“I never eat out,” Mr. Lefroy said on his way through the dining room.
“No?” Adrienne said. “And why is that?”
“Well, when you’ve seen what I’ve seen…”
“On the job, you mean?”
“The cross-contamination dangers alone,” he said.
“Dad,” Tyler said. “Please shut up. People are trying to eat.”
Adrienne let the family settle, then she handed out menus. “Enjoy your meal,” she said.
The Lefroys’ table was assigned to Spillman, but within minutes he found Adrienne at the bar, where she was drinking her champagne and trying to eavesdrop on Duncan and the two bombshells.
“Lefroy wants you,” Spillman said.
“You’re kidding.”
“He wants your opinion on the menu,” Spillman said. “My opinion apparently doesn’t matter.”
Adrienne returned to table twenty with her champagne. She complimented the sister, Rochelle, on a rhinestone bracelet she was wearing and she asked Tyler about his finals. He made a flicking motion with his hand. “Aced them.”
Mr. Lefroy pointed to Adrienne’s glass. “Now, what’s that you’re drinking?”
“A glass of the Laurent-Perrier brut rosé.”
Mr. Lefroy looked to his wife. “You want one of those?”
“Sure,” Mrs. Lefroy said. “It’s my lucky day.”
“One of those,” Mr. Lefroy said. “And what is fresh on this menu?”
“It’s all fresh,” Adrienne said. “The fish is delivered every afternoon, the vegetables are hand-selected by our…”
“That’s nice,” Mr. Lefroy said. “But what is really fresh?”
When Adrienne returned to the podium, Thatcher was grinning.
“What?” she said.
“Lefroy can’t keep his eyes off you.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s because you’re so damn fetching in that dress.”
For the first time all night, Adrienne felt the electricity that had buzzed up her spine that morning when Thatcher whistled. She was beginning to think she’d imagined it.
The Lefroy family had a wonderful meal. In the end, they all ordered the steak, which was not fresh, but aged, though Adrienne did not point this out. Adrienne asked Thatcher if he wanted to comp the meal, as it was Tyler’s family.
“I can’t,” Thatcher said. “The man is the health inspector.”
The two blondes unstuck themselves from the bar at ten o’clock. Off to the Boarding House, they said.
“Cute bartender,” the girl in the blue halter said. “He needs to lose the uptight girlfriend.”
“Okay, bye-bye,” Adrienne said. She was relieved to see them go. It had been another very, very long night, and it wasn’t over yet. At eleven, Thatcher helped her bounce, and this was something new. Adrienne relayed the saga of Caren and Duncan as they watched the headlights pull in.
“The bar is popular for two reasons,” he said. “Duncan and our indifference.”
“Our indifference?”
“Well, Fiona’s indifference. She hates the bar. She think it’s all about money.”
“Isn’t it all about money?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”
At midnight, the crackers came out of the kitchen: parmesan rosemary. Adrienne took a handful and offered the basket to Thatch. He nodded at the kitchen door. “I’m going to eat,” he said. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at seven.”
“Where are we going?” Adrienne asked.
“Where aren’t we going?” he said.
5
Night Off
Notre Dame magazine,
Volume LXVII,
September 2004
“GREEN AND GOLD GOES BLUE”
Thatcher Smith (B.A. 1991) believes there are two kinds of people in the world: those who eat to live and those who live to eat. Until he was twenty-two years old, Smith, owner of the Blue Bistro, a highly successful restaurant on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, categorized himself as the former.
“I grew up in South Bend, a town that is virtually devoid of cuisine. My mother left the family when I was young and my father and brothers and I subsisted on shredded wheat, bologna sandwiches, and pizza. And Burger King, of course. But nothing you would ever call cuisine.”
So how did this native of South Bend, and Notre Dame graduate, end up in the restaurant business? He gives credit to the girl next door.
Fiona Kemp (daughter of Hobson Kemp, a professor of electrical engineering at Notre Dame since 1966) lived four houses down from Smith growing up.
“There’s a picture of Fiona and I on our first day of kindergarten,” Smith says. “I can’t remember not knowing her.”
Because of a childhood illness, Ms. Kemp could not participate in sports. So she turned her energies to an indoor activity: cooking.
“She was always making something. I remember when we were about twelve she made a chocolate swirl cheesecake sitting in a puddle of raspberry sauce. She invited some of the boys from the neighborhood over to eat it, but it was so elegant, none of us had the heart.”
After graduating from John Adams High School together in 1987, Smith and Kemp went their separate ways. Smith enrolled at Notre Dame, where he majored in economics. He planned to join his father and brothers at what he modestly calls “the family store”: Smith Carpets and Flooring, which has five outlets in South Bend and nearby Mishewaka. Meanwhile Kemp enrolled at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. She wanted to fulfill her dream of becoming a chef.
Smith and Kemp reunited on Nantucket Island in October 1992.
“Fiona had been working on the island for two years at that point,” Smith says. “And she felt ready for her own place. She convinced me to visit, and once I saw the island, I decided to leave South Bend behind. I sold my interest in the business to my brothers and took the money and invested it in Fiona. I knew there was no way she would fail.”
Indeed, not. Smith and Kemp bought a run-down restaurant on the beach that had formerly served burgers and fried clams, and they transformed it into the Blue Bistro, with seating for over a hundred facing the Atlantic Ocean. The only seats harder to procure than the seats at the blue granite bar are the four tables out in the sand where the Bistro serves its now-famous version of seafood fondue. (Or, as the kitchen fondly refers to it, the all-you-can-eat fried shrimp special.) Many of Ms. Kemp’s offerings are twists on old classics, like the fondue. She serves impeccable steak frites, a lobster club sandwich, and a sushi plate, which features a two-inch-thick slab of locally caught bluefin tuna. Ms. Kemp relies on fresh local produce to keep her plates alive.
Ms. Kemp’s cooking has been celebrated in such places as Bon Appétit and the Chicago Tribune. She was named one of the country’s hottest chefs by Food & Wine in 1998. All this notoriety comes despite the fact that she is, in Thatcher Smith’s words, “a highly private person. Fiona doesn’t give interviews. She doesn’t allow herself to be photographed. She doesn’t believe in the new craze of ‘chef as celebrity.’ Fiona just wants to feed people. It has never been about the reviews or about the money, even. For Fiona, it’s all about love; it’s about giving back.”
For Thatcher Smith, running the Blue Bistro is a dream come true-a dream he wasn’t even aware he harbored. “I love every minute of my work,” he says. “The fast pace, the high energy, the personal interaction, the management challenges. And yes, I love the food. Once I tried a plate of Fiona’s steak frites, I learned the difference between tasting and eating. I knew I would never hit the drive-through at Burger King again. I became a person who lives to eat.”