The Reuben That Slipped Time

The plan had been solid. It always is at the beginning.

Tuesday was devoted to the work. Splash, under direction from Miles, was tasked with producing a follow-on to Deierdre’s St. Patrick’s Day Reuben Special Luncheon. Something efficient, scalable, and just a little bit better than it had any right to be. The math was simple enough: twice the diners at half the cost of the Zingerman’s benchmark. Not just competitive—decisive for the Affordability messaging we are supposed to be trumpeting all the time while privately mostly ignoring it.

Rocket and Splash worked it out together, heads down over iPads, moving through ingredients, substitutions, pricing, and sourcing. Pastrami, kraut, bread, condiments—the whole stack engineered for both taste and margin. Tyson’s Corner was the target. Whole Foods would cover the gaps. It was all aligned. Execution was next.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday, of course, had other ideas.

They were already moving toward Tyson’s when Rocket spotted it—the kind of thing you don’t pass up if you are paying attention to the broader field of play. A case of ’23 Kelly Fox Canary at Arrowine, priced at less than a c-note. The galley needed stock for April. April was coming whether anyone liked it or not. Even the polling suggested as much.

So they turned.

Arrowine is rarely just a stop. It is a pivot point. One thing becomes another there. The wine was secured, of course, but that was only the beginning. Cheese appeared. Pâté followed. What had been a clean procurement run became something more layered—richer, if less predictable.
Somewhere in that shift, the luncheon began to move—not canceled, not abandoned, just displaced.

The exchange itself happened in the parking lot.

These things often do. Splash and Rocket, an Uber driver drawn into the orbit, and a quiet negotiation over what was being moved, traded, and carried forward. Wine, cheese, spreads—assets changing hands in a way that made sense at the time and would be explained later, or not at all.

By then, the clock had slipped.

What had been intended as Wednesday lunch slid past its mark. Breakfast the next morning didn’t quite happen either. Time, like the plan, had been re-sequenced.

It is only a question of when the moment catches up with the plan.
Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com
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