Matthew Batt had modest plans for his sabbatical — writing a novel, running, napping. What he hadn't planned on was this: going broke. It only took a few months to realize that sabbatical pay — half his salary as a professor at the University of St. Thomas — was not enough, especially with a family, a mortgage and $100,000 in student loans.
"I needed a job and I needed one now and it had to pay quick," he writes. "That meant only one thing to me: a restaurant job."
"The Last Supper Club" is Batt's account of working at two St. Paul restaurants in 2015. It's an entertaining, occasionally funny, sometimes puzzling look at two start-ups, both since closed: a fine dining restaurant at Surly Brewing, and a doomed-from-the-start New Orleans-style restaurant that Batt refers to simply as "the lake place."
Though the narrative sets up a comparison of the two, that structure fizzles halfway through when Batt quits the lake place to concentrate on the Brewer's Table, the upstairs restaurant at Surly's that pairs specialty beers with exotic foods. (Duck tongue, Hamachi collar with tare and shishitos, octopus glazed in orange and chorizo.)
It's a place, Batt notes, that is a hit with critics and foodies but is mostly confusing to ordinary people who wander in hoping for the burgers, fries and pizza that are served downstairs in the brewpub. Not only are those foods not available at the Brewer's Table, they're forbidden — in one tragicomic scene, a man smuggles in a basket of fries, which gets his entire party kicked out.
These folks take food seriously, and Batt, who also write "Sugarhouse," is right there with them — deeply admiring while also understanding that the place is slightly crazed.
The story hints at a midlife crisis; Batt is 42, with a Ph.D. (something he tells the reader perhaps one time too many) but admits he prefers restaurant work. His late-night hours mean he seldom sees his wife and son, and he is surrounded by "beautiful, talented, wickedly smart people" with bespoke messenger bags, expensive bicycles and tattoos. He seems almost desperately eager to fit in, even as he knows he never will, and most of the muted humor comes from his own insecurity.
More interesting, though, is how much he genuinely loves the work — the ambience, the curmudgeonly chef (is there any other kind?), the hefty tips, the salty language (which seems to come naturally to Batt — many of the book's best lines are not quotable in a family newspaper).
Mixed with the panic and longing are moments of pure joy. In one extended scene, Batt takes the reader nearly moment by moment as he pedals from Como Park, past the state fairgrounds, to Hamden Park Co-op for a kombucha, and "then through the back forty of Surly's vast parking lot."
It's not a lovely scene — Batt is too rough around the edges for lovely — but like the entire book, its appeal lies in how much he loves being in the moment, every moment, right up until the end.
The Last Supper Club: A Waiter's Requiem
By: Matthew Batt.
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 272 pages, $22.95.
Events: 7 p.m. Tue., Magers & Quinn, Mpls. 6 p.m. Nov. 7, in conversation with Brad Zellar at Next Chapter Booksellers, St. Paul.
