Cafe Mutton cometh!

plus: heat waves + George Michael

Hello! And welcome to Monday.

Please excuse brevity/typos here, as I shoved my left thumb directly into a mandoline (the slicer, not the string instrument) this morning and am typing with a bundle of bandaids on my finger, like an antihero in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Any time I have any kind of cooking-related injury (which is how I get most of my injuries), I am forced to recall every brutal, professional kitchen injury I have ever witnessed. Some resulted in ER visits, some resulted in extended hospital stays, all of them required multiple coworkers to urge the injured cook to seek medical attention. It’s easy to forget that kitchens are extremely dangerous places full of knives and boiling liquids and stressed out people running around under extreme pressure, relying only on the hypervigilance of those same very stressed out people to ensure someone doesn’t get stabbed by mistake (I have seen someone get stabbed by mistake).

In each of those post-injury kitchens, we remained in service. We remained in service after someone got stabbed. At a very good restaurant. I’d like to think that we’ve all come around to the fact that the people who witnessed the stabbing might also need a minute to recover from watching a close coworker get stabbed, but then again I am often joyously naive in my hope for progress.

My own little injury is making me think about the myriad ways in which kitchens can purport that they’re a “faMilY” at the same time that grill moves over to garde manger so the line can continue to put out tuna tartare while someone bleeds in the walk-in—but then again, our own, actual families often fail to pause and make space for suffering, so perhaps expecting more from a workplace is holding everyone to an unrealistic standard. Who’s to say?

The point is, we’re going to be experiencing a heat wave this week, and I’ve never worked in a Boston-area restaurant with a kitchen that had air conditioning. I’ve never worked anywhere that closed due to high temperatures. Things are changing a little (she said with joyful naivete), and I’ve noticed some social media posts from restaurants letting guests know menus and hours will be modified due to the pending heat, which is heartening. I also know that I’ve seen, like 4 posts, and there are hundreds of restaurants in this city.

I don’t have a hot (sorry) take! I have only this mangled thumb and these thoughts about the working conditions in kitchens, which I feel was once an important part of the conversation around restaurant labor but has somehow been sidelined by mental health conversations, which we should absolutely be having, but perhaps at the same time. My spidey senses tell me that dangerous working conditions are a little too tangible, and the woozy and tenuous definition of mental health makes it an awfully attractive focal point for “change” if you’re not particularly interested in actually doing anything about anything.

Perhaps I do have a hot take after all.

Anyway, I’ll be on the bar tonight! Come see me and my finger condom from 4 ‘til whenever I feel like I’ve proven my worth as a soldier in this industry.

Stay cool this week, and pray for the line cooks.

XOXO

Lauren

EVENTS

Some of you may know that our Events Lead, Brittany O’Keefe, recently took over events at Dear Annie, which means we went from having some events sometimes to ALL OF THE EVENTS ALL OF THE TIME (Brittany was also behind what was a truly epic, community-oriented Pride event last weekend, and her Virgo-ness knows no bounds—except the ones that she puts in place, obviously).

And so! As previously teased, we have a lot of superb events on the horizon, including a collab with the beloved Cafe Mutton on Monday, June 24th from 5-10 PM. Chef Shaina Loew-Banayan is fresh from the James Beard Awards and driving over to sling all manner of meat in our little pescatarian wine bar for a dinner we’re nicknaming Dear Annie In Drag.

I love this event because I love its origin story:

Several moons ago, Shaina DM’d me to ask whether we were getting our asses handed to us at Dear Annie after our back-to-back listings on the Bon Appétit and NY Times 50 Best Restaurants lists. We were both small, scrappy, neighborhood spots with “unique” service models that had absolutely no designs to be put on national 50 Best lists and were woefully unprepared for the onslaught that descended. Shaina and I forged a little bond in the aftermath, I visited them out in Hudson a few times, and they shared their mechanical dishwasher preferences, and we continued to coalesce around what it means to be a scrappy neighborhood spot after the shine of two 50 Best lists has worn off.

Eventually, I said, “Hey! It would be fun to do a thing together!” This is that thing! (There’s likely a lesson there about the ways in which community requires vulnerability but let us instead focus on THE OFFAL.)

Here’s the menu:

Come hang out with Shaina and me and catch the scrappy vibe. This is an a la carte situation, and it’s also a first-come, first-served situation. Tickets and more info are here, but tix are free and just helping us figure out how much food to cook (read: a ticket doesn’t guarantee food)! Grab one as a reminder/help us make enough food.

Does the fun stop there? It does not.

We’re welcoming a few of our favorite queer-run restaurants from New York to join us over at Dear Annie (and at Rebel Rebel and Wild Child, too) this summer. Those events will be live soon, but in the meantime, I invite you to get excited and express gratitude for Brittany’s sun sign and the glory it bestows upon us all.

WHAT I’M READING

Everything Is a Cool New Modern Wine Bar Now (Rachel Sugar for Punch)

Consider me profiled! No original ideas, blah blah, but this was a funny one for me to read in the context of the Boston dining scene, where our (somewhat desperate) insistence that we are a WINE BAR, not a RESTAURANT at Rebel Rebel and Dear Annie often doesn’t make it as far as the guests before they walk in the door (a favorite story to retell at Rebel is of two guests who joined us and closed out after one glass because they were “on their way to Rebel Rebel,” which couldn’t possibly have been the tiny, handmade bar at which they were currently perched). This gets us into trouble, particularly in this city, where we tend to embrace bar identity more than our peers, and where guests are used to visiting places in the surrounds that call themselves wine bars but are absolutely restaurants. While the article suggests that this probably doesn’t matter, we all know that mismatched expectations are the unparalleled foundation for relationship failure, and what is dining out but a brief relationship?

A ‘derelict’ winery and abandoned tasting rooms: How a Sonoma wine empire crumbled (by Jess Lander for The San Francisco Chronicle)

This might be a little too deep in the weeds for some, but it’s interesting to me because though the Ravenswood estate became a grocery store brand through various corporate acquisitions, it was originally a very small, very forward-thinking, early adopter of organic viticulture in Sonoma. It was originally distributed in Massachusetts by one of our favorite, forward-thinking tiny distributors. It could have been an important heritage estate telling the story of California zinfandel to young wine professionals. Unfortunately, as with so much of California’s wine heritage, it was gobbled up by Constellation Brands and tossed back and forth between corporate interests until it was literally abandoned and left for dead. Just a reminder that wine is a commodity and we work with natural wine, not because it’s so hot right now, but because we believe strongly in supporting independent businesses, whether those businesses are wineries, importers, or distributors. Watching corporate money start to poke around in the natural wine scene is freaking me out, and this is why.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO

I recently finished the multi-part You’re Wrong About episode on George Michael with Park Cruising author Marcus McCann. As a result, I’ve been diving back into our darling Georgios’ entire discography. Perhaps most delicious was rediscovering the “Freedom!” music video, which I first saw at the age of 12 when it was released in 1994, and which blew my tiny little prepubescent mind. My very confused response to all of the very hot models in the video (the guy in white thermal pants! naomi campbell in black lace underwear AND Frye boots?!??) short-circuited my sexuality for close to a decade, when I finally discovered that being bi was an option. (We’ll leave the questions about why they’re trapped in very wet, abandoned mansion for now.) Pride!

SPECIAL SAUCE

It’s going to be an all-Burgundy all-week selection! I haven’t made it in yet to make said selections (see above re: Bugs Bunny), so I’ll be posting them on our Instagram today instead, along with a little tasting video for fun. So follow us there if you don’t already.

ONE MORE THING: WILD CHILD UPDATE EDITION

A brief update on the status of the new Wild Child! We’re hoping to open the week of August 1! You’ll be able to use any existing gift cards in the new space. If you’re a wine club member, we’ll update you on the status of club pickups and deliveries (if you want to be a member of wine club, we’ll update on new memberships soon). We’re very excited!