Staff Biography #2: Yannick - Assistant General Manager

I first met Yannick when I lived in France. He spent his days harvesting sea salt and his nights as a street mime on Île de Ré. At the time I was working double shifts at La Marie Galante in nearby La Rochelle, and, as the foreigner, it was my job to fetch the sel gris from Yannick twice a week.

I didn’t mind. Riding my bicycle over that bridge was about the only exercise I got during my several years there. Not to mention those eyes, burrowing to the very depths of my soul. 

When I met Yannick I was four years older than he, but still a kid at heart. We’d meet every night just after I finished mopping the kitchen floor, and spend many moonlit hours playing pétanque by the harbor. He spoke only in exaggerated gestures, and I’ll never forget the moon reflecting off the white paint on his face. He was my Jean Genet, dark, haunted, brilliant, and I was his Moroccan page, ready to lavish him with fresh figs. 

Finally I convinced Yannick to let me smuggle him to America. We were stowaways on a Portuguese fishing trawler headed for Maine. I have connections, I told him. People in high places. I called my friend Laurie at the White Barn Inn. You’ve got to meet Yannick, I said. You’ll melt. 

Still, my mission could not be accomplished until I got Yannick right here beside me at Grill 23. For years and years I tried, but even the thought of highway driving paralyzes me in fear, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask him to make the trip to Boston by himself. It wasn’t until Amtrak completed the Northeast Corridor that we would finally be together again.     

I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to bring back the magic of the old days, but I’m still happy to have him nearby. And as time has passed he has finally become older than I by several years. I can’t complain about that.