were honest and charming. Special thanks to Chris Passerati, Dan Sabauda, Russell Jaehnig, and Johnny Bresette, bartender extraordinaire, who very much wanted me to change the name of the bartender in this book from Duncan to Johnny B.

Al and Andrea Kovalencik, of the exquisite jewel-box restaurant, Company of the Cauldron, shared hours of stories with me from their rich and varied experience in the resort life.

Joanna Polowy, pastry chef, taught me about the sweeter side of the restaurant business.

Angela and Seth Raynor, owner and chef/owner of the Boarding House and the Pearl, told me more stories than I could possibly include in one book. Angela also inadvertently gave me the idea for this book. In the summer of 2000, when my novel The Beach Club was released, Angela said to me, We decided in the back [of the house] that you could never write a restaurant book. Too scandalous. Thank you, Angela!

Finally, I am indebted to Geoffrey, David, and Jane Silva of The Galley, who for the twelve years as my friends have demonstrated how to gracefully run a successful beachfront restaurant.

I read comprehensively about restaurants, culinary schools, and food and wine. The following publications were especially helpful: The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher, Becoming a Chef by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, Cosmopolitan: A Bartenders Life by Toby Cecchini, The Fourth Star by Leslie Brenner, The Making of a Pastry Chef by Andrew MacLauchlan, Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg, The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman, If You Can Stand the Heat by Dawn Davis, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, The Last Days of Haute Cuisine by Patric Kuh, and what felt like hundreds of issues of Bon Apptit and Gourmet.

Thank you to my early readers: Mrs. Pat van Ryn, Tom and Leslie Bresette, Amanda Congdon, Debbie Bennett, and, as ever, Heather Osteen Thorpe. Thank you to Wendy Hudson of Bookworks and Mimi Beman of Mitchells Book Corner. It is a lucky writer who has two stellar independent bookstores on her home island. In New York, as always, thanks to Michael Carlisle, Jennifer Weis, and Stefanie Lindskog.

Finally, thank you to the people who gave me the time, space, and support to write. My sitters (who are also friends): Becca Evans, Julia Chumak, Kristen Jurgensen, Jennifer Chadwick, and Dan Bowling. My friends (who are also, occasionally, sitters): Amanda Congdon, Anne Gifford, Sally Bates Hall, Margie Holahan, Susan Storey Johnsen, and Wendy Rouillard. My sons school: The Childrens House of Nantucket. The sanest hour of my week: the Thursday morning parenting group. My mother, Sally Hilderbrand, and my husband, Chip Cunningham.

Chip shines his light on my every page. In this instance, I am especially grateful to him for sharing the details of his beautiful and unique friendship with Katie van Ryn, who died from complications of cystic fibrosis in 1995 at the age of thirty.

READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
ELIN HILDERBRANDS
NEXT NOVEL

The Love Season

AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER FROM ST. MARTINS PRESS

August 19, 2006 6:30 A.M .

Marguerite didnt know where to start.

Each and every summer evening for nearly twenty years, she had cooked for a restaurant full of people, yet here she was in her own kitchen on a crystalline morning with a seemingly simple missiondinner for two that evening at seven thirtyand she didnt know where to start. Her mind spun like the pedals of a bicycle without any brakes. Candace coming here, after all these years. Immediately Marguerite corrected herself. Not Candace. Candace was dead. Renata was coming tonight. The baby.

Marguerites hands quivered as she brought her coffee mug to her lips. The grandfather clock chimed just as it had every fifteen minutes of its distinguished lifebut this time, the sound startled Marguerite. She pictured a monkey inside, with two small cymbals and a voice screeching, Marguerite! Earth to Marguerite!

Marguerite chuckled. I am an old bat, she thought. Ill start by writing a list.

The phone call had come at eleven oclock the night before. Marguerite was in bed, reading Hemingway. Whereas once Marguerite had been obsessed with foodwith heirloom tomatoes and lamb shanks and farmhouse cheeses, and fish still flopping on the counter, and eggs and chocolate and black truffles and foie gras and rare white nectarinesnow the only thing that gave her genuine pleasure was reading. The people of Nantucket wonderedoh yes, she knew they wonderedwhat Marguerite did all day, hermited in her house on Quince Street, secreted away from the eyes of the curious. Although there was always somethingthe laundry, the garden, the articles for the newspaper in Calgary (deadline every other Friday)the answer was: reading. Marguerite had three books going at any one time. That was the chef in her, the proverbial more-than-one-pot-on-the-stove. She read contemporary fiction in the mornings, though she was very picky. She liked Philip Roth, Penelope Lively, as a rule no one under the age of fifty, for what could they possibly have to say about the world that Marguerite hadnt already learned? In the afternoons, she enriched herself with biographies or books of European history, if they werent too dense. Her evenings were reserved for the classics, and when the phone rang the night before Marguerite had been reading Hemingway. Hemingway was the perfect choice for late at night because his sentences were clear and easy to understand, though Marguerite stopped every few pages and asked herself, Is that all he means? Might he mean something else? This insecurity was a result of attending the Culinary Institute instead of a proper universityand all those years with Porter didnt help. An education makes you good company for yourself, Porter had liked to tell his students, and Marguerite, when he was trying to convince her to read something other than Larousse Gastronomique. Wouldnt he be proud of her now.

The phone, much like the muted toll of the clock a few seconds ago, had scared Marguerite out of her wits. She gasped, and her book slid off her lap to the floor, where it lay with its pages folded unnaturally under, like a person with a broken limb. The phone, a rotary, continued its cranky, mechanical whine while Marguerite groped her nightstand for her watch. Eleven oclock. Marguerite could name on one hand the phone calls shed received in the past twelve months. There was a call or two from the editorial assistant at the Calgary paper; there was a call from the Culinary Institute each spring asking for a donation; there was always a call from Porter on November 3, her birthday. None of these people would ever think to call her at eleven oclock at nightnot even Porter, drunk (not even if hed split from the nubile young graduate assistant who had become his late-in-life wife), would dare to call Marguerite at this hour. So it was a wrong number. Marguerite decided to let it ring. She had no answering machine to put the phone out of its misery; it just rang and rang, as pleading and insistent as a crying baby. Marguerite picked it up, clearing her throat first. She occasionally went a week without speaking.