Chapter 1 #2
The hostess glowers down at an iPad affixed to the host stand, and she heaves a sigh when she spots my fake name.
I notice not all the tables are full, but the poor hostess is acting like they have a huge backup.
This tells me they don’t have enough waitstaff to cover their real estate.
She shows me to a two-top in the corner and thrusts a menu in my hands.
I take out my phone, open a blank sheet in the Notes app, and peck out my first impressions:
540 Blake
*Service could use improvement. Cold welcome. Kept waiting.
From a professional standpoint I am grateful that in the digital era, taking photographs of food and scrolling on one’s cell phone is accepted practice in a fine-dining establishment.
It sure beats the old days described by retired inspectors of sneaking off between courses to discreetly scribble notes on a covert notepad in a restroom stall.
All the while hoping an overly officious staff member wouldn’t check in on them during their third such trip out of concern that something was dreadfully wrong with the food.
But for the rest of the patrons, who should be fully present for their dining experience, it’s a shame so many are distracted by their phones.
My father would have hated it. He introduced me to fine dining in the era just a few short years before everyone had cell phones glued to their hands.
Had I been my baby sister Chloe’s age, introduced to the restaurant scene five or ten years later, I liked to think he’d have held my phone hostage until the bill was paid.
He might have indulged me long enough to take a photo of an exceptional meal. Maybe.
I’ll never forget the year he took me—just me—to a place on the coast called Serendipity.
It was a standard white-tablecloth, tie-preferred sort of place, but to me it seemed like a fairy palace.
It’s gotten a Michelin Star in recent years, but back then it was grateful to have been mentioned in the guide, even without the distinction.
I’d fallen in love not only with the food, but also with the theater of it all.
From the gracious host to the especially kind waitress and the introduction to the chef, it was a spectacle.
I read the menu. It isn’t laminated but is a loose sheet of paper tucked into a leather backboard designed for this purpose, suggesting the offerings are changed frequently.
A good sign. It’s printed with elegant but unadorned script on thick linen paper, much like a résumé.
Appropriate. A menu is very much a snapshot of a head chef’s CV.
Not the whole of their repertoire, unless they’re foolish or they’re running a chain restaurant with a ten-page menu, but it should represent a wide variety of their skills and talents.
The first thing I notice on the menu is the prices.
They wouldn’t be out of line in New York, Singapore, or Paris, but seem, according to my cursory market research, a solid 25 percent too high for Denver.
That is something crucial to bring up in the interview, as one of the five criteria Michelin takes into account is “value for the money.” If they want stars, they have to play it smart.
While few Michelin contenders sell their food on the cheap and their prices invariably go up as soon as they affix the red plaque with the white star on their door, value is still a consideration.
It’s one thing to drop a few hundred on a good meal that will leave you talking about it for weeks.
It’s quite another to shell out that figure for a meal that leaves you wanting a cheeseburger afterward.
The next thing I notice is a huge number of entrées that include vanilla, sweet and savory dishes alike.
It’s unconventional as a signature flourish, and I hope the effect won’t be too cloying.
I’m fond enough of the flavor, but too much of any one note can be tedious.
But if it’s the chef’s trademark, it would be my responsibility to select dishes that highlight it.
Ingredient quality is another tenet, and I hope the chef has brought their A game with some exceptional home-brewed vanilla.
My options selected, I scan to the bottom of the menu and see the words Executive Chef Edward Fairbanks printed in small type.
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.
I consider leaving then and there. I could message Nora, the director of operations for the restaurant group that recruited me.
I could claim my flight was late and if I stayed for the interview, I would miss my connection back to California.
That I’d risk missing my kid sister’s engagement party unless I went straight to California.
But if I flake on an interview, word will get around.
I might not get another GM interview, and it would set my career back even further.
Edward will block me from being hired here. I’m as certain of this as I am of my next breath, but that won’t reflect as badly on me as my not showing up to the interview.
I had done as deep a dive into research as I could, given that the interview was offered on short notice.
Edward must be very new to the place, or else they aren’t crowing too loudly about his association with the restaurant.
Which, given the industry rumors about him, might be true.
He had a spectacular failure in New York not long ago: a nouveau-industrial nightmare called Nava.
Out of morbid curiosity I’d taken the opportunity to eat there while on a weekend stay in the city last year, and it was as awful as the reviews said.
Most newspapers and magazines either left tepid praise or omitted the place from their reviews altogether.
I assume his investors had sway in publishing to bring that about.
But even if they’d secured a glowing review in the Times—and they didn’t—it wouldn’t have been enough to drown out a sea of bad word of mouth among the foodie crowd.
I had referenced the place in my blog, briefly, as a place to skip if on a short trip to New York.
I’d offered up one short sentence about the bad ambience and discordant flavor pairings and suggested three other “edgy” places that better managed to hit the mark.
It was perhaps untoward to review an ex’s restaurant, but if the chef had been a total unknown to me, I don’t think I would have done anything differently.
Actually, that isn’t true. I’d have done a full review and panned the place the way it deserved. But as a kind and magnanimous ex-girlfriend, I’d refrained.
It would seem he came to a less competitive environment to start over. But the investors won’t plaster his name all over the place until he’s earned some accolades. Accolades in the form of a red-and-white plaque one affixes to the front entryway.
Knowing Edward, this has to be eating at him. He lives for the recognition that comes with being an executive chef. To have his name kept on the down-low would be the worst sort of blow to the ego. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.
I am glad to see he isn’t making the same mistakes with garish ambience and discordant flavor pairings. If anything, he’s erring too far in the other direction. He couldn’t even come up with a name that was more exciting than the address, for crying out loud.
I decide to stay the course. Chances are, an executive chef isn’t in-house on a Monday. I’d escaped seeing him at Nava, and my luck may extend far enough to avoid an encounter here. I’ll do the interview and save as much face as I can.
I bury my face in the menu and pray I can stave off embarrassment.
But fate has really decided to mess with me these days.
“Sabrina fair, listen where thou art sitting,” a familiar voice croons from above me. “Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.”
I look up from the menu and there he is.
Edward. Not Teddy. Never Eddie. Always .
. . Edward. His bronze hair is a little grayer around the temples, a few more lines at the corners of his eyes.
Still devastatingly handsome. And quoting the Milton poem for which I was named, which is a low blow.
My mother envisioned a delicate water nymph of a daughter, not a sturdy Viking maiden—a fact she reminds me of often.
I study Edward’s face. Has his ego mellowed with age? Unfortunately, my experience has shown the opposite is more likely. Chefs’ egos age like whiskey: They don’t mellow. They become more complex and nuanced. More potent, oftentimes. But mellow? No.
I pause for the briefest of moments and consider the possibility of lying to his face and telling him that he must have mistaken me for someone else. But, unfortunately for me, I am a terrible liar. It’s also unlikely that my doppelg?nger is walking around Denver. Copenhagen? Maybe.
“I didn’t know you were much for Milton.” I like to think my words are laced with confidence and bravado, but I probably just sound like I have a cold. “It’s nice to see you, Edward. Or Executive Chef Fairbanks, if you prefer. Well done, you.”
His black chef’s coat with Fairbanks emblazoned on the right side above the words Executive Chef is sleek and fitted. He must have gone to the expense of having it tailored rather than deigning to wear something from a garden-variety uniform supply shop. Very on-brand for him.
“What brings you to Denver?” His eyes are on me, assessing. Classic Edward. Always analyzing. Always scrutinizing.
“Oh, just a long layover on the way home for the holidays. Lots of travel lately, and I couldn’t bear the thought of airport food for another meal. You know how it is. And when I heard you had a new kitchen, my curiosity got the better of me.” There. Not entirely true, but believable.
“I’m flattered you’d take an interest after all these years.” I think I detect a flicker of sentimentality cross his face but dismiss it just as quickly as the machinations of my own mind.