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“No chefs,” Cara said, her eye snagging Lili’s.
“No chefs,” Lili repeated.
Six
“So I guess the days of restaurant critics wearing disguises to make sure they get the genuine service experience are long gone,” Tad said with a smile at the woman sitting before him. Not so much sitting as perching on the edge of the leather sofa in his office.
She had already given an oh-so-surprised lip tilt when he didn’t sit down beside her, but instead chose to put an appropriate distance between them by plunking down in the swivel chair three feet off. Definitely close enough to conduct an interview with Monica Grayson, food critic forTasty Chicago.
She smiled back, her teeth radioactively bright against her porcelain skin. Her sharply angled bob framed a strong jaw and stubborn chin.
“It’s usually enough to reserve under a fake name,” she said in the flat vowels that signaled her origins as being East coast, probably New York. “I’ll come by two, maybe three times before I write the review. But really, I’d like to do a more extended profile.”
“Well, anything that brings us positive attention.” A profile was so much more than he’d expected whenTasty Chicago’s top food journo had called to say she wanted to meet with him ahead of his opening.
“So Tad… I can call you Tad, right?”
“Sure.”
Glancing down at her phone, she tapped a couple of times and scrolled. “But your full name is Taddeo?”
“Only my aunts call me Taddeo. Everyone calls me Tad.”
She gave what he imagined would be a very winning smile for the right audience. He was curiously unmoved. “And the name for the wine bar? Where does that come from?”
“Vivi was my mother’s name.” He had said her name a million times while preparing for the opening, but there was something about “Vivi” and “was” in the same sentence that called up an achingly familiar lurch in his chest.
Monica made a note and he was grateful for the few seconds to get his emotions under tether.
“You were voted one of the top ten mixologists in Chicago last year, and I wonder how many of those votes came from your female fans.” Squinting, she consulted her notebook. “The Hot Taddies, they call themselves.”
He had wondered how long it would take to get around to that stupid FaceBook page. Her comment was iced with condescension, as though it were a fact she was unfortunate to have in her possession but, by God, the readers ofTasty Chicagomust be informed.
“It’s nice to be appreciated, I suppose,” he said evenly.
“More than nice. The Facebook page your fans created has close to thirty thousand likes. Your name is a regular in all the “Hot Bartender” lists.” She paused and eyed him from under her dark lashes. “Things really took off for you when Jack Kilroy picked your family’s restaurant to be on his TV show a couple of years ago. And now he’s an investor in your new venture.”
“Jack brought a lot of attention to DeLuca’s Ristorante, but the quality product has always been there. There’s only so far an association with someone like Jack can take you and I intend to prove it at Vivi’s.”
“Right. Talent is key as well,” she said with a smirk he didn’t enjoy.
He waited for whatever dig she had at the ready, but she retracted her claws. “So what makes your wine bar different?”
“Well, small plates are a lately popular trend and that’s not going away. I’d like to bring the Italianenotecaconcept to Chicago where the emphasis is on shareable small plates. In Italy, the core elements of traditionalenotecasare small plates of simple, authentic, delicious food, designed to be shared, plus plenty of affordable wines.”
She looked unimpressed but then he supposed that was her job. Practiced indifference. “And the wine?”
“We want to keep it accessible. Everything on the 56-bottle wine list will be available in 3 oz. and 6 oz. pours, as well as in full bottles. We mean to be generous with the food portions and the pours.”
“You’re fairly well-known for your generous dating policy.”
He coughed, unsure he’d heard that right. “Excuse me?”
“You have a lot of exes, though they all seem to rave about you. No one has a bad word.”
He shifted in his seat. “I thought you were here to interview me about my opening in two weeks. My private life couldn’t possibly be of interest to the readers ofTasty Chicago.”
“You’d be surprised. These days, the cult of the celebrity chef, bar owner, entrepreneur—” She waved a hand that he supposed encompassed the type of businessman she was forced to lower her standards to deal with. “—extends beyond New York and L.A. People are always interested in what inspires people, what impassions them, what turns them on. People are always interested in sex, don’t you think?”
