ARTS & MANNERS

Nicola Paone, who has the best Italian restaurant in New York at 207 East 34th Street, says that he might close up at the end of the year for lack of help. This is bad news for all who love the elegant, light, non-garlicky food of Northern Italy, and especially for the editors of national review who, like Dante in his day, will find it hard to adjust to eating somebody else’s bread; Nicola has fed them too well for too long. His is a small restaurant, but even so, neither Nicola nor his assistant Franco and their faithful, devoted and efficient staff of many years can go on doing the work of the missing cooks, assistants and dishwashers. This desperate help situation, found in restaurants all over town, has been largely responsible for the closing of two deluxe ones, La Seine and Chauv-eron.

The help problem is one that restaurateur and housewife ponder alike. Here we are, listening to the bleats of some people and newspapers I could name, lamenting that there are no jobs. There certainly are jobs, and they are well paid when the person hired for one knows his business. As Nicola says, more, though not many, people come around asking for work now than before. But they haven’t learned anything, and they are not particularly willing to learn now. So the jobs remain unfilled and the people unemployed.

NH

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Nika Hazelton

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Nicola Paone, who has the best Italian restaurant in New York at 207 East 34th Street, says that he might close up at the end of the year for lack of help. This is bad news for all who love the elegant, light, non-garlicky food of Northern Italy, and especially for the editors of national review who, like Dante in his day, will find it hard to adjust to eating somebody else’s bread; Nicola has fed them too well for too long. His is a small restaurant, but even so, neither Nicola nor his assistant Franco and their faithful, devoted and efficient staff of many years can go on doing the work of the missing cooks, assistants and dishwashers. This desperate help situation, found in restaurants all over town, has been largely responsible for the closing of two deluxe ones, La Seine and Chauv-eron.

The help problem is one that restaurateur and housewife ponder alike. Here we are, listening to the bleats of some people and newspapers I could name, lamenting that there are no jobs. There certainly are jobs, and they are well paid when the person hired for one knows his business. As Nicola says, more, though not many, people come around asking for work now than before. But they haven’t learned anything, and they are not particularly willing to learn now. So the jobs remain unfilled and the people unemployed.