"Just you think because we both have ovaries, I'm your new BFF?"
"What? No."
"That's 'No, chef.'"
There's something blocking Ava's throat, as if she's swallowed one of the magic peas by mistake. "No, chef.”
"Good. Unlike, some people I could name, I don't talk to fresh meat. Get back to work."
"Yes, chef."
Jade goes back to her rapid prep, ignoring Ava completely, and Ava ducks her head back to her work. She has to be stone, she reminds herself. She isn't here to make friends. What does she care if people don't like her? She's here to do a job. She sets the pastries aside to rise just as the scallop first course goes out, a stream of wait staff gliding from the counter out into the dining room.
Ava has point for the third course: impeccable French onion soup with crusty baguette due out of the oven halfway through the second course, made again with the bag of boring old flour that might be Ava’s actual new BFF. She’ll serve the soup with pear and apple slices simmered in brown sugar as a sweet dipping option for the bread, and sundried tomatoes with salty anchovies and capers as a savory option. Her mouth waters and her cheeks flush just thinking about it. She checks the soup before sliding over to the sauté station to start the apples and pears caramelizing on two burners, simmering the anchovies on two more. Mario checks over her shoulder, gives one of the pans a flip, and nods before shifting back to his bigger project of the lemon sauce for the Ibong Adarna. When the venom shots go out, he sets his lemon sauce to simmer and takes over the anchovies, tossing in strips of sundried tomato mumbling, “Pick it up, Ava. Pick it up.”
She doesn’t think she’s being particularly slow, but she tests a pear with a fork and, finding it tender and oozing juice, and she starts plating the fruit into square dip bowls. Mario appears next to her half way through, spooning the savory option into matching bowls. “Pick it up,” he says, more urgently than before. He’s finished before she is, although her pears are much neater.
“Ava! Oven!” Christos shouts, and she’s slicing baguette, which is whisked away even as she slices. She turns to ladle the soup, but it’s already being done, and she follows behind, placing baguette into the soup bowls and grating cheese over the top.
“Let’s go, people!”
Ava’s cheeks burn from the heat of the burners and the dawning realization that she’s late. Late, late, late, moving as quickly as she can even as Zach swoops in and takes the bread from her, dropping pieces into place, bam bam bam. The wait staff is already lined up at the pass, the plates set with two square dipping bowls each and a gaping space where the soup should go. Dennis grabs bowls out from under her, then grabs the cheese block from her hand, chops in in half and hands it back, moving down the row of soup bowls and grating along with her, faster than her. The soups are not getting enough cheese.
"Ava! Now!" Augustine. His face is as red as hers.
She gasps, "Ten seconds, chef!" and grates as quickly as she can without shredding herself, without serrating the cheese edges, without the long slivers breaking into a short mess, trying to go faster, faster, steady, faster.
"Now!"
"There!" She jumps back as the last bowl is swept out from under her and delivered to the counter for plating. Augustine, Dennis, and Jade swarm the counter, wiping spilled soup from the sides of bowls, the edges of plates fast, fast, fast, steady, fast. Jade gets in Dennis's way, colliding an elbow with a hip, and they explode in swears, and Chef Augustine barks at both of them and sweeps in to wipe away the mess they made. "If we'd had these bowls two minutes ago…" “…Dicking around…” “…can’t hack it in a real kitchen.” The wait staff is already leaving, the finished plates already entering the dining room, even as Dennis and Augustine plate the last few. Dennis steps back, lifting both hands in the air as the last plate is shifted onto a tray and the last server leaves only two steps out of place.
Ava presses her hands to her hot cheeks. Embarrassment tastes bitter on her tongue.
The second the door to the front of the house stops swinging, Chef Augustine rounds on her. "The hell was that?"
"I was too slow, chef."
"Damn right you were too slow. The cheese only melts if it's hot. It’s not hot if you let it sit. It cools, Ava. It's useless."
"Yes, chef."
"You nearly ruined a whole course."
"I’m sorry, chef."
"Where do you think you are right now? Does this look like some leisurely lunch in a Tuscan olive orchard? Is everyone here siting around a table, watching you cut a baguette in slow motion. Are you hallucinating right now? Does this look like an olive grove to you?”
“No, chef.”
“Where are you?”
“Your kitchen, chef.”
“My kitchen, and no one here is drinking and enjoying witty conversation while you plate like a little priss. Who’s the only person here that gets to plate like a little priss?”
“You, chef.”
“Me. And when the saucier says to pick it up, you pick it up.”
As she says, "Yes, chef," Zach says, "She just wanted it to be perfect."
There isn’t enough air in the room. Chef Augustine's anger narrows along with his eyes and lips. It focuses. He turns with painful slowness towards Zach, and says in a deadly quiet voice, "Excuse me?"
Every single chef stills, poised for fight or flight, waiting for the land mine Zach just stepped on to erupt, not daring to breathe the air that tastes so strongly of smoke. Every single chef but Zach, who is too big an idiot to read the room. "She was being careful. She's trying her best to make everything she does perfect."
Ava may be having an aneurysm, because this is surely what it feels like when a blood vessel pops in your brain.
"Was I talking to you?" Augustine says.
Zach looks befuddled, like he’s genuinely confused to hear he wasn't part of this conversation, like he only just realized that Augustine is ticked.
"Let me make this real clear,” Augustine says, his voice still too quiet and too measured, “since it seems no one has told you this simple, basic fact. You too," he points at Ava without looking away from Zach, "and any of you other screw-ups who may not realize how food works. If the food is not all ready at the same time, it is not perfect. One part is cold. One part is hot. The cheese doesn’t melt. They don’t go together. If you're taking too long, worrying about not being perfect, you’re not just an idiot, but a coward. You hear that?" He swerved to face Ava again. "A coward too afraid to cook in the big leagues. A coward who lets other people fight her battles."
She opens her mouth to argue, to say she never wanted Zach to butt in. She never asked for that. She doesn't want his help. She doesn’t need his help. But a sharp look from Augustine reminds her not to talk back, not to defend herself.
Her mouth snaps closed, reopening to say, "Yes, chef."
Chef Augustine shouts to the kitchen, "Four more courses! Get back to work!" And life jerks into motion again.
She ducks her head to hide her face as she pulls down the croissants to proof them a second time. Christos doesn’t make eye contact. Somewhere off to the side, she can hear Jade snort.
She can't defend herself, and no one can stand up for her.
~
Ava strips off her white coat and is twenty degrees cooler, the air against her bare arms shocking and almost unpleasant. She slumps against her locker in the break room and wipes her face with a towel. Her hair is a mass of flyaway stands, all sticking out from her flushed face, and the sweat against her scalp doesn't even help to slick them back. She's a disaster. A disaster that screwed up French onion soup and can't make an omelet.
She's debating taking a long hot bath with a hard cider balanced on the tub rim against plopping straight into her bed without taking off her shoes. It's after midnight and her arms are sore, she's asleep on her feet, and she's so punchy she feels drunk.
So, of course, Zach picks that mo
ment to make his entrance. He opens the locker next to her, sighing a few times more than necessary.
When she doesn't speak or even open her eyes, he takes the plunge. "If they'd been helping with the soup course instead of focusing so much on the Ibong Adrna, it would have gone fine. No one should expect you to get that full course ready by yourself. I should have stepped up and helped out sooner."
Ava's felt a whole slew of emotions in this kitchen. Embarrassment. Disappointment. Fear. Anxiety. But never before has she felt rage. It's a rage that spikes and flashes and suddenly she's yelling. "I don't need your help! I don't need anyone's help. I can plate a damn soup course. Back off."
His eyes get all sympathetic, which just fans the rage. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You did your best."
"You really think that's my best? That’s my peak? That? That's who you think I am and what I can do?"
"What—"
"Screw you and your infantilizing bullshit. I'm sick of it. I don't need you protecting me or standing up for me or fighting my battles. I'm a grown woman, and I'm a professional chef in a professional kitchen, so Back. Off."
He stares at her, his mouth hanging limp. He looks so injured, so betrayed that she would say something harsh, that she possesses sharp edges that it makes her want to punch him.
"Do you not get what it looks like when you pull stunts like that?" she says.
"When I pull stunts?"
"Yes. You. You are at fault here."
"Chef Augustine's the one that got in your face. He and Dennis are the ones who are supposed to manage the work load."
"I messed up, Zach. That happens. I deserved to get chewed out, because I messed up. I don't deserve you treating me like a baby in front of everybody. That makes me look weak, like I'm waiting for some white knight to come rescue me. It's hard enough in there without looking any weaker than I already look."
"I don't think you look weak," he says.
She takes a breath, the tiredness crashing over her. "I'm a woman,” she says. “That doesn't make me weak, but it sure as hell makes those people see me that way."
She grabs her coat and bag from her locker and stomps out, leaving him standing, speechless, slumped, and alone.
~
In the fresh light of the next day, after a sleep and a cool down, Ava picks up a bag of Swedish fish as an apology. Zach has an unnatural love for Swedish fish. She gets into work to find him waiting for her with his head ducked like a bashful puppy, and a cheese Danish in a paper bag for her. They laugh and trade peace offerings, slipping into the alley and ducking their heads together to whisper and snack before the deliveries start rolling in.
“I thought about it, and you’re right,” he says. “It wasn’t my place. It’s just…” His eyes dart around. “It feels like there are traps everywhere around here. Everything’s a test of my cooking or of my character, and the character tests are like the opposite of everything my mama taught me.” He twists the Swedish Fish bag closed with a loud crinkle. He twists and twists to the point where he’s squeezing the candy into a mass. “With failing at the cooking too…it’s impossible not to fall into those traps.”
“I know what you mean,” she murmurs. “And I was wrong, too. You’re right, anywhere but here, standing up for me would have been a nice thing.”
He nods with enthusiasm and leans in closer. “I get that they’re trying to make us better chefs, and we need to toughen up--I mean, I need to toughen up. You’re tough already.”
She shoves him with her shoulder.
“But sometimes I wonder if what I’m turning into is something I really want to be. You know?”
“Secrets, secrets are no fun,” Mario sings. They jump up when they see him coming down the alley. “Gossiping about cute boys?” He snatches Zach’s Swedish fish away and dumps a pile into his palm. “It’s me, right?” He winks at Zach and shoves the handful into his mouth, grinning through reddened teeth. Zach makes a swipe for his candy, but Mario holds it out of reach like a bully on a playground, then tosses it back so Zach nearly fumbles it, and heads inside laughing.
They both take a moment to stare at the door, both thinking the same thing: this is where I work.
“It’s a great opportunity,” Ava reminds him, reminding herself out loud. Remember the smells, she reminds herself. Remember the way people roll their eyes into the back of their heads after their first glorious bites. Remember the love.
Remember the love.
A delivery truck rolls up and they don’t speak of it again.
On a Tuesday morning a week later, Ava makes a perfect golden omelet. Something clicks, and her every move is assured, controlled, her muscles relaxed and her hands deft, and she knows she has it before she plates. She’s got this. She gets this. She’s leveled up, and she can do anything.
Dennis tilts the plate back and forth, assessing the golden sparkles that catch in the light. For the first time in all the days she and Zach have had the fork sitting ready, Dennis reaches for it, cuts off a piece, inspects the fluffiness, the consistency, then pops the bite in his mouth and chews, eyes on the plate. He nods once. “Good,” he says, and Ava punches a fist in the air.
Zach shrieks and grabs her around the waist, lifting her in the air and spinning her around, shouting, “You did it! You did it! You did it!” She can’t help but laugh.
“Jesus Christ, did that noise come from you?” Jade sneers. “Grow a pair.”
There’s a round of imitating squawks, like rowdy penguins. A few of the junior chefs do little twirls, their arms held out to their sides. To Ava, their display is entertaining in how much they don’t realize they should be embarrassed, and she peeks over at Zach in hopes they can both snicker about it. Instead, she finds that Zach doesn’t agree. He’s rubbing the back of his ducked head, shifting uncomfortably.
As they disperse, Mario looks Zach up and down, reassessing. He pointedly turns toward Zach’s burnt omelet, then back to Zach. “Huh,” he says. A hum of agreement comes from the group.
Zach’s ears turn red when he’s emotional, something the rest of the group picked up on only a touch slower than Ava.
Her joy fades. She isn’t going to let everyone ruin her moment. She isn’t.
Christos, the Greek patissier with fingers that seem too thick to do the delicate work she’s seen him do, slaps a hand on her shoulder and steers her toward the pastry station. “Congrats,” he says. “Now the real hell starts.”
Zach makes his perfect omelet the next day. Ava rushes in for a high-five, but he shakes his head in a subtle motion and avoids eye contact. He heads off to the rotisseur station without any fanfare. It dawns on Ava that his victory over the omelet is null and void. He got beat by a girl.
~
The learning curve at the patissier station hits Ava like a wall. They use golden eggs in everything, and while she can now whisk them up and make an omelet in her sleep, she has to learn brand new procedures for quiche and cookie dough and cake batter. The bronze wheat flour, the amaranth flour, the almond flour, and the rye touched by a Roggenmuhme all interact with the eggs in unintuitive ways. The ritual of removing flour from its bag involves opening the bags as quietly as possible and singing specific songs or reciting specific prayers or ringing certain bells as you scoop and measure and pour into mixing bowls. The kitchen has sets of gold, onyx, and porcelain measuring cups and spoons, and memorizing which ingredient can touch which measuring spoon has Ava’s head spinning. Every time she thinks she finds a pattern, an exception pops up and flour explodes into a puff of black ash into her face. The cooking times are determined by smell rather than sight or pesky digital timers, and Christos tells her the bread is almost done when it smells like burnt plastic and then suddenly turns over and smells like garlic and honey and he has it out of the oven before it starts to smell like strawberries, which means it’s ruined. The kneading of dough involves elaborate dances of protective charms done with snapping fingers and twitchi
ng crosses drawn in the air with pinkies while her hands are already filled with a rolling pin. She has to roll some doughs with bottles of two-hundred-year-old honey mead, which Christos then splashes over the pastry in a way that stops Ava’s heart every time.
It’s such that she has to ask Christos to check her before she uses any tool at all, and it’s wearing on both their patience. Christos doesn’t already have a commis chef working under him, because he keeps dismissing them, sending them to the pantry or the entremetier when he decides they can’t hack it in magical pastries. The amount of time he gives his potential assistants varies from a couple months to a couple days, and Ava feels the pressure to perform building inside her with each hour she continues to be dead weight. Without additional help, Christos covers the patissier station mostly alone, and with the added burden of teaching her, their situation lumbers along at an ever more frantic pace.
At first, she tries to make notes, but there’s just not enough time for that and at the end of the day, she finds the pages of her notebook appallingly incomplete with words cut off halfway through when she was called away and large spaces left blank for her to fill in later, but once she has time, once she’s collapsed at her kitchen table at night to study, she has no memory of what she’d meant to write, and just stares at the notebook, straining her brain to remember twenty seconds of instructions snapped somewhere in her twelve-hour shift somewhere between the white lightning cake batter and the crust for the salamander pot pie.
“You’re a pastry chef,” Christos tells her, in what comes so close to a pep talk that she almost cries with gratitude. “It’s hard.”
The only thing that saves her is that pastry involves so much prep work that she’s not constantly rushing to make dishes as orders come in during service and screwing up in real time like everyone else. Like Zach. Her schedule changes so she comes in before the protesters gather, before the sun breaks through the front windows, and she and Christos bake bread and croissants and rolls and crusts and English muffins and cupcakes and ice cream and icing and fondant and chocolate sauce and candies and truffles and spun-sugar accent pieces. They prep, and when an order comes in during service, all she has to do is pause what she’s prepping (because even during services she’s constantly prepping for the next day, for the day after), slice a piece of cake or fry up some dough real fast, throw hot fudge over it, send it out, wash her hands, and go back to her prep work. The bread they make is handed over to the pantry so other chefs can use it for sandwiches at lunch service and they never have to look at it again.
The Etiquette of Mythique Fine Dining Page 2