Stravinski's Italian Restaurant
Chapter 4 | Scene 3
Vinnie's sitting in the first booth in the dining room, closest to the counter. He's drinking a cup of coffee, reading the paper, enjoying the downtime between lunch and the early dinner rush – his favorite time of day. Angela, his older sister is closing out the lunch receipts and getting ready for dinner.
The coffee Vinnie is drinking is from Gimme! Coffee – a small-batch roaster from New York which he buys from on a regular basis. It's a medium roast called Honduras Las Peñitas.
He usually buys their Brazilian or Colombian roasts, at wholesale prices – but Marcus, one of the hipster waiters in his restaurant, was yammering on about this Honduras roast, so Vinnie bought a 5-pound bag of whole beans.
This Arabica coffee comes from the Santa Barbara region of Honduras and is grown at an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet by the award-winning Las Peñitas family farm.
This is the first time he's tried it. His first reaction is good. It's smooth. Maybe even sweet. Hint of cherry. No bitter aftertaste. He can smell the flavor before he gets to taste it. It's good. He's been drinking his coffee black for a few years and has grown accustomed to the difference in flavors between good coffee and coffee that needs cream or sugar to mask it's bitterness or blandness. This doesn't need anything. It's clear that from high elevation grown, to washing, to drying, to roasting – this coffee is worth the extra cost.
Before he can finish his cup, he sees a kid enter into the restaurant and walk up to the counter. Angela talks with him for a second, then points him in the direction of Vinnie. Vinnie looks back down at his newspaper.
The kid awkwardly approaches Vinnie, waits for a few seconds thinking Vinnie will look up. When he doesn't, the kid says, "Uh, excuse me?"
Vinnie looks up from his paper. "Yeah?"
"Uh, the lady at the counter said I could talk to you about a job?"
"Okay…" Vinnie pauses, then says, "what's your name?"
"Scott."
"Scott?" He shakes his head. "No. We already have a Scott." Vinnie goes back to his paper.
Angela is counting the money in the register and looks up. "What? Are you kidding me Vinnie?"
"No. I'm not kidding. We already got a guy named Scott." He thumbs in the direction of the kitchen. "The black kid who does the salads. I'm not having two 'Scotts' in the kitchen."
Angelia crosses her arms and tilts her head to one side. "You've got three Vito's in the kitchen!"
"Yeah, I know. That's different. They're all cooks." He pauses, but Angela is clearly looking for more explanation. "If I say 'go get Vito' it doesn't matter which Vito shows up. Plus, we've got old Vito, young Vito and Vito – so we know who's who."
"They're all old," she says. But Angela is done discussing it. She waves a hand and turns back to counting money. "We need a dishwasher. Hire this kid."
"Ok, fine. But we gotta call him 'White Scott'."
"Forget it," she immediately says.
"Okay, fine." He turns to Scott. "What if we call you Scotty?"
Scott shrugs.
"Okay. Scotty. You're hired. Get in the kitchen."
"Oh, uh…right now? I was just looking to fill out an application."
"You want an application or you want a job? You don't need an application. I can see you've got two arms and two legs. Go find Vito. He can get you all set up."
The kid wanders off in the direction of the kitchen and Vinnie picks up the paper again and flips to the sports page. He takes another sip of the delicious Honduran roast by Gimme! Coffee and savors the sweetness of the bottom half of his cup. Definitely need to get some of this for his home use.
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