9 August 2024
Friday. The Butcher has a second dining room, on George Street, five floors up, and he will not stop talking about the view.
It is larger than the original. The Sydney table seats eight, which means more place cards, more menu cards and more guests wandering about reading his diary when they ought to be panicking. Northbridge still seats six. He calls it “the intimate one”.
I helped with the menu cards. I wrote them in my best copperplate. The guests do not read them, of course. They read the diary. They always read the diary.
The shopping trip remains the problem. The Butcher steps out to fetch the final ingredients, I remind him that he does this every single time, he says it builds tension, and when he gets back the locker is empty and somebody is posing for a photo.
Still, two dining rooms. In two cities. Not bad for a man the newspapers dismissed as a hoax.
— U.
