Walk of Life

by Saladin Rafa

Akan diterbitkan Agustus, 2024

Disunting oleh Anh Thu Truong Nguyen & Jasmine Gabriel Winoto
Novel, 118 halaman
dalam Bahasa Inggris
ISBN belum tersedia

• Sinopsis Buku

  Luca Fenicci, a charismatic, young man from a small town decides to take control of his family’s business following the death of his father. Faced with challenges, foes, and an uncertain future, he will have to embark on a journey to his hometown in Italy to find a secret ingredient that could potentially save his family’s restaurant business.

• Cuplikan Buku

  Prologue
  10 years ago

  It is sometime between six to seven p.m. Drizzle pours outside the streets of Jamestown. The side of the street is packed with cars whose owners are waiting inside a restaurant with their semi-soaked clothes and umbrellas. It is unbelievably crowded inside, with thirty or more customers stuffed together to keep themselves warm. The restaurant floor is covered in muddy footprints and puddles of water, presumably from the rain. Staffs are having a hard time mopping the floor, while hosts try to help the increasingly agitated guests.

  This is perhaps the busiest night the Fenicci restaurant has ever had in its thirty years of business. Hundreds of customers along with some food critiques from all across the state have flocked to the family-run restaurant to witness its reopening.

  On the other end of the restaurant, the chefs and employees are gathering around in the restaurant’s massive kitchen waiting for the usual speech delivered by the restaurant’s current owner, Alfonso Fenicci.

  Alfonso is excited and nervous at the same time. For him, delivering speeches is something he does every day, but reopening the restaurant on a busy Saturday night – famous food critics among the guests – is considered uncommon.

  As he gets out of his office, he sits on the kitchen’s fine-metallic countertop feeling anxious but also self-confident, as he didn’t want to look vulnerable in front of his employees.

  With a soft tone he speaks:

  “Alright, ladies and gentlemen, Listen up! As you can tell, there are a lot of guests waiting outside and by the looks of it, we know that tonight ain’t gonna be an ordinary night. Out of the hundreds of people out there, there might be a chance that one of them is a friend, or one of them is our ally, but some of them could also be a foe. We don’t know who but we ought to be prepared. Those aren’t the only people we gotta be afraid of ‘cause a little birdy told me that one of the country’s most well-known food critics, Pierre Hughes, will be coming here, he’s probably a little late now, but when he does come, he’ll be stepping on our front doorstep, banging on the front door, demanding for his Chicken parmigiana.”

  “And boy I’ll tell you, that man is dead serious about his job, and so do I want all of you to be... dead serious with your own job. This.. This is your chance right here. Prove him that we are the best restaurant in Jamestown, and prove to me that you are the best team of staff a restaurant owner could ever wish for, ‘cause deep down, I believe that each and every single one of you have dreams, whatever it is, and we here at the Fenicci’s will make that come true. Now I want all of you to get out there and serve him the best dish the Fenicci family restaurant could offer. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, people, and if we’re lucky enough, we might find ourselves a potential investor among those guys.”