From Prep to Clean-Up, 8 Hours in the Vetri Kitchen
Fine dining is a little like yoga, or meditation, or floating on your back in the middle of a Jacuzzi: the world gets really small when you do it. At Vetri, on 1312 Spruce St., it’s a world of glass from Murano, of wooden tables and floors. It’s a world of dimmed lights; it’s a world of Prosecco. Dinner there, for the yogis and the meditators and the Jacuzzi–floaters, is a two–and–a–half hour affair: they see a hand–painted menu and are asked their culinary preferences, and they get served a $155 tasting menu of the chef de cuisine’s choice. But I did not come for this. I came for the other world, behind the Murano glass. The world of pots and pans and shouting, of glistening fat and sinewy muscle. The world of cursing and ass–slapping and unhinged laughter: the back of the house.