The World's Greatest Chocolate-Covered Pork Chops

by Ryan K. Sager

  Gershwin whistled the way men do when they see an expensive sports car. “Golden Gate Magazine. That’s a big deal.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I saw the New York Times video. What was it the lady said about your pork chops?”

  “World’s greatest.”

  “High praise. I bet Boarhead’s assistant is anxious to try them.”

  “He didn’t mention them specifically.”

  “Chef Cannoli said Golden Gate Mag already chose two candidates for the Golden Toque. How many candidates will there be, total?”

  “Three.”

  “So one spot is still available.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Boarhead’s assistant is vetting Zoeylicious tonight.”

  Zoey hadn’t thought about that. Was that why Royston Basil Boarhead had told his assistant to eat at Zoeylicious this evening? Not soon, not next week sometime, but tonight? Nah, it couldn’t be. Could it?

  Gershwin bent down and kissed Zoey’s cheek. “I’m sure you’ll make the right decision. If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen sucking on a mayonnaise Popsicle.”

  Gershwin handed the folded check to Zoey and walked into the kitchen.

  Zoey stared at the check.

  She looked out the window at Zoeylicious, parked along the curb.

  She stared at the check again.

  You only live once.

  She ripped the check in half and let the pieces fall to the floor.

  Zoeylicious arrived at Jefferson and Hyde at 6:30 p.m. A crowd of hungry customers filed into Trolleys 2 and 3. Dallin and Gershwin had to turn half of the people away. “Sorry. Reservations only.”

  A few parties pretended to have reservations. One man accused Gershwin of losing his party’s reservation. Gershwin, who dealt with swindlers and fast-talkers on a regular basis (you know, jazz clubs), saw through the tactic and sent the man packing.

  Dallin ushered Faruq al-Falafel to Table 1 and wished him a “happy dining experience.” Then he stepped over to Table 2 to check on Tom Salado and Wendy Pfeffer.

  “Tonight’s meal is on the house,” he told them. “If all goes well, please ask about Zoeylicious’s wedding catering packages, perfect for your special day.”

  By 6:45, every reservation was accounted for, every table was occupied, and Zoeylicious was on the move. In Trolley 3, Valentine & the Night Owls riffed on a slow jam as cool as watermelon gazpacho. In Trolley 2, Dallin came to the serving windows. “Table one wants the S’meesecake.”

  “Roger that.” Zoey rubbed her hands together. Okay, Mr. al-Falafel, get ready for the best S’meesecake you’ve ever had.

  While Dallin tended to other tables, Zoey darted to the walk-in fridge. The walk-in door was so heavy she had to pull with both arms to get it open. She stepped inside and turned on the light. For a fraction of a second, she thought she saw the floor move. No, it must’ve been the swaying of the trolley and the sudden change from dark to light tricking her senses.

  Zoey took a cheesecake from the pie rack. She paused. Something about the cheesecake looked…wrong.

  She smelled it. Smells fine.

  She scooped up a little bit with her pinkie, licked it. Tastes fine.

  But something wasn’t right. If only she could put her finger on—

  At the center of the cake, the ivory filling bubbled up like a stalagmite.

  “What the cheddar?”

  A small black head burst out of the filling, gobs of cream dripping from its spindly antennas. Zoey recoiled with a shriek. The cheesecake hit the floor with a splat! The insect—a large cockroach—scampered for the shadows. Zoey stomped it with her boot, killing it dead.

  She laid a hand on her pounding heart. Stay calm, Chef. It was only a bug. And now it’s dead. Sure, you don’t know where it’s been, or what it’s touched, or if it had the black plague, and hundreds of creepy babies, and my once clean, health-code-compliant fridge is now a radioactive Ebola locker. HOLY CRUMPETS I’M GOING TO DIE!

  Her phone rang, making her jump. She checked the caller ID. Gershwin. She took a deep, steadying breath, and took the call. “Oui?”

  “Hi-de-ho, Chef, I got two Caramel Popcorn Lasagnas, five Honey Nut Eggnogs, one Athens-Fried Cucumber Crab Gyro, and one S’meesecake.”

  “Got it.”

  Zoey put away her phone. She scooted the smushed cake aside with her boot. Isolated incident. Stay in the game, Chef.

  Reaching for another cheesecake, she saw something move. Not on the cheesecake, but on a T-bone steak on a different shelf. A centipede, its creeping black legs tearing at the steak’s raw flesh.

  “Yuck city.”

  Zoey used a carrot to bat the centipede to the ground, then boom. Boot. Stomp. Squish-squish.

  Something was very, very wrong. Ants, weevils—that’s one thing. But a cockroach and centipede—that’s horror-movie stuff.

  The fridge crawled to life. Red ants swarmed in and out of bins of tomatoes, boysenberries, spinach leaves, and other produce. A furry gray tarantula slinked across a wheel of Brie cheese. Something long and green swam inside a jug of milk.

  After throwing up in her mouth a little bit, Zoey fled the fridge. She flung her body against the massive door, heaving it closed. Her hands trembled. Her stomach writhed. How did this happen?

  The top, bottom, and sides of the refrigerator door were flush with the stainless-steel frame. Airtight. Not even the tiniest specks of dusk could have squeezed through the cracks. So how’d the bugs get in?

  Then it hit her. Like a hurricane.

  I’ve been sabotaged.

  She zoomed to the driver’s box and flung open the door. “Knuckles, we got a problem!”

  “What kinda problem?”

  “A big problem. Last night—or this morning, or afternoon, I don’t know when—Chef Pao snuck into my kitchen and bugged my ingredients!”

  Knuckles pulled a lever, slowing the trolleys a little. “So let’s stop at a grocery store, buy new ingredients.”

  “We can’t stop. If we stop, people will think something’s wrong. If they think something’s wrong, they’ll ask questions. If they ask questions, they’ll find out my kitchen is infested. If they find out my kitchen is infested, they’ll call the bogeyman—”

  “Bogeyman?” Knuckles said.

  “Health inspector.”

  “I get it. We gotta be discreet.” Knuckles stroked his bushy black beard. “Hey, we could try the Montana ’89.”

  “This is no time for dancing!”

  “Joe Montana, 49ers QB, Super Bowl, 1989, threw the game-winning pass to John Taylor. Remember?”

  “Wasn’t born yet.”

  “Well, last summer, I was in San Quentin doing a stretch for…never mind what for. The warden was a real hardnose, wouldn’t allow us basic amenities like Tabasco sauce and nunchakus. So we’d arrange for our girlfriends to meet us at the south fence at rec time. They’d quarterback over all kinds o’ stuff: socks, pizzas, puppies, Xboxes, you name it. The guards never suspected a thing.”

  Zoey slapped Knuckles on the back. “Drive us to Beach Street. Hurry.”

  Zoey whipped out her phone and dialed a number she knew by heart, for she had dialed it hundreds of times. A man answered. “Hallo.”

  “Hey, Mr. Bregenwurst, it’s me.”

  “Chef Zoey, how are you this fine evening?”

  “In a pinch, actually. I need to place a huge order, and I need it ready in five minutes. Can you do that for me?”

  “How big is the order?”

  Zoey rattled off the names of various sugars, flours, marinades, herbs, spices, oils, cuts of steak, cuts of chicken, shrimps, lobsters, crabs, clams, salmons, sausages, pepperonis, fruits, vegetables, milks, creams, butters, cheeses, crackers, and chocolates.

  Mr. Bregenwurst cleared his throat. “You need all this in five minutes?”

  “Four minutes now.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “How good is your throwing arm?”

&nbs
p; “I beg your pardon?”

  Zoey gave Mr. Bregenwurst the 411 on the Montana ’89. “Only throw the groceries into Trolley One,” she added. “Do not throw anything into Trolleys Two and Three or you’ll hit my customers. Be inconspicuous. Tell your staff to draw as little attention to themselves as possible.”

  “Thirty-five years I’ve been in business,” Mr. Bregenwurst said. “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever been asked to do.”

  “See you in three and a half minutes.”

  Dallin came to the serving window. “Table five wants the Mongolian Beef Lettuce Wraps with Celery Mushroom Chow Mein.”

  “It’ll have to wait, Dal. I’m busy putting out a fire.”

  “Fire? Where?”

  “It’s a metaphorical fire.”

  “Oh.” Dallin scratched his nose. “What’s a meta…phim…orkal…?”

  “It means I’m dealing with a time-sensitive emergency that could, metaphorically speaking, burn my life to the ground. I need you to buy me some time. Go make small talk with the customers. Compliment the men. Flirt with the women. If you see a young couple, tell the girl she’s lucky her boyfriend brought her to such a classy establishment. Keep them occupied so they don’t notice the delay.”

  “Remind me what a ‘metaphammer’ is?”

  “Go!”

  Dallin approached a table of elderly Hispanic women. “You ladies look youthful this evening. Would you like to see my muscles?”

  Zoey checked the rest of her kitchen for bugs and was relieved to not find any. With disinfectant rags, she wiped down every surface, every corner, every appliance. Twice.

  As Zoeylicious turned onto Beach Street, Zoey opened all the windows on the right side of Trolley 1. She looked up the street and saw Bregenwurst Market. Men and women in green aprons were filing out its doors, hefting bulging grocery sacks.

  Nearing the store, Knuckles slowed Zoeylicious to a steady five-mile-per-hour crawl. And then the groceries started flying.

  Zoey ducked behind the counter as dozens of grocery sacks sailed through the open windows, landing on counters, the sink, the stove, the floor. Next came items that didn’t fit in grocery sacks: cured hams, racks of lamb, banana stalks, potato sacks, blocks of cheese, a four-pound bar of dark Ghirardelli chocolate.

  By the time Trolley 1 had passed Bregenwurst Market, Zoey’s kitchen had enough groceries to feed the 49ers defensive line. Zoey poked her head out the window and blew Mr. Bregenwurst a kiss. He tipped his hat and chuckled, bidding her guten Abend.

  Zoey unpacked and organized the groceries, performed a quick mise en place, and set to work on the S’meesecake. She would have to make everything from scratch. Time was against her.

  First, the crust. With a rolling pin, Zoey reduced a stack of graham crackers to a mound of rubble. She tossed the crumbs into a bowl, stirred in sugar, cinnamon, and soft butter. With her fingers, she spread the graham cracker goop onto the bottom and sides of a springform pan, creating a smooth, bowl-shaped crust. The crust looked so yummy that Zoey half considered serving it to Faruq “as is” and moving on to the next order.

  On to the filling! In sixty seconds flat (a personal best), Zoey whipped flour, sugar, cream cheese, milk, and eggs into a cheesecake filling as smooth and fluffy as a whipped mousse. She scooped the filling into the graham cracker crust inside the springform pan.

  Typically, a cheesecake takes an hour to bake. Zoey didn’t have that kind of time. Fortunately, she knew a trick that would bake the cheesecake in three minutes or less. She hadn’t tested the trick in years, but it had worked once, so it was worth a shot now.

  Zoey fitted a lid onto the springform pan. She wrapped the pan in tinfoil. She placed that pan inside a bigger pan: a roasting pan. She poured boiling water into the roasting pan, submerging the bottom two-thirds of the springform pan. She fastened a lid to the roasting pan.

  Using a wooden peel the size of a snow shovel, Zoey deposited the heavy roasting pan into the fires of the brick oven. If all went according to plan, the flames would heat the roasting pan, the roasting pan would heat the water, the water would heat the springform pan, and the springform pan would become a mighty super-oven, unbeholden to the laws of thermal dynamics. Like Leonardo da Vinci but with food, Zoey thought, remembering her first meeting with Miss Lemon.

  Now, the s’mores.

  Zoey unwrapped a one-pound bar of Ghirardelli dark chocolate. Under normal circumstances, she would have made the chocolate bar from scratch, but these weren’t normal circumstances. She unwrapped the chocolate bar, set it on the block, took up her trusty, super-awesome Santoku, and chopped the bar into bits. Next, she unwrapped a dozen cubes of caramel, dropped them into a tin mug, and placed the mug on a hot burner. The caramel began to bubble and melt.

  These tasks didn’t quite occupy three minutes, but they came close enough. With the wooden peel, Zoey retrieved the roasting pot from the brick oven.

  Typically, a cheesecake needs four hours to chill and set. Again, Zoey would have to improvise.

  Careful to not drop the red-hot roasting pan, she trekked across the kitchen. Holding the peel over the saltwater tank, she let the roasting pan slip off the blade into the cold water. Steam billowed from the top of the water. The pan hissed as it sank to the bottom of the tank. Zoey wondered if the ice-cold water would cool the pan in a hurry, or if the hot pan would cause the water to boil and cook all the crustaceans alive. To her relief, the cold oceanic water won the battle for dominance. The tank water didn’t boil. The crustaceans stayed safe. The pan cooled in seconds.

  Leaving the pan in the tank, Zoey impaled six jumbo marshmallows on a long roasting fork. She held the fork over the fire pit, six inches from the dancing flames. She waited until the marshmallows were golden brown and beginning to melt off the fork. (She didn’t allow the marshmallows to catch fire. That would have created char. Zoey had a simple philosophy on char: great on pork, bad on marshmallows.)

  Zoey set down the hot marshmallow fork, the handle on the counter, the middle of the fork leaned against a pan, the marshmallows hoisted in the air.

  She reached into the chilly saltwater tank. The roasting pan’s handles were cold to the touch. Her back ached as she drew out the heavy pan and placed it on the counter.

  Let’s see if this worked.

  She removed the lid from the springform pan. The cheesecake filling looked settled and beautiful, smooth and creamy, firm but delicate.

  Relieved, Zoey removed the sides of the pan. She spread the gooey, melty golden-brown marshmallows evenly over the cheesecake. She added the chopped chocolate bar, whipped cream, and a cherry. For the final touch, she poured the mug of hot caramel in a pencil-thin zigzag down the center of the cake.

  À la perfection.

  Zoey handed the S’meesecake to Dallin in Trolley 2. Dallin carried the cake to Faruq. Holding her breath, Zoey watched Faruq take his first bite.

  Faruq chewed.

  He swallowed.

  He blinked.

  He breathed.

  He gave Zoey a thumbs-up.

  Zoey’s legs were shaking. The muscles in her arms and neck felt overworked and tired. Zoey lumbered into the pantry. Sitting on a barrel of flour, she enjoyed a hunk of Chocolate Mexicano: Dark, Cayenne Pepper. She drew a deep calming breath. She closed her eyes, focusing her thoughts on the task still at hand. A restaurant full of hungry customers awaited. She had taste buds to rock.

  I’ll deal with Chef Pao tomorrow.

  Something fell. It wasn’t big or heavy, but it was loud. Outside, on the street.

  Zoey awoke with a start, which is never a good way to do anything, especially something as unpleasant as waking up. The digital clock on her nightstand glowed green. 3:03 a.m.

  Static electricity crackled between her pajamas and sheets as she rose to kneeling position on the bed. Parting two blinds slats with two fingers, she peered out the window into the foggy dark, to the opposite side of the street, where Zoeylicious was parked. The trolleys were mer
e silhouettes, untouched by the meager house lights on Francisco Street. Behind the trolleys, the steep, vine-covered hill looked like a sleeping dragon, its leafy scales fluttering in the invisible wind.

  She couldn’t see anything to account for the loud sound—a BAHFFFF! it had been—that had woken her up. Of course, things were so dark and foggy she couldn’t see much of anything. For all she knew, the sound had come from another street, or from her own dreams.

  She watched and waited, wanting to know for sure that her trolleys were safe.

  Minutes passed. Nothing moved. Nothing happened. Zoey was about to turn away from the window, lie down, and go back to sleep.

  But then she saw something move. A figure, dressed in dark clothes, crouched atop Trolley 1 like a giant tarantula. At least, she thought it was a figure and she thought it had moved. Might’ve been the leaves beyond the trolley. Might’ve been nothing.

  She continued to watch and wait. Until, at length, the figure moved again. It rose to its full stature. From her vantage point, Zoey couldn’t tell if the person was short or tall, fat or skinny.

  Zoey yanked the lift cord, and the blinds shot up to the headrail. She slid open her window, placed her hands against the screen, and shouted, “Freeze! FBI!”

  The prowler ran for it, leaping from the roof of Trolley 1 to the roof of Trolley 2, then from Trolley 2 to Trolley 3, then onto the street, landing with a roll. It raced toward Hyde Street, formless, like a living shadow, at once visible and invisible.

  There was no point chasing the prowler. He or she or it had too big a head start. Besides, the prowler was probably armed and Zoey was in no mood to get murdered.

  Turning onto Hyde Street, the prowler passed under a lamppost. While the light failed to reveal the person’s face, it did expose one distinct feature:

  A long braided ponytail, whipping in the wind like a violent snake.

  The next morning, Zoey went to Mission Police Station. She found Officer Haggis in his windowless office, seated at a small desk, a raspberry Danish in one hand, a Styrofoam cup of black coffee in the other. The morning paper lay on his desktop, opened to the sports section.