Spiced

by Dalia Jurgensen

  “Is that ready?” Marlene’s voice snapped me back to reality. “The dessert,” she went on. “Can I take it? My table’s in a rush. Pre-theater,” she explained.

  I looked down at the warm pear tart Tatin oozing caramel, my right hand poised above the plate, a scoop of fromage blanc ice cream ready to finish the dessert. I hated to put the ice cream on warm desserts before I had someone ready to pick them up.

  I squeezed my right palm around the scoop and, with a flip of my wrist, let the ice cream fall onto the warm Tatin. With my left hand, I wedged a chunk of pecan brittle into the ice cream. Done.

  “Ready,” I told Marlene. She quickly headed back to the dining room.

  I looked over at Joey. He was so talented, standing there keeping watch over his kitchen. He was calm and commanding and fair, stern but sometimes playful. The cooks respected him, the waiters adored him, and all the women vied for his attention. We had been open for six weeks, and everyone wanted to be his favorite. Even women working in neighborhood offices had shown up for lunch waving his photo from a recent local magazine review. He charmed them all, including me.

  Aside from the brief conversation a few days after “that night,” Joey and I never talked about what had happened between us, we simply went back to work. Judging from the amount of press we’d already gotten, our public relations company was doing its job. Scarabée had been featured in plenty of local magazines, and Joey’s photo had been featured almost as often as his food. The restaurant had been relatively busy since opening night, and as a result I’d been too busy maintaining my dessert station and helping out with the kitchen to worry about what had happened between Joey and me. Until Camille walked in that night.

  At my spot at the dessert station, I was perfectly poised to watch the younger, clean-smelling Camille cozy up to Joey. I was ten hours into yet another fourteen-hour day, in my uniform of super baggy chef ’s pants reminiscent of MC Hammer and shapeless chef ’s coat (the smallest size available is still too big for me), my short hair pomaded into place, and my forearms sticky with sugar and covered in burns. Camille’s freshly shampooed, flowing hair was framing her face and big doe eyes. I felt about as far from fucking hot as possible, and I couldn’t believe I was jealous. What had I been thinking, sleeping with my chef? Was I stupid? I knew that sooner or later he’d find someone else to be with and that, given the close quarters and long hours in which we worked, I’d find out about it. I hadn’t counted on actually having to watch.

  I pushed the uncomfortable reality out of my head and went back to work. I pulled a bowl of pistachio biscotti dough out of the refrigerator beneath me and plopped it onto the stainless steel counter. If I could finish rolling out the dough into logs at night during my down time, it would be ready to bake the next morning. I’d be one step ahead of the game, and keeping up with the heavy workload was all about staying one step ahead, using every available second. Using a curved, plastic bowl scraper, I cut off a hunk of the stiff dough, dusted the table with a sprinkle of flour, and dropped the dough onto the floured surface.

  But rolling out logs of biscotti dough did little to distract me from the harsh reality that Camille had brought with her when she’d sashayed into the kitchen. I suddenly saw myself as just one of many employees Joey had taken home. I was a cliché. Worse, I shared the honor with the ultimate restaurant cliché: the coat-check girl, the easiest hookup in the business. And she was French, too. Before I knew it, I was replaying my night with Joey in my head, trying to remember all the details, looking for clues in the hope that it actually meant something to him.

  I gently caressed the ball of dough outward while keeping the pressure even with each hand. I remembered his thick fingers in my hair, my mouth on his neck. I slowly worked each stump, stretching the dough outward into long, thick, even logs. I lined them up evenly on a half sheet pan lined with parchment paper. I pictured my hands on his . . .

  “Doll!” commanded Joey. I looked up from the biscotti. “Give Rob a hand.”

  Rob (aka Rob the Slob) had been working garde-manger for more than two weeks and hadn’t yet learned how to work efficiently or neatly. Since our stations were right next to each other, he became my responsibility. I quickly rinsed off my hands and wiped my table free of flour and residual dough. Then I glanced at the tickets hanging in Rob’s station and looked down at the plates he’d begun in front of him.

  “What about the cherries?” I asked. Caught like a deer in headlights, he stopped his shuffling and looked up at me. He was a mess. He moved way more than he needed to, using three motions when one efficient move would have sufficed. He was the kind of cook who always had a filthy apron and always seemed out of breath. He hated having to answer to a girl.

  “The dried cherries,” I specified, “for the duck confit salad?”

  He stood still for a moment, looking painfully at the duck salad, wanting so badly for me to be wrong. I was not.

  “Fix it,” I told him.

  He turned away with his head down, plucked a few of the bright red cherries from his mise-en-place, and added them to the salad, then pushed the plate forward so it could be picked up by the food runner, Sayid. I assessed the dupes hanging in front of him and put up two green salads (I was still amazed at how many of the ordinary salads we sold), a salmon tartare, and a warm goat cheese and golden beet salad. He was in the weeds already, and it wasn’t even crunch time. I washed the vinaigrette off my hands and took my tray of biscotti logs downstairs.

  By the time I returned, the printer was beginning its steady staccato, informing us that the dining room was filling up. Joey’s voice took on that “don’t fuck around” tone as he called out appetizer orders.

  “Rob!” he demanded. “Pick up two green—one SOS; three duck; three tartare; and a beet—no onions on that beet.”

  He reached into Rob’s station and added copies of the new tickets to the dupe slide, framing his station with a curtain of white paper rectangles across the top. I stepped in, before Rob drowned in a swirl of mesclun greens, chianti vinaigrette, and chopped herbs. Not wanting to be reprimanded in front of everyone again, he silently stepped aside and let me help.

  While we worked on the appetizers, Joey continued calling out orders, forewarning the rest of the cooks of their upcoming pickups.

  “Vinnie!” he boomed. “On order: two salmon—one medium, one mid-rare; a squabie; and three filet, two mid-rare and one well done.”

  “Well done?” Vinnie snapped without losing a single second of precious time and without a slip of his smile. “Who the fuck eats filet well done?”

  “Some asshole from Jersey,” answered Billy from the hot appetizer station. “It is Saturday night!”

  “Frank,” Joey continued, ignoring their banter and directing the orders at Frank, who worked the sauté station in the middle of the line. “You got two pasta, four—that’s four—bass. Jeez, they love that bass. And two cod. And while you’re at it, fire tables thirty-two and fourteen. Let’s get their food outta here before the next big pickup.”

  I helped Rob get his appetizers out while keeping one eye on every plate he put together. Before long, the kitchen became a swirl of controlled chaos—chaotic to an untrained eye, and controlled by Joey. Everyone, aside from poor Rob, was working with practiced movement, careful not to waste a single turn.

  “How many miles do you think we walk each night here, just within our own little station?” joked Vinnie.

  “Five miles,” piped up Billy. Vinnie looked at him incredulously.

  Billy shrugged. “I wore a pedometer once. Just to see.”

  Vinnie was about to razz him: What kind of a loser wears a pedometer to work? The cooks seemed to thrive on a constant flow of teasing, dissing, and practical jokes, though Vinnie had yet to be the butt of any of these. He was the one who poured Tabasco (or salt or white vinegar) into Billy’s iced coffee when he wasn’t looking, and it was Vinnie who humiliated any waiter who dared to complain, giving voice to the collective exaspe
ration of the cooks who worked twice as long and earned half as much money. His mocking voice sent waiters running out of the kitchen.

  “Keep it down, guys,” Joey interceded. “Pay attention to the food.”

  More tickets. More calls. Plates clinked, pans clanked, but otherwise the kitchen became quiet with intent. No more banter.

  Suddenly the owner was in the kitchen standing next to Joey, exactly where Camille had been not too long before, talking into his ear. He turned and left the kitchen. Joey looked down for a moment, then headed toward my station. I left Rob alone to meet him. He looked serious.

  “Doll,” he said, standing close, “I want you to go downstairs and get two of every dessert on your menu, garnishes, too, the best you’ve got. They have to be perfect.”

  He paused, leaning in. “She’s here.”

  “She” was Ruth Reichl, the restaurant critic for the New York Times, the most prestigious reviewer we could get. I couldn’t believe the moment had actually arrived.

  “Yes,” was all I could say.

  Then he said, “Come back upstairs. I’m gonna need your help up here.”

  I ran downstairs, thinking of nothing else besides collecting my desserts and making a good impression. It is the day that every ambitious restaurant hopes for. Both Joey and the owner knew what she looked like, and for those who didn’t, they’d posted an old photocopy of her face that had been passed through the restaurant world. We also had a list of known aliases she’d used in the past, as well as some phone and credit card numbers that had gone with them. Though we all like to believe that every single diner receives equal treatment and food, the reality is that no one gets the complete and utter devotion and focus of the entire restaurant staff like the critic from the New York Times.

  I was back upstairs in five minutes, desserts in hand, searching through my candied rose petals for the most beautiful specimens, picking over my various tuiles for those that were perfectly baked and formed. I planned every inch of each plate.

  “Okay,” said Joey, pulling the dupe out of the printer. “This is her table: twenty-three. VIP! Pick up! One goat, one duck, one tartare, and a crab crêpe. Got it?” He looked over at me. I nodded. Regardless of what had happened between us personally, we still had full communication in the kitchen: I knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

  Rob had already pulled down the appropriate plates when I stepped over to his station. He looked up at me. Joey looked at him. Rob looked at Joey.

  “Let Doll take care of this table, okay, Rob?” he said sternly and unapologetically. Rob stepped aside, head hung down.

  I carefully composed the salads, making sure that each leafy green was perfect, each tender morsel of duck confit free of gristle, the Gorgonzola perfectly crumbled and evenly distributed. I tasted everything (tasting is the only way to really know if there’s enough salt; in fact, diners should hope that the cooks’ fingers have been in everything they’re eating), adjusted the seasoning, styled the plates. I aimed for that ideal salad pile that simultaneously looks architectural and completely effortless.

  The goat cheese plate was all about color. After Billy handed me the small puck of warm pan-seared goat cheese, I mixed a salad of roasted golden and red beets, frisée, chives, and pickled red onions and gently molded it into a ball on top of the goat cheese, almost like a tiny tumbleweed. I dotted the naked border of the plate alternately with an intensely purple beet reduction, vibrant green chive oil, and syrupy black balsamic reduction. Spiced candied walnuts were the final touch. The salmon tartare was the quickest. The chopped raw salmon, avocado purée, caviar, and crème fraîche had been layered in a two-inch-high cylinder before service started. I simply unmolded it onto a circle of thinly sliced and flash-marinated cucumbers. With a final wipe of each plate’s edges, I pushed the appetizers forward, where Joey had been watching, waiting. He nodded his approval, then called to the most reliable food runner to deliver the first course to table twenty-three.

  “Sayid,” Joey told him sternly. “This is a very important table, understand?”

  “Yes, Chef,” he answered. Though still young, Sayid was a veteran food runner and took his job very seriously. He kept his plates perfectly balanced and paid meticulous attention to detail. “I know,” he assured.

  “I want you to clear the table,” Joey instructed him. “And I want to see their finished plates before you drop them off at the dish station.”

  “Yes, Chef.”

  “Okay, Sayid. Go.

  “Okay, guys,” Joey continued. “Whatever you got working right now, get it out. I want everyone to be able to focus on twenty-three. It’s gotta be perfect.”

  By the time twenty-three was ready for its entrées, the cooks had their pans hot on the stove, their proteins pulled out of the refrigerators and seasoned, their most perfect garnishes chosen. When the call to fire the table came, everything else was put aside, and the four entrées for twenty-three became the only thing that mattered. Joey left his post and stepped behind the line to oversee every detail.

  “Doll!” he directed, nodding his head toward the expediting station.

  I took my cue and filled in for him while he helped out with the entrées. I kept track of new tickets coming in, fielded any questions from the waiters, kept an eye on Rob, who had been left to tackle incoming appetizers on his own, and got the last-minute touches ready for twenty-three’s entrées: a tiny quenelle of thickened yogurt, a perfect sprig of chervil, a dollop of caviar.

  Camille was probably standing vacantly in her coat-check area, smiling hopefully at the customers as they came and went, laughing at whatever they might say. She probably didn’t even read the New York Times, let alone know who was at table twenty-three. Maybe she was fucking hot, but her job was to stand around and smile, take a coat, match a number now and then. She’d even been banned from answering the phones ever since we found out she’d giggled in response to a customer wanting to change a reservation: I am sooo sorreeee! I do not speak English vereee well! She’d never be trusted to oversee the dupes or be relied on to make food for the New York Times critic. Maybe I wasn’t fucking hot, even without my shapeless chef ’s coat, but at least I made a contribution. No one would put her name in a review.

  After twenty-three’s entrée plates came back much like the appetizers—mostly clean, aside from an only partially emptied marrow bone, over which Joey obsessed—I got the dessert order: tarte Tatin, crème brûlée, pyramid, pomegranate bombe. I slid a tart Tatin into the oven and with a practiced and steady hand, I plated each dessert under Joey’s watchful eye.

  I shook an even layer of white sugar onto the surface of the crème brûlée and burned it to an even, deep brown with a propane torch. Quickly, before the caramel set up, I placed two perfect candied rose petals on the crust. It was such a simple dessert, but I didn’t want it to seem as though I had overlooked its plate, so I carefully stacked four small pieces of pistachio biscotti in the shape of a crisscross next to it.

  On to the pyramid. I carefully set the chocolate mousse pyramid in the center of a round white plate. I’d sprayed the pyramids with milk chocolate, which gave them a sandy-looking coating, appropriate for a pyramid, I thought. The garnishes were simple: a large dot of blackberry sauce in the front of the plate and a round vanilla tuile that had streaks of purple running across stuck into the pyramid. The tuile appeared to be a setting sun and the blackberry sauce its reflection on the plate. The final touch was a small triangle of halvah.

  The pomegranate bombe, a dome of frozen lemon verbena parfait with a ball of pomegranate sorbet hiding in its center, was my favorite plate of all. I set the dome on top of a smaller almond dacquoise (a crunchy meringue) so that it appeared to be hovering just an inch above the plate. Then I stuck sliced almonds into the bottom edge of the dome, so they splayed out in a circular pattern. The result, floating over the plate with a river of pomegranate reduction and crème anglaise below, looked like something out of The Jetsons.

  By th
e time the three were done, my tart Tatin was warm. I turned it upside down and onto its plate, quickly made a perfect quenelle of fromage blanc ice cream, which I set on the Tatin, and gave the nod to Sayid. My desserts were ready to meet their fate, as was I. Everything I’d worked for thus far culminated in that moment when the critic feasted her eyes on what I hoped she would think were great-looking and even better-tasting desserts. Taste was my number one priority, but I cared about how they looked, too, knowing that a customer could be sold on a dessert just by seeing it pass by in the dining room. I’d tried to make all of my desserts slightly playful and not too fussy. I was proud.

  “Good job, everyone,” said Joey. “Now let’s finish up the night.”

  Once the last customer was fed and table twenty-three’s dessert plates returned (mostly cleaned, aside from a half-eaten pyramid, over which I then obsessed), we peeled off our night’s worth of sweat and returned to the clothes of regular people. We all—waiters and cooks alike—needed a drink and headed out to the corner bar for some unwinding. We replayed the night over and over. Who spotted her first? The owner. Good call! What alias did she use? Marge Hooper. It got added to our list and passed on to our friends in other restaurants. Was she nice? Polite. Did she know we were on to her? Nobody knew.

  After an hour, I was spent. Tired from the long workday, the overwhelming conversation that surrounded me in the bar, the excitement, and the booze. And from my earlier bird’s-eye view of Camille acting so cozy with Joey. She wasn’t such a bad person, I knew that deep down. I guess I just hadn’t really let go of my own night with Joey.