The Counter Service Community’s strength gave me strength last week to keep on keeping on. And this week’s journals are no different, with thoughtful reflections on alone time and cooking for others, and letting your mind wander back to when you would pop to one bar for a drink then one small plates spot for appetizers then another restaurant for dinner, to the theatrics of eating and eating alone.

This second journal has relit my excitement and solidified, again, how impressive this community is. Personally, I’m taking heed from these optimistic and creative humans to slow down, gather my thoughts, make sure my friends are good mentally, physically, and financially (as best I can).

All of these pieces have been donated to Counter Service to make this come to life, so if you have it in you, please donate a few dollars ($1, $3, $5) to @Josh-Hamlet and all funds will be distributed to these creatives.

Love you all, and come let your mind wander for a minute. 

Words by Melinda Cardozo

This morning, before I’d even had coffee, still in bed, cats biting my toes for breakfast, I caught myself scrolling through my “camera” archives for something to post on Instagram.  I’m a florist and the Manhattan flower market is closed because of the coronavirus. My clients are predominantly restaurants. All of them have indefinitely ceased service. My floral and culinary friends are slowly weaning themselves from work by rationing out the photos they’d never shared of dahlias and zinnias and tarts and cookies and weddings and parties from seasons past. Photos frozen in our phones of the collective work we spent our lives doing on jobs that are simply impossible to perform in isolation will either become proof of how we lived in the last days of disco, or an encouragement of lives we will return to in due time.  I was about to do the same, then someone in my feed posted a quote from Arundhati Roy’s essay, “The Pandemic is a Portal.” I cancelled my post and opened that door instead.

Roy writes with immediate clarity of the contradictions coronavirus makes visible. She asks: “Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk?”  One of the more shocking elements of this pandemic is its global disruption of the tactile gestures of the everyday. Sharing plates of food with friends, eating with our hands, kissing our lovers and our children but also grabbing a drink after work. Work. Grabbing.  As we lament the hopefully temporary absence of these mundane yet vital intimacies, many of us are trying to also pay attention to the positive changes that could emerge from this current state of being inside-out of the world. Victims of the AIDS crisis notwithstanding, coronavirus presents most people living in the United States with a truly novel realm of the everyday. 

At least the chefs among us can bake at home, creating new content out of small treats they will render large in the aftermath.  I suppose I could create ikebana tutorials out of the dried flowers I keep in my apartment, but I don’t feel like it. I realize that even if I make it through this with my health intact, I might not be able to return to the work I did for a living prior to this catastrophe. I alternately refer to that work as floristry or floral design.  I regularly worked 7 days a week, and those days usually involved driving into the city, purchasing flowers shipped to Manhattan from all over the world, driving to various stores and restaurants to craft “seasonal” arrangements in closed city spaces to remind the clientele of the natural world they have perhaps seen on vacations, on summers upstate or weekends in the Hamptons, or even from places outside the city where they were lucky enough to have spent their childhoods.  The work I do is a luxury service with a large carbon footprint. The irony of what it costs to represent nature in environments that no longer have access to flowers is not lost on the people who work in this industry. Many of us are trying to figure out ways to shop primarily with local growers, to compost, to avoid using toxic materials like floral foam or heavily sprayed flowers, in short, to learn how to make floral design sustainable. People love to receive flowers; they do not like to think about their real cost.  When we emerge from all of this, if our former clients even have the budgets to reincorporate flowers into their businesses, we will be tempted to do whatever we can to invigorate the supply chain. We also have the chance to reconsider whether or not this is a good idea.  

The picture I had singled out to post this morning wasn’t even a flower photo.  Not exactly. The subject was a birthday cake made for my friend and former boss, Ignacio Mattos.  On the night of the photo I had rushed to meet my dear Natasha Pickowicz at the Odeon for martinis and fries before we walked over to Lee’s on Canal for the party.  Sister Nancy performed. The room was packed, sweaty, electric. A few days later Ignacio texted me: “You were there?” Yes, we hugged, I informed him. At the party, Natasha and I had settled by the cake she’d made. In the photo, the last slice oozes shiny lemon curd and whipped cream. A giant knife rests on the round cutting board. No plates or forks in sight. Sharing a bottle of champagne we’d found on the table by the front door, chatting with people we hadn’t seen in years, plunging our fingers into the cake, gossiping, wiping the platter clean, we discussed how much we missed house parties.  In writing this, the photo shapeshifts from a snapshot into a time capsule.

Looking closer, what I’d first glossed as celery leaf comes into focus as feathery acid green celosia suspended in custardy goo.  The celosia had served as garnish, and it was destined for the trashcan. I would have forgotten it, but seeing it now I have a server flashback.  I remember how Ignacio would check every plate as it came back from the kitchen to see how people were eating. If a sweet potato leaf or a sprinkle of oxalis was left behind, he would sigh and say: “You have to tell them to eat these things. There is no such thing as a garnish here.” Like many of the flowers that trend in floral design, celosia, which blooms in a variety of day-glo colors, rides the line between tacky and cool. I know that seems like a ridiculous thing to say about a flower, but yes, there are also dorks in the flower world.  I look celosia up to double-check its spelling, and notice that its leaves, stems, and even the young flowers are not only edible but also high in folic acid and beta-carotene. The seeds can be used to manage high blood pressure. It occurs to me that I have arrived at one of those portals Roy is describing. I enter. 

Like everyone else, I am cooking up a storm. I’ve always loved to cook and bake, so it’s not a huge change for me, but the difference is that usually I am making treats for a crowd. My coworkers, classmates, and friends are always the benefactors of my hobby – angel food cake and cookies for readings, empanadas to snack on during a shift, a three-layer peanut-butter and Oreo birthday cake for my best friend’s 30th party. When I found myself stuck inside the first week or so of quarantine, I thought: what’s the point of making all of that food, when there is just us, me and my husband, in our little apartment? But that isn’t exactly true.

I live in a two-apartment building, not quite a brownstone, but what was once a family home in Sunset Park. My downstairs neighbors are the grandson of the original owner, Joe, and his girlfriend Sophie. There is a little button underneath the light switch in the dining room connected by old wiring to a bell that goes into the downstairs apartment. It was for Joe’s grandma to use when she needed assistance upstairs. When we first moved in we made jokes about who would be the first to accidentally lean on the button in the middle of the night, waking Joe in a panic. 

Over the years we’ve lived here, Joe and Sophie have become more than just our neighbors. They’ve welcomed us into the neighborhood, pointing out the best taquerias and hot-pot joints, invited us to their backyard for drinks, grieved along with us when we put down our 13-year-old pit bull last summer. My favorite thing about Joe and Sophie, though, is our bake swap.

Sophie was in nursing school when we moved in, and now she works at a major hospital nearby. She also loves to bake. What started as a common interest we could use to make small talk turned into a few cookies exchanged, a recipe request, shared notes on the chocolate selection from the Key Food versus the C Town down the road. When a huge fire devastated the housing complex nearby, Sophie donated trays of her cookies and breads to the bake sale we hosted at a local bar. 

A few days into quarantine, Joe knocked on our door. I’d lost my job almost immediately as restaurants across the city shuttered, and my husband Adam was working from home for the foreseeable future. Joe explained to us that because Sophie was still working at the hospital, she would be taking extra care to keep the building sanitized and follow stringent hospital practices to keep all of us safe. As I watched Joe and Adam talk through the glass pane of our front door and the staircase landing, my heart sank. I couldn’t imagine sending Adam off to the hospital every day, waiting for him to come home, worrying every minute about the invisible creep of this new, nebulous danger. Joe looked worried, but he was cheerful. I wondered nervously if that would last. 

When I went for a grocery run the next day, I peeked down the hallway. There was a bag of Sophie’s scrubs outside the door to their apartment, one blue pant leg draped over the side at the knee, like the scrubs had laid down and fallen asleep there. I imagined how tired Sophie must be. The bag was so full. 

Then, a few days later, I got a text from Sophie. 

“Hey I left some cookies outside your door. I didn’t touch them with my hands! They’re copycat Levain chocolate-chip-walnut.”

I opened the front door, and there on a vintage porcelain plate were four perfect, still-warm cookies. I brought them inside and put them on the coffee table. Adam’s eyes lit up. 

“Ooh! Did Sophie make these?”

I stifled my slight pang of jealousy – I can admit that Sophie is a better baker than me, and I was also elated to be eating someone’s cooking besides my own. We stopped the millionth episode of bad TV we were watching and bit into the cookies in silence. 

They were so fucking good. Chewy and nutty, with big flakes of Maldon on top. We smiled at each other, laughed, and immediately started in on the last two cookies. 

I couldn’t believe she had found the time to bake in between shifts, let alone make some of the best cookies I’ve ever had. But then I thought about all of the people I love to bake for, how much it soothes my anxiety to be in my kitchen, browning butter and weighing flour and looking at a recipe for an hour instead of the horrifying news. I miss those people so much. I don’t know when I will see them again. But that night, I put on some music, poured a glass of wine, and started a batch of focaccia, excited to have remembered that I did in fact have a few more people I could feed. Two people, specifically; one of them a helper, and one the person who loves her. Every project I start feels like a chance to thank Sophie for what she is doing and a way to bring my mind back to something that always makes me feel better: making something with my (gloved) hands. 

This thing has been horrible and scary and it won’t be over any time soon, but one tiny pinprick of light in my life has been thinking about how in a small way, this building is a little bit more of a house than it was before, with four people looking out for and appreciating each other, and sending treats up and down the stairs, a little circuit of joy. 

Over the years since I formally started working in restaurants as a chosen career I have collected business cards, postcards, matchbooks, and menus. Anytime I met someone new and they handed me their card, I’d tuck it into my wallet, where it would live for a month or so, before being moved into a shoebox with all the others. Any chance I got I’d take that physical reminder from a bar or restaurant I visited. Places I’ve worked, places people I love work, places that I consider home, places I’ve only been once. The shoebox is overflowing at this point. Once, in a little apartment in East Williamsburg, I made a wall mural of all of these mementos. But since then I have kept them safe in their box, rifling through them when I need a favor or a contact somewhere, or when I am feeling nostalgic and have some time to kill. 

Obviously now is one of those times. We live in a world completely different than that of a couple of months ago, and certainly different than when I lived and breathed the restaurant industry in New York before my move to Maine last year. I pulled them out again and created a massive collage on the floor of my living room and was once more pulled down a road of memories. Looking over the collage it was transportive to recall the times and places where each of these physical mementos were collected. Many of the establishments have been closed for years; I’ve lost all personal contact with many others. And yet each little card, holds my recollections and emotions.

At first the collecting was impulsive, a treat, a little jewel to tuck away. Over time, as I rose in the industry, and my network grew, it became compulsive. As we all have experienced, it becomes addictive to be a part of this world, to see and be seen. You must go to the opening service, check out the new restaurant as soon as possible, make introductions, make connections. One might argue that cards, especially personal ones, are ego-driven, self-serving. So much of what was important in New York was the networking: who you knew, who you got to meet, whose card you had so you could have a spider-thread of connection and potentially tug on it from time to time for personal or professional growth. One could argue that it is shallow, about recognition and gain. Even beyond the potential gain was the simple psychological fact of belonging, being a part of the world, being vetted because someone deemed you worthy of handing you one of their well-earned cards. That feeling, of course, is mutual. You are now bonded, connected, part of a network.

In addition to the emotional meaning of card exchange, there is of course the very literal reality: a piece of advertising, shiny and colorful. Something that is uniquely of that place. Something that costs money to produce, and does not necessarily translate to immediate monetary gain for the business. It is boastful, performative, in a way. I grew weary of this mentality, it wore on me, and yet I didn’t know how to extricate myself because it still mattered so much, to me, to everyone. Over the last year living in Maine I’ve slowly unzipped myself from this world. Partly it was due to geography; I was no longer physically there. But I also stopped engaging in the frenetic networking life here (there is an ‘industry’ everywhere after all). I pulled back from social media engagement. I held bitterness and sadness that I had so deeply sought validation and belonging in these arguably shallow ways. 

And yet now, when I look over these little pieces of paper, all I see are the time-capsuled moments of history: my history, that restaurant’s history, that person’s history. Like a familiar smell that suddenly transports you back to childhood, as I allow my eyes to wander over the surface of this collage, I see snapshots of people and moments who shaped me. I can trace my own history and growth in this industry I love. The people I’ve met, places I’ve been, the sweet little bits of what made up my narrative, and the greater narrative of the world I chose to belong to. My bitterness and sadness is no longer at the fore, replaced instead with the soul-warming truth of collective memory. I have had the immense honor of creating moments of beauty shoulder to shoulder with some of the people I admire most in this world. I have earned life-long friendships grown out of ‘work friends’ - people who I now consider family. Restaurants and the people in them have held and nurtured me through heartbreak and depression, have clapped and celebrated with me through moments of triumph and raucous happiness. 

I left the collage arranged on the floor overnight, and of course when I came down in the morning it was shifted and scattered as my two cats had played and chased each other over the collage all night, dancing their little paws across the impermanent visual love letter I’d written. At the risk of being hyperbolic, this too is fitting. The collage was never meant to be permanent, I did not glue or tape it to a board, I simply carefully laid it out, covering holes where I could and making little adjustments as I went. I knew that our living room would need to be returned to its functional state - the collage sits squarely where the yoga mat usually goes - the cards and matchbooks would be returned to their shoebox. Seeing the mussed scatter of cards only reminded me of the reality of impermanence in the world, and especially in ours. 

The restaurant industry is one of constant flux and evolution. That is true now more than ever. Everything is closed, or a shadow of its former self. And yet we’ve been here before, in smaller doses, the daily trials we endure to keep our unstable little worlds functioning and do what we love. We now face an entirely unfamiliar set of trials, the impermanence of today and uncertainty of tomorrow in high-def screaming neon that we cannot look away from. Watching how quickly everyone has pivoted to function in this new reality is breathtaking. It is a reminder of our creativity and our rejection of stagnation and acquiescence. I have no idea what the future of restaurants will be, and I’m sure that future will look quite different than our past (on some level it must, right?) but all I know for certain is that our history is always with us. These winding narratives of growth and loss, joy and failure. Little vignettes of beauty, forever snapshots in our memory. I hope you see bits of your own history in this collage. If you know me, I hope you spot the places where our stories overlapped or intersected. 

When I started this little project I thought of it as a visual love letter to the industry. Not just the restaurants, but the vignerons, the importers and distributors, the farmers and purveyors, and the guests, the people for whom these mementos are technically designed. I’m not sure if what I’ve written is a love letter or not. But I will finish it there, as it originally came to me. I love you, I am yours always, through thick and thin, for worse, and for better, I love you.