Elin Hilderbrand: The Blue Bistro

© 2005

Starters

Corn chowder with red peppers and smoked Gouda

$8

Shrimp bisque, classic Chinatown shrimp toast

$9

Blue Bistro Caesar

$6

Warm chevre over baby mixed greens with candy-striped beets

$8

Blue Bistro crab cake, Dijon cream sauce

$14

Seared foie gras, roasted figs, brioche

$16

Entrées

Steak frites

$27

Half duck with Bing cherry sauce, Boursin potato gratin, pearls of zucchini and summer squash

$32

Grilled herbed swordfish, avocado silk, Mrs. Peeke’s corn spoon bread, roasted cherry tomatoes

$32

Lamb “lollipops,” goat cheese bread pudding

$35

Lobster club sandwich, green apple horseradish, coleslaw

$29

Grilled portobello and Camembert ravioli with cilantro pesto sauce

$21

Sushi plate: Seared rare tuna, wasabi aioli, sesame sticky rice, cucumber salad with pickled ginger and sake vinaigrette

$28

* Second Seating (9:00 P.M.) only

Shellfish fondue

Endless platter of shrimp, scallops, clams. Hot oil for frying. Selection of four sauces: classic cocktail, curry, horseradish, green goddess

$130

(4 people)

Desserts-All desserts $8

Butterscotch crème brûlée

Mr. Smith’s individual blueberry pie à la mode

Fudge brownie, peanut butter ice cream

Lemon drop parfait: lemon vodka mousse layered with whipped cream and vodka-macerated red berries

Coconut cream and roasted pineapple tart, macadamia crust

Homemade candy plate: vanilla marshmallows, brown sugar fudge, peanut brittle, chocolate peppermints

Executive Chef, Fiona Kemp

Pastry Chef, Mario Subiaco

Proprietor, Thatcher Smith

Breakfast

Adrienne needed a job.

She arrived on Nantucket Island with two maxed-out credit cards, forty borrowed dollars, and three rules scribbled on an Amtrak cocktail napkin. She spent seven of the dollars on a dorm bed at the hostel in Surfside and slept with the cocktail napkin under her pillow. When she awoke the next morning in a room full of slumbering college students, she read the rules again. Rule One: Become self-sufficient. Rule Two: Do not lie about past. Rule Three: Exercise good judgment about men. The last thing Adrienne had done before leaving Aspen was to turn her boyfriend, Doug, in to the authorities. Doug had been living with Adrienne in the basement of the Little Nell, where Adrienne worked as a concierge; he had been stealing money from the hotel rooms to buy cocaine, and he had stolen more than two thousand dollars from Adrienne.

Adrienne quietly slipped into clothes and stashed her belongings in a locker, which was free until noon. She set out into the bright but chilly May morning with her money and the napkin, repeating a tip that a man had given her on the ferry the night before. A tip about a job.

The Blue Bistro, 27 North Beach Extension. The man who suggested this place was a freelance writer who had been coming to Nantucket for over twenty years. He came across as a normal guy, despite his square wire-rimmed glasses, thirty years out of style, and the way he licked his lips every five seconds, as though Adrienne were a T-bone steak. They had started chatting casually over the ketchup dispenser at the snack bar. He asked her if she was coming to Nantucket for a vacation. And Adrienne had laughed and said, Hardly. I need a job. I need money.

If it’s money you want, the man had said, the Blue Bistro is where you should go.

I don’t work in restaurants, Adrienne had said. I work in hotels. At the front desk. I’m a hotel person.

There’s a hotel down the street from the bistro, the man had said. He paused, wet his lips. But, like I said, if it’s money you want…

Adrienne walked to the North Beach Extension, stopping twice for directions. The road was quiet. There were a few houses along the way but most of them were still boarded up; one had a crew of painters working. Then, to the right, Adrienne saw a parking lot and a one-story cedar-shingled building with a green slate roof, all by itself on a stretch of windswept beach. Adrienne stopped in the road. This was the restaurant. The hotel, as the man on the ferry had described it, was down the street on the left. She should go to the hotel. But then she caught a scent of roasting meat and she thought about money. She decided it couldn’t hurt to check the place out.

A sign taped to the front door read: THE BLUE BISTRO, OPENING FOR ITS FINAL SEASON JUNE 1ST. Adrienne perused the menu. The food was expensive, it sounded delicious, and her stomach complained. She’d trekked halfway across the island without any breakfast.

She peered in the dark window, wondering what she might say. She had never worked in a restaurant before; she knew nothing about the business except that it was, prostitution aside, the quickest way to make money. She supposed she could lie and say that she’d waited tables in college. She could pick up the skills once she started. Kyra, her desk manager at the Little Nell, had told her that waiting tables was a piece of cake. Nantucket had been Kyra’s idea. After the whole disaster with Doug, Kyra suggested that Adrienne get as far away from the Rocky Mountains as possible. If it’s money you want, Nantucket is where you should go.

Adrienne tried the door. Locked. She tapped on a windowpane. Hello? She felt like the Little Match Girl, hungry and tired, bereft and friendless. Can you save me?

She thought of her father, at that minute probably elbow deep in a root canal. Since Adrienne’s mother died, his concern for Adrienne’s well-being seemed so heavy as to actually pull the corners of his mouth into a frown. He worried about her all the time. He worried that she was too adventurous, working in all these exotic locales where the men weren’t necessarily principled. And he was right to worry. He was so right that Adrienne hadn’t been able to tell him how guests of the Little Nell had been complaining about cash missing from their rooms and about how Kyra had interrogated the battalion of Mexican chambermaids. When the chambermaids proved a dead end, Kyra had come to Adrienne and asked if she had any idea who might be taking the money. Adrienne was confused about why Kyra was asking her but then, somehow, she realized that Kyra meant Doug. Doug, who had lost his job in February and whose behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. Doug, who traveled down-valley several times a week to visit a “friend” in Carbondale. Adrienne had snuck down to their basement apartment while she was supposed to be at work. She found her hotel master key card in the pocket of Doug’s ski jacket. And then, on a second dreadful hunch, she checked the tampon box where she saved her tips, the money for her Future, which she had always thought of with a capital “F”-money for something bigger and better down the road, a house, a wedding, a business. The box was empty. He had stolen her Future; he had snorted it. Instead of killing Doug herself, Adrienne followed Kyra’s advice and called the Pitkin County police. They caught him robbing the Alpine Suite in the middle of the day. He was arrested for larceny and possession, and Adrienne left town in the midst of his court proceedings, flat broke.