Delancey : A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, A Marriage by Molly Wizenberg, Simons & Schuster, 2014.I try to remind myself periodically that every single business, whether part of a chain or not, large or small, scruffy or classy, is the product of someone’s vision and hard work. There’s a couple in our church who recently opened a franchised consignment women’s clothing store, and it was quite a process, from obtaining a location to getting a small business loan. (For instance, the man had quit his job so that he could concentrate on opening the business, but the bank wouldn’t give him a loan unless he had a job. But his job was going to be the business. I think he had to go back to work to get the loan so that he could then quit. Or something like that. It was incredibly complicated.) Once the store actually opened the real work began. It seems completely impossible to me; I guess I’m just not all that entrepreneurial.
So reading this book, about opening and then running a restaurant, made me very happy that I’m not doing any such thing. I had gotten acquainted with Molly Wizenberg from her first book, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table (originally published by Simon & Schuster in 2009). That book centers around the death of her father, the changes in her life as she dealt with that tragedy, and how she met the man who became her husband. In other, less capable hands, her story would come across as pretty maudlin and self-pitying, but she makes it nothing of the sort. Much as I disagreed with some of the choices she made, I enjoyed that book tremendously. She tells the story about how she started her blog, Orangette, and launched herself on a writing career, a process I am trying to follow myself. (I love her books; the blog, not so much.)
So I was really looking forward to this second book and have to say that it did not disappoint. The part of the subtitle that reads “a marriage” is particularly apt. Her husband, Brandon, sounds like a great guy, the kind of person whose mind is going in a million different directions and who can spark fascinating conversations at a dinner party. But . . . he has so many interests that he finds it almost impossible to settle down to some kind of career. (If you’ve ever read Debi Pearl’s Created to be His Help Meet you’ll recognize a classic Mr. Visionary type.) During the very earliest years of their marriage, while Molly is trying to make some money as a writer, Brandon, a musician and teacher, pursues several arcane interests in his spare time (including violin- and boat-building and gourmet-ice-cream-making) but always loses interest. When he comes up with the idea of opening a pizza restaurant Molly is unfazed. “Sure,” she says, but only because she thinks there’s no chance he’ll actually do it. It’ll quietly expire, lying there in the dust with the violin that was never made and the ice cream shop that was never opened. She’s safe.
But she’s not. A year after he comes up with the idea the pizza place is about to open. All sorts of disasters and detours have taken place in that year; my favorite story has to do with the incredible ingenuity it takes to get the imported Italian pizza oven pried out of the delivery truck, an all-day process. But Brandon pushes on, and Molly guts it out. She even works in the kitchen for awhile, but she has enough sense to see that it just isn’t for her, and she instead takes over as the paperwork person. After Delancey has been open for awhile, Brandon starts making noises about perhaps doing something else in a couple of years. Molly firmly interjects, “Five years.”
It’s still open. I just looked up the website and checked out the menu, and I am determined that we will have a meal there this summer when Jim and I go to Seattle to pick up Gideon after his summer internship. (Yes, that same internship that he was supposed to have last summer before his cancer derailed the whole process. It’s on again.) Maybe we’ll get to see Brandon working the oven. Anything’s possible. And we’ll sit there and eat a pizza with their housemade sausage. I can hardly wait.