Cocky Chef

by JD Hawkins

“Aren’t I a little overdressed, though? If he turns up in sweatpants and a T-shirt I’m going to die of embarrassment.”

  Asha looks at me sternly, like a protective mother.

  “If he turns up in sweatpants he’s the one who’s going to die, trust me.”

  I laugh gently.

  “He won’t though,” Asha continues, smiling with a lusty anticipation. “I’m sure he knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The cab pulls up at the address Cole gave me and I see him standing outside immediately. It’s hard not to notice him, the tailored lines of his suit lending him a striking silhouette in the fading evening light, all right angles and good posture. I step out of the cab and walk toward him, suddenly feeling like the dress is way tighter under the focus of his gaze.

  When I draw close he leans over and air kisses me. I almost swoon from his nearness and his subtle, masculine scent. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to leap into his arms and beg him to show me the back seat of his car. Maybe I haven’t been out with a guy in longer than I realized.

  “You look amazing,” he says, stepping back a little to cast his eyes down and up my body with admiring frankness.

  “Thank my roommate,” I say, before looking around at the long wall of solid brick behind us. “Where’s the restaurant?”

  Cole smiles and steps aside, holding out his palm toward a discreet stairway that leads down to a mezzanine door.

  “Down the rabbit hole,” he says.

  I step forward, wondering if he’s staring at my ass as I descend the staircase, and push open the door. The second I do I’m greeted with the soft groove of hipster music, the chatter of a few dozen diners, easy, buzzing, second-drink laughter. Old fashioned Edison lightbulbs hanging from antique fixtures fight against the darkness of the large space, casting their soft glow against the exposed piping and metallic tables. Sweet aromas fill the air, and I immediately start picking out the flavors: sweet and sour sauces, teriyaki, barbecue sauce that uses whiskey as a base, fresh cilantro and red onion and guacamole.

  I take a moment to soak it all in. The fashionable diners, the clean, angular, rustic-industrial aesthetic of the fittings. Something touches the small of my back and I turn to see that it’s Cole’s hand. He smiles and urges me toward an unoccupied booth, waving and calling out a few greetings to the chefs operating the open-plan hotplates.

  After settling into the booth I shuffle a little, picking at my dress to make sure it’s still in the right place.

  “Are you comfortable?” Cole says, leaning forward.

  “Sure,” I shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I was just wondering if you were a little too…‘down-to-earth’ for a place like this?”

  His concern is obvious, so I don’t take it as an insult. Instead I look around as if checking something, then smile back at him.

  “Seems to me the people here are eating and drinking just like they do in Idaho.”

  Cole chuckles lightly then flicks a finger for a waiter to come over.

  “You’ll like this place,” he says. “A buddy of mine set it up a couple of years ago. It’s already a staple of L.A. It’s a concept menu.”

  I raise a brow. “Oh yeah? What’s the concept?”

  “All the foods are hand foods. Continental fusion. Wraps, samosas. Sushi, antipasti. All of it’s good.”

  I nod politely, quieting the voice inside of me that wants to express how much I hate the notion of a ‘concept’ bar. Trends like this come and go, but great food that’s made well—that’s something that lasts. I’m interested to see if this place is more the former or the latter.

  When the menu comes I tell Cole to recommend a mix for us to share, and order a blueberry cider cocktail. Then I spend a while asking him about how the Vegas place is going, and what his plans are for the next time Chloe shows up for a lesson.

  By the time the drinks come I realize that Cole isn’t entirely the difficult, uncompromising, and reserved person that I—and most people—make him out to be. Sure, he’s passionate about cuisine, but he’s also funny and thoughtful and charming as hell. By the time the food arrives, he’s actually telling me he agrees with what I said about the lemon thyme and that he’s considering altering the recipe. And when the second round shows up, I’m telling him the awful story of my failed restaurant back in Idaho. I can’t believe how at ease I feel, given how poorly our first meeting went and how turned on I am in his presence.

  He listens intently, and I realize as I’m telling him how little I’ve actually spoken about my restaurant to anybody who wasn’t there. All the while he asks attentive questions about my business plan (I didn’t exactly have one) and day-to-day operations, nodding as he absorbs the information but never venturing an opinion, until I finish and find I’ve just recounted my spectacular failure to one of the most successful chefs in the country.

  When I’m done he leans back and looks at me in a way he hasn’t done yet, as if from some deeper part of him, his narrowed eyes glistening with some new perspective.

  After a pause that’s almost awkward, even after the second cider, he says cryptically, “I knew there was something about you.”

  Cole picks up a cannoli, looks at it for a second, then holds it out in front of my face. “This is great. Try it.”

  It’s an intimate gesture, feeding me like this, and yet somehow it feels natural to lean forward, toward those calloused hands, and take a bite from the creamy treat, our eyes never leaving each other. I swallow it and smile, deciding to change the subject before the heat inside of me makes me say something embarrassing.

  “What do you mean, ‘something’ about me?”

  “Something different. Something unfulfilled. Hungry. I noticed it when you walked out the other night.” He stops to spin his glass, frowning at it. “I’m curious though. What do you mean when you say you wanted to cook ‘real’ food?”

  “Real food…you know, stuff that isn’t so overelaborate. Pretentious food.”

  Cole turns his frown from his glass to me.

  “Food like mine, you mean?” he says, a little challenge in his tone.

  I hesitate for a second too long before saying, “What? No. No…I mean, Knife is basically a steakhouse at the end of the day, right? Forget I said anything.”

  “Come on, say it.”

  I look at him for a moment, my pulse racing under his gaze, like I just took a wrong turn somewhere and found myself trapped. Suddenly I remember that he’s my boss, that I’ve only worked at his restaurant for a week, and that I was already inches away from being fired.

  “Go on,” he urges again. “We’re both adults. I can take criticism. I’m curious to hear what you actually think.”

  I laugh a little nervously, hoping it’ll break the stiff look on his face, but his expression doesn’t flicker, and I know the only way out is the truth. There’s something about how he’s looking at me that makes it easy to forget he’s my boss, that I’m his employee. It’s easy to forget that he’s a household name who most people in the restaurant keep looking over at, and that I’m just a girl from Idaho with a failed restaurant behind her and not enough free time to figure out the next step forward. He looks at me, and I look at him, and we’re suddenly just a man and a woman, with all that entails. More intimate and trusting of each other than our brief introduction should make us, and somehow I feel like it’s the most natural thing in the world to speak my mind.

  “Ok. Well…it’s not just your restaurant, I see it in a lot of places. Overcomplicating everything. Taking the simplest dishes and flavors, which are already great, and then dressing them up like they’re going to a prom. Using three different cooking processes on a cut of meat just because it looks good on a menu. Fifteen different herbs so that people can’t tell what they’re even tasting. Covering everything in sauces as if we’re ashamed of tasting something in its natural state. Using its French name, then sticking it on a menu
with a five-times mark-up. Sometimes it almost seems as if the only way we can react to a culture of fast food is by going to the other extreme and making everything as difficult and as pretentious as possible.”

  After a pause, one in which I can’t quite determine what Cole thinks of my emotional outburst, he says, “Is this the alcohol talking?”

  “No. It’s all me,” I say, defiant with the sound of my own words.

  “Even though you studied with Guillhaume?”

  “Especially because I studied with Guillhaume.”

  Cole’s blank face breaks into a laugh, and I watch him in confusion.

  “You do realize that’s why your restaurant failed, right?”

  Indignant, I say, “My restaurant failed because of its location.”

  “No,” Cole says, with a cockiness that annoys me. Slowly, he leans forward. “You’re an idealist. You think too highly of the average diner—and that’s why it failed.”

  I grit my teeth, genuinely weighing the option of telling Cole exactly what I think, and the alternative of keeping my job.

  “You wanna hear a secret?” he says, taking my restraint as a sign to carry on. “I don’t tell this to many people. It took me too long to figure out for me to hand it out freely, but you…I think you should hear it.”

  I fold my arms and ignore Cole’s eyes flickering down to my cleavage for a second.

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “It’s three secrets, in fact. Three secrets that can make any dish taste infinitely better. Doesn’t matter what it is. Starter, main, hell, even a fucking sandwich.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Cole looks at me as if he’s judging whether I’m worthy, then, after a dramatic pause, starts to talk.

  “First one,” he says, waving a finger, “make the dish look good. Lot of people underestimate how powerful the eye is, but the thing is…we taste with it. A great dish doesn’t start at the first bite, it starts when the waiter brings it to your table and puts it in front of you. You see those Titian reds and Cezanne greens of a salad and you already taste the freshness—even if it isn’t actually there. Never serve a potato that isn’t golden brown and you’ll never get a complaint. We taste with our eyes first. The way a dish looks is a promise, a prelude, it’s like foreplay—”

  I almost spit out my drink.

  “Foreplay?”

  “Exactly like it,” Cole continues, without missing a beat. “Years ago, when I was starting out, working in catering with my partner, we perfected this recipe for ribs. Beer and honey cooked, just right. To this day I doubt anyone on the planet could do them better than us. But every time we put them out and waited for people to try them, all they’d say is ‘they’re good.’ That’s all. ‘Good.’ Well, ‘good’ wasn’t good enough for us. These things tasted flawless, but nobody seemed to get it. Then we figured it out—they tasted exceptional, but they looked like any other rack of ribs you’d find at a backyard cookout. Uneven tones, congealing juices, streaky grill marks.”

  Cole shifts in his chair with the vividness of his story.

  “So the next time we cook them, we fucking sculpt the things. We treated them like museum pieces, got those burn marks just right. Chopped them up a little to show off that texture, set them next to a chunk of golden cornbread and a pinch of cilantro to make those reddish-browns pop. And you know what happened the next time we brought them out?”

  “What?”

  “There were gasps,” Cole says, with a sense of aggressive satisfaction. “You bet your fucking ass people had more to say than ‘good’ after that.”

  I sit back and look over at the waiter, pointing at my empty glass when he looks over.

  “I believe it. What’s the second secret, then?” I say.

  “The second one is simple: Charge ridiculous amounts of money.”

  Now I’m the one laughing dismissively.

  “Come on, seriously?”

  Cole’s stern expression leaves no doubt that he is.

  “Seriously. You’re right that there’s a problem in the restaurant business—but it’s not the cooks—it’s the diners. You seen people eat lately? They taste the first bite only, and the rest is just filling a hole. Doesn’t matter how good your food is, if you’re giving it away cheap it’s just fuel. You charge a hundred bucks a head for a couple of lamb chops, though? People are gonna savor every bite.”

  “I get what you’re saying.” I nod, running my finger around the rim of my glass. “But is it ethical?”

  Cole just grins. “Ethical? Hell, I’m performing a service. They’re gonna sit for an hour talking with each other about how complex the flavors are, how aromatic it is, how perfectly cooked it is. They’ll try their hardest to figure out the seasonings like they’re solving a jigsaw puzzle. I’m giving them an experience they’ll never forget. You see, you gotta make people work for something to appreciate it, and if you hit them in the pocket, they’re gonna make damned sure they find something to appreciate.”

  My fresh drink arrives but Cole doesn’t tear his eyes away from me, lost in the momentum of his own arguments. He doesn’t even need prompting for the third secret.

  “And the last one,” he says, leaning over the table now, his voice low and directed, as if uttering a conspiracy. “You wanna leave your customers wanting more. Now I’m not saying leave them hungry, but you wanna leave them a couple of bites short of completely satisfied. The meal lingers then, so they don’t just forget it and start thinking about work or traffic or their taxes. Think about it: people will love a single bite of caviar more than they’ll ever love a plate of it.”

  I nod a little and take a slow sip of my drink. Cole sits back, satisfied.

  “And there you have it,” he says, victoriously. “The three secrets.”

  “Bullshit,” I say, calmly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I could not disagree more with everything you just said.”

  He laughs. “Really now?”

  “Yeah,” I say, almost confrontational. “I think your secrets suck.”

  The laugh dies away and Cole glares at me, his face flickering between confusion and offense, as if he’s never heard somebody speak to him about his craft this way before.

  “Do they? How so?”

  I take a deep breath, realizing that I’m well beyond the point of control, only my principles guiding me now.

  “You talk about dishes looking good—well, what if I don’t agree with your idea of what’s attractive? What if I like my salads cut roughly and jumbled in a bowl instead of arranged and stacked like a flower arrangement? What if I like food that looks like food, and not post-modern art that’s trying to guilt trip me into liking it.”

  “You don’t underst—”

  “And as for pricing stuff ridiculously just so that people take their time eating—I think that’s awful. Maybe that works on the money-obsessed celebrities that go to Knife, but where I come from, people aren’t so good at lying to themselves and they can’t afford to purchase a plate of satisfaction. If a bad meal is expensive, well that just makes it worse. You wanna make people appreciate something you made, then you should make it with love.”

  “Whether you like it or not, it’s the—”

  “And small portions? Jesus! It’s like you don’t even know what food is for anymore! Great food is great food. It should make people feel happy and satisfied, not starve them into thinking it’s better than it actually is.” I gesture at the doll-sized tacos and one-bite samosas in front of us. “Look at this. It’s like a child’s portion size! Maybe that’s enough food for supermodels and decadent actors, but for somebody who’s drained after a nine hour shift, this is only going to leave them more hungry. What were these, thirty dollars a plate?”

  I’m almost out of breath at the end of my rant, glaring back at Cole as if reflecting the dark irritation in his eyes. Before regret can set in, and the reality of where I am, before I remember who I’m talking to and how easily he can just hand
me a pink slip. Before I start backtracking like crazy in order to still have my job tomorrow, he shakes his head, that infuriating grin back on his perfect face.

  “You know that’s why your restaurant failed, right?”

  “My restaurant failed because of its location,” I respond quickly, realizing I’m repeating myself. Instinct taking over again. “Nothing else. If I had half as good a location as Knife I’d have thrived.”

  “You think it’s that easy, do you?” Cole smiles darkly, fully offended now.

  “I never said I think it’s that easy,” I reply. “But I know that I’m that good.”

  He doesn’t say anything after that. The silence is long enough for anxiety to set in, an awkward realization that I might have just fucked everything up—again. I sip my drink, looking around the restaurant to avoid Cole’s calculating stare.

  “Prove it,” he says, eventually.

  “What?”

  “Prove it,” he repeats. “You think you’re so good, that you’ve got it all figured out, that I’m wrong—then show me.”

  I put my drink down slowly.

  “How?”

  Cole shrugs.

  “Cook for me. Something great. Something you think is ‘unpretentious’ and ‘real.’”

  I shake my head. “You’re hardly the best judge. My point is what would work in a restaurant.”

  Cole smiles, as if I’m balking at the challenge. I think hard, and eventually figure something out.

  “Actually, you know what? I’ll do it. But if you like it, you let me put it on the menu at Knife. It could be a special—just for a week. See what your customers think. Then we’ll really see who’s right.”

  Cole looks off into the distance for a second to consider it.

  “Ok. Deal.” He offers his hand across the table and I take it slowly, waiting for him to laugh and tell me this is a joke. “But I have to try your dish first. I’m not just going to let you put anything on the menu. You’ll make it for me, and if I think it’s acceptable, we’ll add it to the specials menu and see if the customers agree.”

  “Sure. Just tell me when.”

  Cole throws me a look of confusion.