Jeff Burkhart: The holidays aren’t all fun and games
“A shot of Wild Turkey,” said the woman in a cashmere stocking cap.
“A shot of Wild Turkey?” I blurted out, not really thinking about how judgey that might have sounded.
I didn’t mean it judgmentally, but when it’s 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving, sometimes things just come out — just ask your Uncle Ted.
“Free-range turkey, huh?” I joked, hoping to recover.
She downed the shot without even sitting down, probably oblivious to my joke. But in the service business, we’re not supposed to force service on someone. If that person doesn’t want their chair pulled out for them nobody should tell them otherwise. Maybe somebody should tell that to the folks at the French Laundry, just saying.
“My family is driving me crazy,” was all she said.
That woman left $20 on the bar, which easily covered her $14 whiskey and then some. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed it’s that people who drink quick shots are usually proportionally the most generous. It’s ironic since that drink requires no special skill, garnish, preparation or even glassware, and usually the interaction lasts 40 seconds or less.
Holiday meals used to be called feasts, and I still evoke that imagery: a large table piled high with celebratory food with people gathered all around. It’s certainly what many of us envision of the first Thanksgiving, as faulty as that imagery is. Because a modern “traditional” Thanksgiving feast — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce — is actually more of a traditional English Christmas meal. The meal shared by the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims consisted of mostly venison. In fact, the only foodstuff on record specifically by name are the three deer the Wampanoag people brought to the three-day feast.
But history is so often what we choose to remember, not actually what happened. So, here we are today with cranberry sauce. Why? Because my grandparents put it on their table, and so did my parents, and now so do I.
The young woman in the stocking cap was long gone. I guess waxing philosophically can look like spacing out, depending upon whose perspective it is.
When the man in his 50s bellied up to the bar 10 minutes later, we were already 50 mimosas into our prix-fixe feast. Feasts often do start early. The early feaster sat half on a bar stool and checked his phone.
And he, too, ordered a shot. His was tequila. And if memory serves me right, when asked what kind of tequila, he responded with, “It doesn’t matter.”
“Rough day?” I asked.
“You know, families,” he said.
The holiday season can be stressful. Familial obligations are often fun, but not always, and not for everybody. And when you see 200 different families in one day, the odds go up that you’re going to see the whole gamut. So, just remember when you have your Thanksgiving that what you experience is your experience, not everybody’s. It’s the same with any other holiday.
The man, too, left $20 on the bar, which really more than covered his $10 well tequila.
A lot is made every year of holiday meal pairings. But have you ever noticed that holiday food itself often isn’t actually paired very well? What exactly does cranberry sauce go with? The turkey? The stuffing? The mashed potatoes? I don’t know and it doesn’t appear that anyone else does either. Maybe before we start pairing wine with the food, we should first make sure all the food works together. Take it from the guy who often clears the holiday feast from the table, green beans almost always go directly in the garbage — even the ones with fried onions on top of them. Ironically, the onions themselves are almost always gone.
Finally, a woman in her late 70s, early 80s, sporting a gold lamé turban right out of a 1969 color episode of TV’s “Bewitched,” poked her head around the corner.
“Do you have any green crème de menthe?” she asked.
“We do,” I said, acknowledging the one and only bottle of it that we have ever carried.
“I’ll have a shot of that,” she said.
“You don’t see many people drinking crème de menthe anymore,” I said.
“Well, I don’t want my family to know I’m drinking,” she said. “We are all doing a sober Thanksgiving.”
She, too, left $20 on the bar, which absolutely more than covered her $8 crème de menthe.
Sometime later, when I passed through the dining room, I scanned the room for all three of those people. They were easy enough to find. They were all at the same table.
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• The trendier your drink is, the more expensive it will be.
• There’s a difference between “getting” to work Thanksgiving and “having” to.
• Sometimes the only things that bind a family together are the holidays and the dysfunction.
• Often the bar in many restaurants is not visible from the dining room. Now you know why.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com