1 Chapter 1

Should you have previously read about “the Valentine’s Day incident,” I’d be spared a ton of exposition and exclamation marks and could just cut to the chase.

Even if you haven’t, you’ve undoubtedly read about a similar “incident”—the quote marks were the media’s, not mine—involving some bigot.

Everyone had a strong opinion about the “incident.”

This probably included you. No mea culpa will change that.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself, which my husband, Dom, reminds me I’m wont to do, especially when it comes to the night of February 14.1

I am Hugh Neumann, the accidental restaurateur.

My parents, Maximilian and Berthe, both of Germanic descent, opened Platte—it means plate—when I was four and my sister Elise was seven. It was in the 1960s. Entrees were dense and diners smoked uninhibitedly through the meal. The menu—punctuated with Bavarian staples, since their heritage was from the southern region of Germany—emulated my parents: corpulent and humorless. After swallowing that last boiled potato and settling the tab, one had to resist the temptation to catnap on the moss green shag carpeting. The décor was equally oppressive, dark wood benches suggestive of barracks and just as daunting. An absence of music meant the austere soundtrack was cutlery clinking and determined mastication. This, Elise and I would someday inherit, a natural progression, my parents assumed.

But Elise rebelled, shaving her head, becoming vegetarian, declining to work in the family business, and finally refusing to even step foot in Platte. I wasn’t any more eager, but I dutifully bused tables, raked the carpeting when it was flat, washed dishes, and learned bartending during summers home from college. At my dad’s elbow, I learned why all the truisms of the restaurant prevail…because they are true. The help steals, so build it in the budget. People will bitch about their dinner after licking their plate clean. Suck it up and comp it. Pour heavy; too many faces tending a table causes confusion; be as diligent about bathroom cleanliness as the sommelier is about curating wines. With my sister’s refusal to shoulder any future role and her willingness to forego monetary interest in Platte, I was my parent’s default, and I assumed the mantle at a woefully unprepared twenty-four when Dad suddenly succumbed to ventricular fibrillation and my grieving mother retired to Naples to stare at a parking lot from her lanai.

The shag carpeting went first. Brood-style dining was supplanted by bistro, booth, and banquette seating. A wasted second floor was converted for greater capacity; people love looking down on others. The menu was gradually rejiggered. Off went fare like spaetzle large as pillows and on went steaks, seafood, and tableside Caesar salad. White asparagus replaced those boiled potatoes. This was no aspiration to become an expense account-driven Ruth’s Chris; it was survival in a more health-conscious climate presided over by foodies. I also knew retaining our basic demographic yet cultivating a new, albeit safe—safe meant arriving in something with four wheels and a closed-toe shoe—image. Now men and women convene here Tuesdays for what’s called “Cheap Meat”—Prime Rib, $12.95—and Crab Leg Friday, and there’s a small gourmand cult who look forward to Truffle Night. Politics are on the conservative side, but my stewardship and the presence of my partner, Dom, means our homosexuality is quietly accepted.

Dom equals Dominick Brodie, actor and director in regional theater. He tries to keep it close to home—our longest separation was his doubleheader summer of Kiss Me, Kateand Rent at The Muny in St. Louis—which means countless temporary jobs. Between La Cage aux Follestech rehearsals or a promising Angels in Americacallback and teaching as an adjunct performing arts instructor at the community college, he also works at Platte—in the back as needed but usually out front—making the rounds and checking in midmeal with each table—I do the thanks-for-dining-with-us closure.

Seventy-hour work weeks are common in three separate dining areas that optimally seat 152 without pushing us, but holidays are especially punishing for anyone in the food service industry: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve aka The Amateur Hour, Mother’s and Father’s Day brunches and those Belgian waffle comas.

In a separate category goes St. Valentine’s Day dinner. Keeping the fires of ardor burning is our charge on February 14. Food is either an aphrodisiac or a substitute for actual sex. Platte offers two seatings, 6:00 P.M. and 8:30 P.M., credit card guarantee required. Profitable, yes, yet its intensity always leaves us impoverished of energy.

This sounds as though I am throwing myself on the sword of exhaustion, which, actually, I could and should plead.

Again, I’ve either gotten ahead of the story. Or maybe I’ve already fallen behind, depending upon how the “incident” precedes me.2

Don was buffing our shoes in the bedroom while we casually discussed how we would celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. Maybe, I proposed, after breakdown and cleanup, something light—lobster ceviche—then passionate yet rough sex somewhere daring, like the walk-in.