by MJ Post
Kacie was in a winning position. Why was she feeling low? She’d made an exceptional dish. Why mope? Why worry more about Toby than herself?
Oh my God, she thought. I’m in love with him.
Kacie’s mother had explained love to her in a few simple expressions: “When you don’t feel all right unless he’s all right; when his problems are your problems; and when the physical part will be acceptable.” Mingyung Lee didn’t think love was necessary for marriage and talked more about choosing the right person to fit your other plans in life, so that marriage was a partnership.
Telling Eloise, “He’s mine” had been a bold move for Kacie, but actually being in love was as bold as setting out to climb a mountain.
Was it true like she’d heard in grade school, that the girl always fell in love first?
What was love? Was it biology? Was it an overreaction to stress or solitude? Would it go away if she went to bed with him? That, at least, she had to do. He was a man she’d be able to remember fondly, the long hair, serious eyes, lean muscles, sexy deep voice.
She swigged her wine, slammed the glass down, started to stand. I’ll go now and fuck him. I will, she thought.
No, no, not in the dorms. That wasn’t possible. She sat back again. Noise rose in the room as Buster switched over to a basketball game.
A while later, Alia woke Kacie and walked her to the dorm, where she crashed in her clothes and slept till morning.
∞∞∞
The morning started with a set of quiches prepared by Louie. Kacie was late getting to breakfast because she had to hand-wash her blouse and apron, having failed to hand them in for cleaning the night before. She sought out Toby with her gaze, found him with his jaw set and his eyes lidded with stress. His food was only half-eaten. He sat at the table staring at the wall. She leaned over his shoulder. “You okay, country boy?”
“I guess so.”
“Give me your fork.” She forked quiche from his plate into his mouth. “You had a bad day, but we’re still friends. That’s the main thing, right?”
“It’s very important,” he said. “But right now, I just need some quiet thinking time.” He accepted another bite as she served it to him.
“Thinking about yesterday?”
“Something from then.”
“The cook-off?”
“No, that was fine. Other things.”
“That note Madame gave you?”
“Please, not now.”
“Take the bite.”
“That’s it,” he said as he took in the last of his quiche.
Kacie straightened. “Whatever you need.”
He turned and looked at her directly for the first time that morning. “That means a lot. I promise, good times ahead.” Then he lowered his head.
Kacie went to the kitchen to get quiche for herself, as well as a cup of espresso. “Toby say anything?” she asked Louie as he served her. “Maybe he mentioned the note?”
“Yeah, he was reading that note Madame gave him, and he crumpled it up and said, ‘Fuck them.’”
∞∞∞
In Kitchen One, the presence of the Hammer Chef staffers, Matt and whats-her-name, alerted the chefs to the onset of a new guest judge. This proved to be Hammer Chef Russian, Grigori Medvedev, a man in his early thirties with icy blue eyes, a square jaw, and a habit of bouncing on his heels as he talked. He assigned them to prepare a dish from traditional Russian cuisine and warned them that borscht was NOT originally a Russian food, but had been developed in the Ukraine, which was definitely not the same thing. If they made borscht anyway – because it was still quite popular in Russia – at least they had better make it with beet root and beef, the way Russians liked it.
Kacie knew how to make borscht and a few other very basic Russian dishes but wasn’t remotely strong in the day’s cuisine. She went with a shchi, a cabbage soup, hoping that the preparation would put her in the middle of the pack, sacrificing the hope of a win simply to avoid another cook-off.
Madame Queen criticized her on the grounds that her cook-off dish the previous night had also been a cabbage soup, but Medvedev pronounced the shchi to be fairly tasty and moved on without much interest.
The win that day went to Eloise for a plate of pelmeni, dumplings stuffed with three meats. She used ground pork, ground turkey, and ground lamb, and produced a delicately flavored herbed sour cream that Medvedev gobbled up.
Toby and Vegas had made borscht despite the warning. The Hammer Chef liked Toby’s and gave him a pass. Vegas, who had added southwestern heat, was put into the cook-off for a failure to be traditional.
“You see, Chef Camacho,” said Madame Queen. “You finally got your wish for more television time.”
Alia would be his opponent; Medvedev said her lamb chops with mint jelly were not authentic enough, no matter how much her Russian friend liked them, and no matter that she served a side of porridge. It was her second cook-off.
Maryann had originally been scheduled to make the cast and crew lunch, but she was recording for the show Sichuan with Style, so everyone ate the leftovers from the Russian challenge. Buster absconded with the half-full pot of Kacie’s shchi, so she and Toby split his borscht. Eloise joined them. “So, I’m cooking with Grigori tonight.”
“You call him by his first name?” Kacie asked.
“Yeah, my dad and his dad are friends, so we met growing up. I never cooked for him before, though. You guys tried my pelmeni?” She went and got the few left on her station, and the three of them ate.
An explosion of juicy meatiness in Kacie’s mouth told her the blond’s win had been deserved. “That’s a winning bite.”
“I know. Grigori’s dad taught me when I was fourteen. He came over to cook us dinner. I just watched him, mostly.”
After lunch, everyone lined up for the ingredient announcement. Alia and Vegas would battle with squid ink pasta.
“You must not merely develop a sauce,” said Madame Queen. “I expect something very special from your own particular cuisine.”
Eloise and the Hammer Chef were moved to an upstairs studio with another crew so that Kitchen One wouldn’t be tied up. They sent down hotel pans filled with a fish soup made with pickle juice, followed by a variety of cutlets, meat dumplings, and potato pancakes. The dinner was hearty and filling; Kacie paid attention to the flavor profile, though she wasn’t sure how to reproduce many of the things she was eating.
After dinner, as the cook-off progressed, Kacie stood by Toby and tried to draw him into conversation about the cooking. Toby replied in monosyllables. When she took his hand, he squeezed her and let go. Finally, when Shelley was distracted enough not to stop them, she pulled him toward and into the lounge.
“What’s the matter?” she demanded. “You promised me you wouldn’t give up on me. So I beat you in a cook-off. So what? That doesn’t prove anything. You could win another time.”
“It’s not about you.”
“Well, you’re taking it out on me.”
“I wouldn’t be,” he barked, “If you’d just do what I asked and give me some goddamn space!”
“You want some space, country boy? Okay. Fuck you. There’s your space.” She stalked out of the room, slammed the door. Shelley intercepted her as she made for the cluster of spectators.
“No more noise today, right?” Shelley snapped. “You had the spotlight yesterday, didn’t you?”
“It’s not an act. We’re really fighting.”
Toby emerged, slammed the door, stomped toward the elevator. Shelley watched. “Guess so.”
“He got some note from Madame yesterday. Do you know what was in it?”
“Not a fucking clue,” said Shelley. “Now, if you’ll allow, I have a show to record.”
The cook-off was done early. Alia’s kugel, traditional Jewish noodle dessert, beat Vegas’ smothered capon legs over pasta and five-cheese sauce. Vegas got a strike.
“Now,” said Madame Queen at the wrap-up. “Chef Kamara, you hold two co
ok-off wins and have no strikes. You are the only one among the competitors to be without strikes. You are also clearly the most well-liked of the eight chefs among your peers. Will these facts be enough to put you in contention to win Chef Showdown? I think it is time that your talents be acknowledged. Well-done. As for the rest of you, beware. She begins to look unbeatable.”
MADAME QUEEN’S CHEF SHOWDOWN
DAY 8
Winner: Eloise
Strike Two: Toby, Maryann, Vegas
Strike One: Buster, Eloise, Kacie, Louie
No strikes yet: Alia
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Tell me this was real”
The next day, as Eloise was prepping for a breakfast of ricotta pancakes and poached eggs on avocado toast, Shelley arrived in the common room and cleared her throat for attention. Louie, Alia, Maryann, and Vegas were lounging on the sofas. Toby and Buster were still in the dorm. Kacie was in the dining room with a cup of green tea; she was sort of hanging out with Eloise.
“Right,” said Shelley. “Electrical problems in Kitchen One. We could, COULD, do some recording elsewhere, if we’re willing to work around the schedules for five other shows, but as Jill said to Jack, fuck it. I’m giving my crew a day off, seeing they’re such troopers but all about ready to drop. That means you lot get a day off as well. We’ll provide your meals — a brunch is coming up from The Smith in about an hour. Chef Hamilton, you’re off the hook. You may look like a million bucks, but I know you’re as tired as the rest of us.”
“Maybe half a million,” Eloise said from the kitchen.
“No, she’s right,” Kacie said. She and Eloise were still being nice; being on the blond’s good side was a lot less stressful for Kacie.
“You can all sleep or watch TV as much as you like,” the director continued, “but stay in the building if you please, and don’t wander into any other studios and make nuisances of yourselves. I’m going home myself, to sleep for a whole day and surprise my husband with a fuck when he comes in the door from the office, but Madame plans to keep you company at least until after lunch. Any questions?”
“Why don’t you give us our phones?” asked Maryann.
“Sorry. I’m not that nice. Anyway, Chef Chen, you had a whole hour’s natter yesterday courtesy of Mr. Samsung, didn’t you? Sorry, chefs, you’re stuck with each other for company. Okay, bye.”
Shelley made her escape good.
“Girl time,” said Eloise.
“Yeah,” Kacie agreed. They packed up and put away the prep items.
“Story I wanted to tell you,” Eloise began. “A couple of years ago when I was sous chef at Godfrey’s of Escondido, it happened kind of by accident that the whole kitchen staff was men except me. Godfrey was never there because he was laid up with gout, so I was the de facto boss. So you have me supervising eight ambitious men with an average of seven more years of experience. And one by one, they came to me privately and offered to let me take it easy and just learn by watching while they ran the place. I ran out of nice ways to say no. Then whenever I got to work, I’d see someone added a special on the morning board by the office, like, ‘Bitch stew with rosemary dumplings,’ or ‘cunt lorraine.’ The funniest one was ‘stir-fried puta with summer squash.’”
Kacie wasn’t surprised. The men in culinary school had been dismissive of any women they didn’t want to sleep with. “Yeah, I believe it. You remember the matelote I made?”
“Oh, yeah. You and I were having a bad day, but I snuck a taste.”
“Chef Bellegarde kept telling me I had no idea how to season fish. And he praised the hell out of this other student, Jean-Luc something, some pale pimple-faced nothing. So I arranged a blind taste test with some other students, and they all picked mine. Jean-Luc totally sucked, but he was a man, and Chef Bellegarde saw himself in him, and all that bullshit.”
“You weren’t close with Chef Bellegarde?” Eloise asked.
“No. I used his name to suck up to Dampierre, but the truth is, he never gave a shit about me, even though I was the best in my class.”
“I’m sure you were,” said Eloise.
Kacie looked into her green eyes. There was no hint of insincerity there. Maybe if they hadn’t been rivals for the same man, the two of them would have become friends. But they had been rivals, and Eloise’s amiability was mostly likely a ruse. Kacie regretted trusting her with the story.
Buster turned up by the kitchen entrance, and his face fell when he saw there was no cooking in progress. “No pancakes?” he asked.
“No,” said Eloise. “They’re catering today, and we’re having girl time.”
He chuckled. “Girl time? You two?”
“Absolutely. Girl time is important. Men are so competitive, and it takes so much out of a woman to have to beat them over and over, when cooperation would be better, that sometimes we need to re-center ourselves.”
“You’re crazy,” said Buster. “Competition keeps a man sharp. Gives him motivation. You have to stay on your toes 24-7.”
“You’ll get a heart attack that way.”
“No I won’t. I’m losing weight. Soon I’ll be the stud chef ladies dream of.”
Kacie was glad to keep out of this conversation.
“Give it time,” Eloise said, “and you’ll find a lady who likes you as you are.”
“Why not you?” Buster asked. His lips were slightly parted. His eyes were so expectant that they were almost attractive. Kacie found that she pitied him just a little.
Eloise raised her eyebrows. “Me? No, I go for quiet confidence. You’re all about noisy confidence. You need a girl who likes the party scene.”
“I’ll change,” he said.
Kacie offered, “I’m out of here.”
“No need,” said Eloise. “Just friends talking. Chef Wayne, you have to be true to who you are. Don’t change for anyone but yourself.”
Kacie headed down to the sofas, found Toby now sitting stone-faced in front of the TV, and sat by him. She told him Eloise’s story, and added, “I never want to be in that kind of situation. I respect her a lot more knowing she dealt with that and came out okay.”
“I suppose I see why she plays games with people the way she does,” Toby said. “Probably a survival skill back in the day.”
Maryann, sitting nearby, said, “I heard the story. You ready for a worse one? Listen up. When I was twenty-two, even younger than you two are now, I went for an interview as a line cook at Houston’s biggest Chinese banquet hall. Imperial Hunan Garden. Huge place. Thirty cooks on the line, fifty on Saturday nights. Three hundred seats, waiters sponsored from Changsha. The head chef was Chester Tien, sixty-seven years old, famous as a student of Peng Changkuei, which later turned out to be bullshit, but whatever. Heard of him?”
“Peng Changkuei invented General Tso’s chicken,” Alia said.
“Yeah. You heard of Chester Tien?”
“Not really.”
“Good. He’s dead anyway, and fuck him. He tells me to make him a duck hot pot. That’s not easy for a twenty-two-year-old who specializes in Cantonese, but no problem for me. I make it and he eats the whole thing and goes hmm, hmm, like he’s not sure it’s good. He says, come back tomorrow. So I do that, and he wants xiaoxiang turtle. What a ballbreaker this guy is, I’m thinking, but I remember in a while what to do, and I make it. Again, he says come back tomorrow. I’m thinking, this motherfucker is up to no good, so I say, I can’t because I have the dentist. I don’t really, because my dentist is my uncle and he does his shit in a chair in my mother’s kitchen. Tien says, if you want this job, come back tomorrow. So I have a weak moment and think, maybe there’s a chance. So I told him I’d move my appointment. Next day I show up at Imperial Hunan Garden, and like it was nothing, he says, now I know you want the job, and you can have it if you will help me to balance my chi. It will bring us into harmony. We will spend one hour in bed together.”
“Bastard,” Kacie said. “Well, you didn’t do that.”
> “Yes I did,” said Maryann. “And next day I show up for work and he hired a young man for the job. And since then, I say fuck famous chefs, and fuck working for other people. Chef Lee, you’re a pretty girl. Just watch out.”
“Thanks, I do.”
Louie and Alia sat down by them.
“You should watch out, too,” Maryann said to Alia. “Any young girl in culinary needs to be careful. The men want to take advantage of you.”
“I did double shifts and stuff, especially in Italy,” Louie said. “It’s a rite of passage.”
“Not like that,” Maryann said. “Like your boss says you have to fuck him. Did that happen to you in Italy?”
“Well, no,” Louie said. “My bosses were all men. Maybe I’d go with it if it was Giada de Laurentiis.”
“Pig,” said Maryann.
“Hey!” Louie pouted.
“Let me explain.” Alia patted his hand. “When I was in high school, before I was a Muslim, I was a little wild. I had a nose ring, I had a tattoo on my back.”
“What kind?”
“A little flower.”
“Wow. Do you still have it? I’d like to see.”
“Let me finish. So I guess when I went in for a job interview, the men thought I was available as a plaything. So I took a job at an organic vegan restaurant, really small, four tables or you could sit on a bench outside. In Harlem. And the boss Howard wanted to drive me home. I didn’t want to go on the subway because of the homeless — yeah, I was that stuck up — so I said yes to the ride. And then he started driving the wrong way. I told him, no, I’m uptown from here. You’re going downtown. And he said, ‘Oh, ha ha, I just forgot. Force of habit. I live downtown a few blocks. Well, we’re headed that way. You want a drink?’ I said, ‘I’m sixteen. I don’t drink, and my mom wants me home by midnight.’ So he wound up dropping me at the subway. I got home really angry, and I told my mom, and she called him herself to say I wouldn’t work there anymore.”
“All men in culinary aren’t like that,” Louie said.
“Boris never did that stuff,” Toby added. “He said he liked a woman with substance, with life experience.”