This week on Sweetbitter, Tess masters the three plate hold in a very unique way. She also figures out that settling can be dangerous. Here’s our review of “Everyone is Soigne”.
Whoa boy! Sweetbitter took us on a ride this week!
Tess is having some serious trouble holding three plates at once while serving and drops a dish, shattering the plate and making the food unservable. This pisses off Josh, the sous chief, but gets her close with Will. After borrowing a serving set from the resturaunt, she asks Will to come over and help her learn how to properly hold the plates.
Of course he comes to her house, casually asks about her boyfriend, then gets straight to business. He teaches her own to hold the plates while caressing her skin and heating up the plates so Tess gets the full experience. Once she’s holding the plates, he asks if he can kiss her. When she questions why he asked, he tells her that he was raised to be very polite.
And in being a true gentleman, he goes down on her, causing Tess to drop and break the plates. The next morning, she wakes up to Will beside her then goes to the kitchen to keep practicing.
At work that night, Jake is in a bitchy mode and Ari is sharing her girlfriend troubles and wondering why a girl she’s been hooking up with hasn’t called her back.
“Ari, are we friends?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
That’s when Ari asks about Will, and even though Tess doesn’t say anything, they all know. It also turns out that Ari and a few other people that work there have slept with Will, too. They also know his penchant for going down on his girls super fast. Sasha even gets a little gross with it, but that’s Sasha.
It certainly doesn’t help Jake’s mood, though. He breaks a glass over the ice at the bar, and Tess has to “burn” it after Howard tells her to, and he also asks if Jake has a problem. He tells Howard no, and is short with Tess when it comes to needing hot water to “burn” the ice.
Tess asks him what’s wrong, and he tells her that Simone wants to go back home to the Cape, but he doesn’t want to home. As she’s cleaning up the glass, Jake finds her tattoo on the back of her neck and runs his fingers over it. Tess is all about this, as am I.
He asks if she’s going to Home Bar that night, and she says she is, and it looks like this ship may sail, but the side plot of the whole episode derails it…
Simone has been avoiding making reservations for someone named Serena all night long. There’s a history there apparently, and Simone doesn’t want to have anything to do with Serena. Unfortunately for her, Howard lets her know that he has made a special reservation for the following night for Serena and her husband, Fred.
Simone grins and tells him to make sure they’re in her section. After Howard leaves, Simone asks (tells) Jake to walk her home, and Tess misses out on Home Bar with Jake.
She ends up sleeping with Will again, though.
The next night, Tess shows off her ability to hold three plates, but it turns out she just needs two. She serves dinner to Serena and her husband with Howard looking on. Serena immediately recognizes the newbie back waiter, and Howard jokes that Tess got the job because she complimented his nails.
Finally, Simone shows up with some fancy wine she’d been hiding. She pours two glasses and adds more napkins to their table. As the conversation gets awkward, Simone sends Tess to reset another table. When Tess finishes that, Jake has her go and retrieve a bottle of wine, and she runs smack into a private conversation between Simone and Serena.
Serena really wants to reconnect and be friends again, and Simone doesn’t want that at all. When Simone notices Tess, she ends the conversation, and Serena leaves. We latter find out that Serena isn’t there to eat at all because she’s spit her food into the napkins that Simone kept refilling at her table.
Tess is grossed out by it, and Simone explains something about Serena to Tess that changes the way she approaches the rest of the night.
“Good reminder…of the consequences.”
“Consequences of what?”
“Settling.”
“How did she settle?”
“Serena? She was just like all of us. She was young and without any idea of what was gonna happen, and she couldn’t stand it, the uncertainty. Some people can’t. Then she met Fred Benson in this building, and she decided. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”
“Yeah, she decided to marry him.”
“No, to make the safe choice.”
After clean-up, Tess comes out during shift drinks and Will tells her he saved her a seat. When he asks her out on an official date, she gets caught up staring at a cup of coffee. The bitter smell yanks her right back to the night she tasted oysters with Jake. We already associate bitterness with poison thanks to Simone’s first lesson and also bitterness with Jake because of the night at Home Bar.
Those thoughts about bitterness and saltiness, prompt her to break things off with Will because she’s not willing to settle. Will is like every guy she has dated before, and now it’s time to try something different…expand her palette.
—
Next week, it seems like Tess will get those wine books from Simone but will we see some Tess/Jake interaction? **fingers crossed**
Sweetbitter airs Sundays at 8/7c on STARZ.