Baccomatto.

Braddles wanted to try the new place in town.

We’d both just lost our jobs, as so often happens in the industry. Restaurants open and close - no biggie.

I’d worked in hospitality for all my adult life, but I was now 25 and getting over it. The chefs were tracking the manager’s menstrual cycle on their whiteboard and too many pans were being thrown. Everyone else in my life was already settled into their daytime careers, while I was stuck working nights.

As a waiter, your job is to make memories. My boss used to ask, ‘What can we do to make their night perfect?’

I created a lot of memorable nights in my time but, unfortunately, my skills weren’t transferable. There weren’t a lot of careers that listed “impossibly charming” in their selection criteria.

I went for dinner with Braddles and sat next a girl who played Roller Derby. Her name was Wilma Fingerfit. The place was Baccomatto. The restaurant opened out onto the street through French doors concertinaed to one side. It was packed inside, noisy and warmly lit. Conversations skipped in and out of the windows, as if making their way from one table to the next, repeating their best jokes.

We had mortadella so thin it waved in the gentle breeze. There were mounds of prosciutto. Tallegio with figs. Ripe pears. Focaccia. Orecchiette. Cacio e Pepe. There was baked provolone with honey. Cod croquettes. Everything was salty and moreish.

I had my first Aperol Spritz. There was a green olive sitting in the bottom of it, winking. A little wooden ramekin collected our pips. 

The service was quick, but the food came gradually. One of the waitstaff whispered in my ear like we’d shared a personal joke.

What else would they do to make my night perfect?

Octopus crudo. Amalfi lemons. Beef carpaccio. Parmigiano.

I ate. Made noises. And washed it down with gulps of Chianti. Montepucciano. Negramaro. When the waitresses passed, they would touch my back just so, or place a hand on my shoulder as they leaned over to pour my wine.

Limoncello. Tiramisu.

The next day I was back again, this time wanting a job. It was early afternoon, between the lunch service and dinner. I knocked on the big glass doors and was invited in by a marble bar sunning itself down the middle of the restaurant. Everything was gold, covered in Sydney sun.

Next, a tiny Maître de, Carol, appeared. Her smile knew mine. She came towards me, rubbing her hands together like a little cricket. I asked for work - there wasn’t any. I wrote my number on the corner of the floor plan.

Cycling home, I wondered what possessed me to go in there with no resume, no speech prepared. I’d just drifted in. It was essentially a home invasion. For weeks, I was convinced I’d fucked it up.

I’d enrolled back in Uni and I needed a job while I studied to become a teacher. But it was more than just needing a job. I really wanted this job.

And then, Carol finally called.

That night, I met Xan. She was grey and curvy and had a gravelly voice made for the blues. I remembered the touch of her hand from my shoulder all those weeks ago. She talked as if we were already in the middle of a conversation. She flicked the air away from herself, like it was crowding her, and led me around the restaurant by my wrist.

She tied my apron for me, spinning me round by my hips. 

 ‘Just run the food tonight,’ she said, ‘We won’t put you on a section till you get the hang of it.’

I tried to show off what I’d learned in all my years in the business. I neatly folded napkins on tables when people went out for a smoke. I inconspicuously poured water and wine and rattled off specials when I could see she was listening. I gestured a lot and pretended I knew everyone and everything. Meanwhile, I only knew one Italian word and it wasn’t appropriate to repeat. Xan kept smiling over at me. And winking.

Carol was carried around from table to table by regular customers. They scooped her up and cuddled her and begged for her attention. I was worried someone might steal her. Take her home and never bring her back.

At the end of the night, we sat at the marble bar with a glass of suave and a bowl of spaghetti. We talked about restaurants. The pace of them. The addiction to the blurred nights, the smells, the aching feet. We talked about my future and my worries. A hand patted my arm. We talked about how they’d met and never left each other since. They gazed at each other; their heads cocked to one side.

‘Our Xan.’

‘Our Carol.’

They threw away compliments with the flick of a wrist, like they were nothing. But I could see they stuck. 

That night, I had made some memories. But there was one customer who wasn’t fooled by my bravado or charmed by my incredibly straight teeth. He just sat at the bar, drinking whiskey, not saying a word.

‘That’s our John,’ Carol told me.

The next night, I got my own section.

I watched Xan’s bum shimmy between tables. Another ripe pear. She squeezed onto people’s benches and carefully considered their orders. Carol kissed people at the door and threw up her arms in celebration. She paused at the bar, her head on a customer’s shoulder.

Everyone was darling. 

Xan taught me how to put through orders in Italian.

‘Eggplant is melanzane, darling.’

‘Carciofi… CARCIOFI!’

Carol pinched my cheeks. Xan rubbed my ear lobes. They held my face in two hands, kissed the top of my head. When I stood at a table with a hand behind my back, Xan would hold it just briefly, as she passed me.

The things they could do to make my nights perfect.

If a restaurant is good, if you have any chance of survival, you need regulars. But the regulars of Baccomatto were like none I’d known before. This went far beyond loyalty. Xan and Carol knew the names of the customers’ children and pets. They remembered anniversaries and called people when their favourite dessert came back on the menu. One was teaching Xan Russian, week by week. Many wouldn’t order, or even look at the choices. Food would just arrive.

There was an elderly vet who walked with a stick but couldn’t bear to retire. Her husband was losing his hearing - I sat close.

There was a man who had gotten so heavy, we had to help him out of his chair to smoke cigars outside. And then for months, he disappeared. When he returned, he was almost thin. He shook my hand - ‘to my health!’

There were two couples - a friendship of 40 years. Mardi Gras ’78ers. They planned their annual holidays at Table 22. When I helped, they kissed my cheeks.

And, of course, there was Our John - the most regular of regulars. He dressed in black and wore sunglasses at night. He sat at the end of the bar and, when his drink was empty, he would push it away, saying nothing, and it would be refilled. He never ate. Xan and Carol seemed to know him, but I never saw a hug. At first, I smiled at him, but then I just left him alone.

After a year of perfect nights, and studying in between, it was time to lose the apron and be a teacher. I was good at it, but I longed to be back at Baccomatto with Xan cackling at the back of my neck, asking me to re-tell her favourite stories. I wanted Carol to feed me panna cotta off her spoon and pour my wine - ‘taste this’. When food was good, she would look to the sky with thanks.

I missed being patted on the bum when I got in the way. I wanted to hear the chefs calling each other ‘Bello’ and holding various vegetables up to their crotch with a smirk.

At my teaching job, the staffroom was too quiet. There were no mid-week drinks and no thoughtful chats. At Bacco, we discussed past lives lived in Queensland, sick mothers in Malta, the pure joy of cheese, of sex, of friendship. There was passion in everything. In their opinions, in their laughter, in their flailing hands. At school, no one was draping their arms around my shoulders or laying their legs over mine. No one buried their face between my shoulder blades after 11 hours standing. 

No one mopped me across a floor and out of a room as if scattering rose petals at my feet.

That’s what took me back to Bacco so often, in the years to come. I missed my friends, their energy. I went there on my first date with Ames and, years later, our last. I took good news to share. And then, our broken hearts.

Both were welcome.

I went there for birthdays - Bacco’s 5th, Carol’s 50th. Mine every single year until I was seven years older. I went when my sister got promoted - they all clapped. When teaching sucked. When a friend found a used condom in her boyfriend’s bed. I went just because it was Wednesday.

We were served by Carol’s niece and Xan’s daughter. Her husband fixed my bike and said he missed me. They remembered my parents and raced to the door to greet me, as if it was even possible that they were more excited to see me than me them.

I went there every time I missed it. Which was often. And always.

I became one of the Baccomatto regulars I had once served. We gave each other the knowing nod, like mutual friends at a birthday. As we ate, we leaned across to chat and merged our tables at the end of a night. Xan would introduce us to each other, her arms around us both. 

‘Our Sian.’ 

Carol would lean from one table to another, stitching our conversations together.

Everyone but John. He just sat, drank and disappeared.

Ames became obsessed with him. Whenever he was there, she would stare. She would try to get a seat near him and then lean in, as if eavesdropping, though he never spoke.

She would ask endless questions, knowing I had no answers.

Does he recognise you?

Does he own a brothel?

Does he always drink whiskey?

Is he blind?

All I knew was: John.

One Saturday, we were late to our booking. We had to wait over in Section 70, the dark back edge of the bar behind the coffee machine. We were giggly from the drinks that made us late. 

There were five stools and four of us. At one stool sat John.

Ames pantomime-gasped, one hand to her chest. She took the seat next to his and ordered a whiskey- did he notice?

And then, the magic. He asked her to mind his jacket. Their future friendship played out in in her mind and it was glorious. When he returned, she launched into a long and bouncy explanation about how well she’d done her duty, how his jacket had not left her sight. She waited for praise, or a best friend charm.

But he simply nodded and turned his back. Ames knew it was over, she had tried too hard.

Soon after, our table was ready, and I leant into John as we passed.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘it’s just that my girlfriend thinks you are the coolest person she has ever seen in her whole life.’

He squeezed the top of my arm. I never told Ames.

Pecorino. Soft cow’s milk stracchino. Another Negroni.

And then - a bottle of Barolo? We hadn’t ordered that, couldn’t afford to order that. I looked over to the bar, beyond the darkness. 

A smirk?

John tipped a hat he wasn’t wearing.

Roast Porchetta. Crackling. Braised fennel.

Suddenly, Carol got sick. Like, really sick. Grown up sick. A family meeting was called.

‘You’d better come in.’

In the years since I had worked there, it had always been Carol’s little hand on mine. So, what could I possibly do to make things perfect?

She would need time off, didn’t want us to worry. I cried like she was my mum. But where to go with news like this- to Bacco?

Each night when she wasn’t there to serve us, there were tears accompanying the regular nods. From the owners, too, who looked up at the door when it opened, as if she would appear from nowhere to greet us all, to fill the space at the front where she had lived for years, reliably grinning.

And then, out of nowhere, John died. His brother came in to deliver a message.

‘He loved it here.’

The man who’d said nothing, had something to say.

As Carol slowly returned to work and found her health, things settled. The worry faded. The dining room was packed, as it always was, and Carol was where she belonged, between the door and the bar, directing traffic, licking a pencil. Dying for a smoke, darling. She was stretching out her arms, inviting you to rest your head. But the end of the bar stayed empty. I’d never realised how full John made it seem.

Gelato. Biscotti. Another whiskey.

What I never knew was that someone else owned the building. For years, I just assumed it belonged to all of us. So, more news as if from nowhere - Baccomatto was closing.

Many years had passed since I had served drinks behind that bar or had a fat wad of tips pressed into the palm of my hand. But I had walked the length of the floor with arms linked in mine. I’d had my knees squeezed under the table, my hair brushed out of my eyes. And all this, while just getting dinner. 

I crammed in visits in the final weeks, trying to fill the quota for the coming years. The final night was magic. 

Cavatelli and broad beans. Burnt butter. White anchovies.

And then - a bottle of Barolo.

Had I thanked him enough?

No tears, I said. We had Xan. And Carol was well. So - no tears. 

It’s just a restaurant, I said. There will be others. With high stools and great food and marble bars that learn your name.

But this is the place I want when I want things to be just right. This is the place I want when nothing else is right. When I want to be leaned into, lingered on and loved.

It’s just a restaurant, I lied.

But I will miss those whispered somethings told just to me.

Those fleeting hands across my shoulders.

And everything else without a name, that they did to make things perfect.