La Dolce Far Niente

 La Dolce Far Niente

Finding the sweetness in life from Eva Davidová 

By Tara Giddings 

Outside the San Francisco ferry building on a crisp bright autumn day a young blonde woman drinks her artisan coffee as she looks over the bay, her blue-green eyes glistening with excitement. The 24 year old, Eva Davidovà, smiles as she describes her childhood, the start of her journey traveling around the world with art and wine. 

“I was born and raised in Prague, which is the heart of Europe essentially,” she says how growing up she would often travel to other countries close to the Czech Republic, such as Germany, Austria, Poland and Croatia.

At the age of 18 she left home and moved to the west coast of the United States, attending San Diego State University on a track and field scholarship. After exploring life in California and deciding not to purse a career as an athlete Eva moved to Florence, Italy, following her love of art. 

In Italy she took a wine appreciation class, leading her to discover her passion for wine. She proceeded to get a master’s degree in Viticulture and Analogy from Florence University of the Arts.

Eva then decided to move to San Francisco to work in the wine industry while studying business at San Francisco State University. She spent a year walking down the street from her apartment on Townsend St watching the seasons change inside the three star Michelin restaurant Sasion. She was mesmerized by the changing beauty of the menu, plants, herbs and design of the restaurant and one day decided to apply for a job. 

Laughing she recalls how “I walk right in and interrupt this whole meeting so forty people in the kitchen turn towards me, I turn pitch red and I’m standing there with my resume like holy shit this is embarrassing.” But she walked back in after the meeting thinking “fuck it I have nothing to lose now”. She introduced herself with one sentence “Hi my name is Eva, I moved here from Italy, I live on the street and here’s my resume.” 

The manager offered her an interview the next day, leading to a meeting with the wine director, and being offered a position. At first Eva worked in dinning room prep during the day, helping with creative aspects from flower arrangements to prepping for the kitchen and serving staff. Soon she was offered an evening position as part of the dining room team saying “I was really excited because those positions are really hard to get into at that level of fine dinning.” 

After a little while working at Sasion her manager came up to tell her a story as the entire staff started laughing. Her manager said “I though you were homeless because you said you live on the street… a really good resume but lives on the streets!” Yet, Eva ended up being the first person who was hired after walking in since the restaurant opened seven years ago. 

Smiling Eva talks about how now her coworkers make fun saying “We’re so happy we hired a homeless Italian girl! I’m not even homeless and I’m not even Italian!” She describes her attitude of “you just have to laugh at life.” Her outlook helps in the fast paced and serious environment to relieve some of the pressure as she says “fine dinning is like any other dinning!” 

Working as a member of the dinning room team at such a high level restaurant presents many new challenges and opportunities. Eva describes how in order for a fine dinning restaurant to properly function “you always have to do everything in order to make not only the dinning room better but in order to make the guest experience better”. Each member of the team memorizes the menu of the day, serves the food and wine and looks around for a stray napkin on the floor. The menu they memorize is composed by chef Joshua Skins and wine director Mark Bright. 

The wine director imports wines from Europe and has the biggest French wine cellar in the United States. Eva says “it’s amazing to be able to work with him” since he is very knowledgeable about wine after working for so long in the industry. Eva befriended the head sommelier Noah Dranow, saying how “he took me under his wine and explains everything to me” as she continues to learn about wine during the staff blind tastings every weekend. 

Some of the wines are like a dream for Eva, many are ones she once studied in textbooks. Cheatau Pétrus, a well known wine estate in France, is one she was able to taste as she calls it “the holy grail”. At the end of many evenings she tastes wines “so rare I would never even have had my hands on” if she was not working at Sasion. One of the most impressive wines she tasted was a 1955 Barolo which was bought by a couple she bonded with while discussing Italian wines and trips to Italy. 

The process of serving at Sasion is a detailed and elaborate. Eva learned the process slowly at the start, as servers spend the first week pouring water, then a week picking up plates and so on. The job has many pressures, if the food is on the pass for more than about 15 seconds it goes to the trash and if someone goes to the bathroom then she waits to serve the entire table. 

All this makes it possible for the restaurant to flourish with the presentation of the food. Eva finds joy in making people happy through the meticulous dinning experience saying at the end of the meal the costumers “expressions on their faces is just priceless, its priceless even though its one of the most expensive restaurants in the United States”. 

Eva faced challenges when she started working at Sasion, struggling to memorize the ever-changing seasonal menu. She learned from this difficulty saying “we shouldn’t look at mistakes as mistakes. I think it’s something that happens in order to push us in another direction or in order for us to develop.” The lesson she developed is to not overthink or dwell upon every mistake from the past realizing how “irrelevant that is in the present”. 

Another challenge was working with people in such a stressful environment. Eva experienced frustration when she began working in fine dinning “feeling like everyone was against me”. Her feelings lead her to switch her mindset, realizing “it’s that everyone actually cares about the entire dinning room and it’s a team work”. By focusing on compassion and respecting others she understands “we’re all human” and appreciates the ability to work with people who care greatly about their work. 

As one of only three women at Sasion Eva also faces working in the male driven food and wine industry. This is represented by the fact that currently in the Court of Master Sommeliers about 12% are women. For Eva this challenge encourages her to find her own power and voice. The competitive environment leads to believe at her job “I think I do more than one things that scares me everyday and I think that’s the power and beauty of it”. 

Her outlook leads her to have more understanding with costumers as well. Eva says some people come in with “anger sadness, whatever they are going through” and will transfer those feelings towards the service staff. She sees this as an opportunity to “influence someone’s day dramatically to better by just saying something simple” such as a compliment or a shared connection. 

Meeting people is one of Eva’s favorite parts of her job. People will fly from all other the world to dine at Sasion and she enjoys “people that are from different walks of life, different ages, different cultures.” The people who come in range from an Australian chef who saved up for the $1000 meal for one to tech industry workers, all of whom come for a “once in a lifetime experience”. 

The co-founder of Google, Larry Page dinned at the restaurant tipping $2000 dollars. The tips off the $400 dollar tasting menu are where Eva receives most of her paycheck along with the $15 hourly wage. She says she visualized being able to pay for school while focusing on her work in the wine industry and her job at Sasion allows her to do so. 

Eva sees the impact of her job saying “what we’re doing here every single day is a work of art.” In a three star Michelin restaurant each evening is a performance, sometimes referred to as a “ballet”. Eva says each evening does feel like a show as the dinning room team puts on suits to carry “incredible pieces of art from the kitchen and blend it with wine.”

Her appreciation of culinary arts is growing while working at Sasion, now her “creative outlet is wine”. After spending her life as a visual artist she sees how in culinary arts “its the visual, it’s the taste, it’s the smell, it’s the whole packaged deal, it’s a form of art that triggers all of your senses.”

The artistic meals are formed with produce from the Sasion farm. Every morning the freshly cut produce is brought to the restaurant and the perfect fruit with the right taste, flavor and color is picked for that days meal. Eva says “I just love vegetables and fruit…as humans we need to be more connected to nature” describing how fine dining gives people the opportunity to eat seasonally instead of buying the newest shipment from the grocery store without knowing when tomatoes are actually grown.

Eva loves the opportunity to learn more about the world of food and wine saying “if you’re passionate…you wake up in the morning and you’re ready to learn, that’s when you know you’re doing it right.” Her passion leads to appreciate “its amazing to be able to go to work and just make other people happy” through the art of wine and food. 

During her first few weeks she felt “really happy and thankful even though it was probably the most stressful time of my life”. She later was approached by one of the chefs who told her how important not only her wine knowledge and service experience was, but also her energy saying “it’s such a stressful environment you need people that can mellow that down”. 

Eva’s energy formed as she worked to create a positive mindset. She believes “Optimism can save the world, we have one life, why would we not have optimism? There’s so much shit going on in the world that we might as well.”  Her optimistic outlook stems from her appreciation for nature and love for detail which also leads her to be inspired by wine. 

Eva’s knowledge of wine developed due to her observant nature. She describes how in swishing a glass of wine you smell the aromas and describe the taste. Eva enjoys using her senses to associate with memories. She says she’ll find a pinot noir that “smells like a corridor of flowers I  walked through when I was six years old in a summer house I grew up in”. For Eva wine descriptions are like poetry, developing from “being present and mindful”. 

Eva realizes how “nowadays the words like gratitude and mindfulness, they’re so hyped that people have lost the core and essence of what they actually mean”. She describes the importance of mindfulness as noticing the little things in life from “cracks in the pavement or the sun on your face”. This technique allows her to notice every detail of wine and see wine as a form of art. 

Eva’s love of art was inspired from her grandfather who was a painter. She appreciates the beauty in life the form from challenges describing how people going to a museum to feel better by looking at paintings saying “if the world was really a perfect place would we need art? no we wouldn’t!” 

Her grandfather passed away just before she moved to Italy, where she was planning to follow his path to be a painter. His death weighed heavily on her until she came to the understanding that “we all have people that inspire us, but we have to know that the people are always with us and what they taught us is always with us.” 

After losing her grandfather she was no longer in the right mindset to paint so in Italy she experimented with other options. Eva combined her talents by designing wine labels for family wine estates giving her the opportunity to try new wines, getting to know the wine and flavor profile so the label “describes the wine itself”.

For Eva “traveling is the best way to learn about wine” while meeting people from other countries and having them describe the wines to her. In doing so she is able to taste a variety of wines differing from every region. 

Eva left Italy after working in a shoe store to pay for being a student along with working at a restaurant called Ganzo. Her experiences adapted her to only knowing how to speak Italian when discussing shoes, food and wine saying “no matter what life throws into your path you go with the flow and it makes life really exciting”. 

While working in the wine industry Eva sees how it is constantly evolving. Today more women and younger people are working in the industry. More biodynamics, organic wines and small batch productions are bringing modern influences to wine making, leading to a new outlook on wine. Eva is excited about how culture around wine is changing as it is no longer seen as a luxury but “more of an accessible good” to people of all classes who are more interested in pairing food and wine. 

Looking to the future for wine and herself, Eva feels the importance of her experience working at Sasion. She describes a discussion with Mark Bright about the opportunities available to her if she stays there for a few years such as being able to “jump around other new locations and maybe even work as a head sommelier one day.” 

Eva’s love of wine and travel are combined in these possibilities as she says how lucky she feels to work in an industry where she can “move around anywhere in the world and work in a similar setting and place”. As a child she loved her international school’s food fair saying she wanted to “learn at a very young age about different types of cuisine, people’s cultures”. 

Her connection to childhood leads her to feel thankful for her experience being brought up by her parents in Prague. But, she describes how in developing her open mindset she realized “you have to reparent yourself”. Her appreciation comes from her idea of accepting her parents and knowing “your parents are only humans and they tried as much as they could to bring you up…that’s essentially all they could do.” 

In learning to love the journey of her life Eva found “how important self love is and how we shouldn’t take anything personally because if we do take things personally it always stems from the ego”. This mindset allows her to find peace even in the high stress situation working at a three star Michelin restaurant in the complex city of San Francisco. 

She aims through her work in culinary arts to inspire others. Eva describes the pressure in today’s society to constantly be doing something, whether in career or relationships. The beliefs that help her to be successful in such an environment stem from the Italian saying la dolce far niente meaning “the sweetness of doing nothing”. As Eva focuses on her passions she says “you achieve more by just being calm”. Perhaps achieving that calm by taking some time to drink a glass of wine.