Revamping the dinner menu was my top priority. I needed to make sure I could keep the regulars that hadn’t given up on us yet, along with enticing new ones to come in and old ones to come back. That meant bringing back a couple of menu items Carrie had taken off, seemingly arbitrarily, and adding a few new ones. It was risky, but I had a feeling people would be excited by some of the changes.
I also had to train Finn to cook like Dina had, which was a bit of a trip. Mom had long retired from regular cooking, but she was very particular about certain dishes and the way the kitchen should run. It was where I got a lot of my love of cooking from, watching her control a kitchen with a militant grace. She was amazing.
Our guests expected certain dishes to be plated a certain way or cooked in a specific manner that needed some going over. Once I could teach Finn all of those things, he could keep them on the regular rotation while also working on the new things we had been talking about. There was still one extra cook, Roger, who came in and worked part time to help out. He used to be full time with Mom, but now, at sixty-five, wanted to step back to one or two days a week, mostly during the busy time when he could do the most good. Between the two of us, I expected Finn to be ready in no time.
Throwing myself into the work also had the side effect that I didn’t think about much of anything else for a bit. Sure, it wasn’t Chicago, but it was enough that I went home and passed out, woke up, and did it again every day. I found myself feeling a little more hopeful when I could find the time during the day to sit down and drink coffee at the counter and not feel like I was wasting time.
“You’re still here?” Finn asked as he came out of the kitchen, Tony behind him flipping a burger. “I thought you were taking lunch?”
“I can’t go too far,” I said. “Too much to get done today. I think I might just sit down and have some coffee and go over the files.”
Finn made a dismissive sound and shook his head.
“Helen, you need to rest a little, or you’ll burn yourself out. Do you do anything for fun?” he asked.
“I haven’t done anything for fun in years, Finn,” I said. “When I was in Chicago, I was at the restaurant for eighteen hours a day cooking.”
“Yeah, but then you spent another two at the bar, am I right?” he asked cheekily.
“Okay, fair,” I said, “but it’s not the same when I’m working on a line as it is running the damn place.”
“True,” Finn said, “but you need to take a breather once in a while too. Go sit down. I’ll put a pot on for you. Anything you want to eat?”
“Maybe some fries,” I said. “I’m not really all that hungry. Just something to munch on.”
“One order of fries, coming up,” Finn said.
“Fries, heard,” Tony called out behind him.
“He seems to be getting into the spirit,” I said. “Things working out back there with you two?”
“Tony? He’s great,” Finn said. “I think another shift or two and we’ll be on the same page on everything and then you can split us up more. Might mean we need you back there once in a while.”
“You mean cooking? How novel,” I said. “I miss it sometimes. Then I see how much grease you have on your apron and remember that being in the office has its perks.”
Finn laughed. “Go sit down, boss. Let me bring you some java. You need anything out of the office?”
“No, I’m good, thanks,” I said.
Finn dipped inside the office and grabbed a new apron, tossing his old one in the laundry basket and tying the new one on. He also grabbed a hat and shoved it down until it bent the top of his ears.
I sat down at the counter and Finn dipped into the kitchen for a second before reappearing. He had a fresh bag of coffee beans that he ground for me and then tossed in the coffee pot. After a minute or so, it had brewed enough that he pulled the pot out and replaced it, pouring what had been brewed already into a mug for me.
Thankfully, I had done enough admin work before that I knew how to put everything on the cloud, so I could view it wherever I wanted. I still wasn’t great at making sure I did things digitally always, but I was able to get most of the numbers up into the system from the last few months and accessed it from my phone as I sat down. I sipped the coffee as I went through them, wondering what it was I was missing.