by MJ Post
“What’s a sous chef?”
“A kitchen manager. Someone who runs the kitchen up to my standards when I’m not there to do it.”
∞∞∞
Business doubled the next week. More favorable reviews came. Kacie was so busy she forgot to pee. Clementine, a slightly older Korean immigrant chef, was hired to assist her. Resistant at first, Clementine began to yield to Kacie’s direction as she tasted the results of her younger boss’ recipes.
Jinwoo pushed to add delivery service. Kacie held him off. He talked about opening a location in Bayside. Kacie told him to wait a year so she could gradually train more chefs. They worked dawn till midnight every night. Kacie’s 24th birthday passed without her remembering it. She found a sponge cake on the kitchen table with a candle on it — left by her mother pretending her father had done it — and opened her gift, left on the bed in similar fashion: a book of biographies of famous engineers. She went and woke up Eunice and “accidentally” left the book on her sister’s bedside table, had a one-sided heart-to-heart with the good girl of the family who didn’t try to hide her yawns and eventually plugged in her ear buds and lay down listening to the k-pop group F-ve Dolls.
∞∞∞
Two weeks later, she received an amazing gift: a major newspaper listed Koryo Burger in the top 10 casual dining restaurants in Queens. A local TV news affiliate sent their entertainment reporter and her family to eat there on camera and interviewed Kacie. Clementine, who knew what was good for her, took the opportunity of her own sound-byte to describe her younger boss as highly talented.
On a Sunday morning at 10 AM, as Jinwoo and Nely were laying down tablecloths, napkins, and silverware in pursuit of a pre-opening mise en place, there came a firm rap at the glass door. Nely, holding a stack of napkins, went to the glass to wave off the two men outside. Kacie continued chopping garlic with her santoku knife, even when she heard the swinging door between the dining room and the kitchen.
“Oh, you look better in person,” said an unfamiliar man’s voice.
She turned to see a thin man with spiky hair leaning forward to see over her shoulder. A blond cameraman behind him appeared to be filming.
“Get out of here,” Kacie barked.
“I really do value your intensity,” said the older man.
Kacie set down her knife and turned fully to face the two men. “Get the hell out of my kitchen! I’m working here.”
“Okay,” the spiky-haired man said. “But can we talk to you over the pass? It’s important.”
“Leave first. Talk later.”
When she heard the men move through the swinging door, she took up her knife again and resumed chopping the garlic.
“My name’s Herschel Singer, and this is Ricky.”
“Yuh,” said the cameraman.
“So?” Kacie wondered where everyone else in the restaurant had hidden, why she was stuck handling these goofballs by herself.
“I’m the casting director for Madame Queen’s Chef Showdown, a new show on TKN, The Kitchen Network. I’ve been following your career since the review on the Times website, and I think you’d be a great choice to compete in our first season.”
Kacie dropped the knife. It bounced off the cutting board and clattered on the floor. “Wait a minute? What was that? Who the hell is Madame Queen?”
“Chef Nina Lestrade. She’s called Madame Queen in Mississippi, her home state. She has two Michelin Stars and a lot of sassy attitude. No one to mess with.”
“Kind of like a dragon,” said Ricky. “Makes a mean fish fry though. Cooked for the crew the other day. Yuh, it was good.”
As she picked up her knife, Kacie searched her mind for what little she knew about TV. “So you want me to audition for this show, I guess.”
“Don’t make her audition,” Jinwoo piped up from the dining room. His head and shoulders were visible over the pass. “Come on, she’s the best young chef in the city. Look at the reviews. My cousin is a goddess. And she’s cute as a button.”
“Don’t be gross,” Kacie snapped at him.
“You could pinch her cheeks,” Jinwoo added.
“Just shut up.”
“He’s right,” said Herschel. “It’s the deep dark eyes. You look like you’re always calculating your next move. That will be great for the show. And you do have pinch-able cheeks. Ricky, does the lens like her?”
“Yuh,” said Ricky. “Just like a movie star.”
“So we need lunch for Madame Queen herself, our showrunner Shaun, me, and couple more execs. Make me takeout for six, your choice. We’re all gourmands, believe me.”
Gourmands, Kacie knew, were people who liked to eat. After five minutes’ discussion with Clementine, she began cooking. Ricky and Herschel filmed at a respectful distance. Jinwoo hovered by the flattop, keeping himself on camera and making numerous remarks of exaggerated praise. The TV team left with three bags of spicy takeout. Exhausted, Kacie took a nap in the chair by the rear door.
∞∞∞
At 6 PM, as the dinner rush was just getting under way, Jinwoo’s phone rang. After a moment’s conversation, he handed it to Kacie. The phone was on speaker, and her cousin hovered listening.
“You’re in,” Herschel chirped. “Good to go. Madame thinks you have the stuff. She likes your flavors. So, do we send a messenger with the contracts?”
Kacie had been too busy cooking and prepping to mull the decision. Now she was on the spot and had to scramble for something to say. In her whole life, she had never had so much attention as in the last few weeks, and today was so complex and confusing she felt her knees buckling. To forestall that, she flopped onto the floor. Jinwoo sat beside her, his thin legs crossed, his eyes bright. “I don’t know. This restaurant is important to me and my family. If I leave now…”
“This show will give you all the advertising you need, and the exposure will help you to build your career in ways you can’t even imagine. It also pays ten thousand dollars.”
Kacie inhaled deeply. “Ten thousand…?”
“That’ll be enough to buy an all new walk-in, and some left over,” said Jinwoo.
Please?” Herschel wheedled. Kacie imagined him making puppy dog eyes.
“Okay, okay. I’ll do it.”
Chapter Five
Best Up-and-Coming
Toby took the ingredients to his parents’ kitchen — it was no longer his home, he felt, but theirs, once he went out the door. He started the stock pot going and began slicing and chopping and cleaning the ingredients. As each spice reached its proper level of pungency, he packed away the extra. A warm, rich smell suffused the kitchen as he transferred his concoction to a serving dish, covered it, laid out plates, water or wine glasses, and wrote on a greeting card.
Dear Momma and Daddy,
I will always love and respect you, but I have to be my own person and follow my own way. I can’t do that under your roof, so I’m moving on. I’m driving Lillian to New York where I have a job cooking on a TV show. The dish is a crawfish étouffée made with love. This is goodbye for now. Be well.
Toby
Lillian came back from last-minute shopping, and they loaded her belongings into the truck and got on the road.
Toby looked back at the house with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was done living with his parents, but he had never lived anywhere else, and after this TV show had wrapped, what would he do in the northeast? Returning to Oxford would be like defeat — but would he have the money to stay in New York? It was an expensive place to live, with a lot of competition even for great Southern cooking. He’d never even seen more than a dust of snow.
Starting all over was right, but it wasn’t easy, and he would never know if he was ready for it until he was in the midst of it.
Just focus on the show, he told himself. Win that, and make contacts, like Light said, and you’ll see what comes next.
∞∞∞
Lillian spent most of the drive north on her phone and tablet, alr
eady networking and developing content for her marketing job. Between Oxford and St. Louis, she added (or so she boasted) fifty new contacts in the food television industry. Thirty were now her Facebook friends and had clicked “Like” on their baby picture: Light and Dark together in their crib with binkies in their mouths. He also had a new fan page: Chef Toby Brutus, TV personality, and it had garnered three hundred clicks based on a few pictures of him cooking in Boris’ kitchen and in his own truck.
The second day of the road trip, Lillian said, “Okay, Dark. While we’re driving, let’s work on your camera skills.” She hoisted her digital camera: that was one graceful-looking piece of black plastic. “It’s the Toby Brutus Road Diary. I’ll ask you questions, and you talk for thirty seconds and I’ll shoot a video so you can see how you did. The best ones will go up on your new YouTube channel and I’ll Facebook them.”
“No,” Toby said.
“Yes.”
“No!”
“Dark, you need to be great on camera. Your pretty face won’t be enough to keep you on TV. I want you to make an impact on the show from day one.”
“My food will do that.”
Lillian clicked a photo of him. He growled.
“Toby, you need to use your head. First of all, all the contestants will be awesome chefs. Food TV is loaded with those. Food alone won’t make you stand out. Personality will. People on TV can’t taste your food. They can see it and hear it critiqued, but they’ll be looking mostly at you, and it’s your personality that will win you a fan base.”
“A fan base.”
“Yeah, people who want more of you. Pictures, cookbooks, videos, magazine covers, and ultimately, tasting your food at your restaurant.”
This seemed more like her business than his. “I’m a chef. I focus on food, Light. Let the TV people worry about that other stuff.”
Lillian snapped a selfie with her iPhone and commenced a Facebook post. “Dark, notice what I’m doing. Sure, I’m telling family and friends where we are so they don’t worry. But I’m also building my brand, because I have business contacts on my Facebook so they see that I’m happy and friendly and pretty and they think, I want to work with someone like that.”
Toby had never used his own Facebook except for messaging and announcing specials on the food truck’s page. Lillian’s new ideas for him were uncomfortably distracting — he wanted to keep his thoughts on recipes and techniques to try.
“Now, let’s get to camera practice. Starting with an easy one. Why do you deserve to win Madame Queen’s Chef Showdown?”
Toby, eyes on the road, waiting for the camera’s click, then said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not good for TV,” Lillian scolded. “Start again.”
Toby gritted his teeth, forced a fake smile. “Look, I know I’m just twenty-four, but my food stacks up against anyone’s. I had the most repeat customers of any food truck in Oxford. Oxford’s a food town, I mean, people like to eat good food there. And I can make it, and I’m bringing my food skills to New York City and this show, and everyone should look out because I’m coming.”
He paused. Lillian left the camera rolling. He switched the heavy food truck to the slow lane as a tractor trailer came perilously into the side mirror. “That’s it. I’m done. Turn it off.”
“Okay. Let’s listen back.”
The camera had a poor speaker for playback, and Toby could barely hear his voice over the road noise. Lillian asked his opinion.
“I couldn’t hear it.”
“Okay, so you can speak louder. Project your voice more. Soft-spoken is good for one-on-one situations, but hard to pull off on-camera.”
“It’s the speaker.”
“I know, but you can do better about it. Let me listen again.”
She played the video a second time, then said, “You didn’t have a good message. You didn’t focus on one point and explain it. You didn’t sound confident. You were just rambling.”
“Sure I was rambling. What did you expect?”
“A focus. A single point.”
“I’m driving, Light. I have to focus on that.”
“Let’s do it again. Say one point, stick with it. Why should you win Madame Queen’s Chef Showdown?”
“I give my customers value.”
“Introduce yourself first.”
“Shit. Okay. I’m Chef Toby Brutus, the best food truck chef in Mississippi. I broke in with James Beard award-winning Chef Boris Winfrey, who is like a father to me. And I’m here to win Madame Queen’s Chef Show thing. What the fuck, Light.”
“Chef Showdown.”
“Madame Queen’s what the fuck Chef Showdown. Yeah, that. It’s quite simple. I make food people want to eat over and over. Perfectly seasoned Cajun and Southern dishes like étouffée and jambalaya and gumbo. You know, good old Southern comfort foods you come back to again and again, just like my customers come back to my food truck again and again because of the perfection I bring. So I’m going to win Madame Queen’s what-the-fuck because my food is absolutely the best Southern cooking. That’s it.”
“Mike drop,” Lillian said.
“Mike drop.”
A long pause. Then Lillian asked, “Do you want to say your food is better than Madame Queen’s?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you’re the best at Southern cuisine, but that’s what Nina cooks. Boris, too. Are you really better than they are?”
“I’m just talking food trucks.”
“Dark, you know, Boris might be okay with you saying that ‘cause he loves you, but Nina has a big ego. You don’t go by Madame Queen as a nickname if you don’t believe it.”
“So what should I do?”
“Be specific.”
“Like what?”
“Say, ‘My food’s the best up-and-coming Southern cuisine and I want to make Madame Queen proud of me.”
Chapter Six
Toby in New York
When they reached eastern New Jersey, Lillian took over driving while Toby called Herschel’s cell. Herschel gave him the street address of an outdoor parking lot the network had arranged for long-term parking of his food truck. Herschel said he would send two Uber drivers to move Lillian into her Brooklyn apartment and transport Toby and his luggage to the show dorms.
Standing in the parking lot with his suitcase and another bag of belongings at his feet, with his arm around his sister who was on the phone with her former college friend and now roommate Shaina, Toby took in the swirl of colors and sounds of Manhattan. Brown and gray buildings that funneled winds into powerful gusts, reflective glass, red brake lights and yellow and lime-green cabs, honking horns and rumbling truck motors, the gassy exhaust of double-length buses. The stench of vehicle exhaust and of stale pee overwhelmed him, along with the occasional trace of salt water carried on the wind. Soon he couldn’t smell anything. Compared to quiet Oxford, Mississippi, this was hell — it was like standing inside a deafening factory. It wasn’t his home! No, that was wrong; now it was.
The first Uber came, and a patient man in a turban carefully packed all of Lillian’s eight pieces of luggage into his minivan. She promised to come to the studio to see Toby after dinner, and a moment later the vehicle carrying her had vanished into the squalling traffic. Toby was alone. He looked longingly at his food truck, already packed in to the back of the outdoor lot with numerous other vehicles. “Keep it locked,” he told the attendant. “Locked, ok?”
The man, short and dark, looked at him blankly. Toby made a gesture as if turning a car key.
“No drive,” the attendant said. “Maybe move some time is all.”
The second Uber vehicle, a weary-looking Honda, arrived, piloted by a bodybuilder about his age wearing a Yankees cap. “I’m Salvatore,” said the driver as he made a marshmallow out of Toby’s right hand. “I got your stuff.” He loaded the luggage. “Herschel gave me the address. I do lots of pickups for him. Have a seat in my luxury vehicle, ha ha.”
; Salvatore kept talking, but Toby answered him in monosyllables. His mind drifted to visions of quiet and intimate Oxford. He remembered a university garden party, one of those he had always hated, and his mother sitting under a shady giant umbrella sipping a mimosa and twiddling her glasses and saying her handsome boy was a chef, you know, but it was only a phase.
Thinking of his mother, he impulsively sent her a text.
Toby: How was the étouffée?
Miranda: Where are you, Tobias?
Toby: I’m in New York.
Miranda: How is it?
Toby: Dirty. Noisy. How was the food
Miranda: I hate New York. You don’t have to stay there, you know.
Toby clicked to darken the screen of his phone. Salvatore was still rattling on, and he was certainly rude for not listening, but it was too late to fix that now. His mind went back to the texts. They reminded him that he’d had a reason for leaving Miranda and his father Roy. He figured his parents hadn’t eaten the food, because for them, it represented ambitions of his they considered foolish.
“Almost there,” said Salvatore the Uber driver. “Hey, you have our app on your phone? I’m around the city a lot, look me up.”
Toby opened his phone, texted his mother.
Toby: Eat the étouffée.
“You’re a chef, right?” the driver pressed. “Man, I love some good food.”
“Me too,” Toby answered. He decided to talk to the driver, who probably already liked him more than his mother did.
“You need a tour of the city? I can hook you up. I’m an entrepreneur. Hundred bucks for a four hour ride around town. Or free if you make dinner for me and my girlfriend. How about it, huh?”
They stopped at a red light. Salvatore announced that he’d gone a little out of the way to show his passenger Times Square, the heart of midtown. Even as vehicles near them braked, a thousand men and women in black and gray business suits flowed into the intersection with the urgency of a cataract. Toby had never seen so many people in one place except at a bowl game. The skyscrapers hung on either side like canyon walls splattered with the neon paint of advertisements. A huge screen ran a blinding digital advertisement for a new Apple product. Toby’s head spun.