Both things cannot be true

I'm working, but my job is in France

Last night, I had dinner with friends at Chez Napoléon, a small French restaurant in Times Square that will hold its last dinner service tomorrow. Reservations are closed; “Au Revoir!” says every menu. None of us had been. Erin had put it on a mental list after walking past its tinny speakers playing old cabaret music outside, and then read the Hell’s Kitchen blog W42St’s reporting on its imminent closure. This was one of Midtown’s remaining holdouts, it said, founded in 1960 and full of house rules.

Marguerite Bruno took over in 1982. W42St calls her “a wartime survivor, ski-lodge chef, and, at the time, one of New York’s only professional female French chefs. She ruled the kitchen with an iron whisk and a glass of Dewar’s until her last night alive.” The “goth bartender” (and website designer) Sir William Welles watched the room with a deflated expression, but that could have been his raccoon eye makeup. Another man in a leather top hat and curled mustache was eating coq a vin at a table alone. I wondered where they will go for dinner in a week.

Owner Elyane Bruno (Marguerite’s daughter and William’s mother) greeted us at the door, led us to our table, and with a thick accent, took our orders: soupe a l’oignon, escargots de Bourgogne, poireaux vinaigrette, steak au poivre, crevettes marseillaise, soufflé Grand Marnier, and two bottles of Beaujolais-Village. Everyone was happy in the warm, classic room, and so the meal was bittersweet. What if we only went to closing restaurants from now on? Would we start to feel good about being disappointed?

“I would do anything for $1000,” one of us laughed, about freelance jobs and their diminishing returns, our disillusionment in industries reliant on people who are just happy to be there. “What I’m getting paid for my dignity,” I said, “is pennies. Selling out isn’t worth it unless you go full tilt.”