Chapter 1 #3
“I’ve always rooted for you, Edward.” Even if you didn’t believe me. The unspoken words hang heavy in the air over our heads, like a noxious plume of kitchen smoke we both want to escape.
He averts his eyes for a moment and clears his throat. “What looks good to you?” He gestures to the menu I’ve set aside. I’m unsure if he’s taking my order or asking for an assessment of his repertoire, but the answer is the same.
I glance back at the menu. “I was drawn to the scallops for the starter, the lamb for the entrée, and the vanilla bean panna cotta with the gingerbread espuma looks especially intriguing for the dessert?” I voice it like a question.
There is nothing in the rules against asking the staff, even the executive chef, what’s good that day.
He nods. “Good choices. Add a beverage pairing: white, red, and a dessert cocktail to go with it, and you’ve got yourself a meal. Want to see the wine list, or do you trust me?”
I consider. “Both, actually. I’d be delighted to follow your advice, but I’d love to see what your list is like.” Key information I’ll need for the interview. I might as well ace it since I’m here.
“Are you doing the sommelier thing these days?” His eyes sparkle as they search mine, hunting for information.
“Not now, but I did several years back. Boston. Eight years ago? Nine?” It seems like a lifetime.
His brows rise. “Impressive. Coming right up.”
He strides off to the kitchen, and the surly hostess provides the wine list a few minutes later. Her expression has softened somewhat, but she looks bone weary. She almost trips over her own feet as she hands it to me.
“So sorry.” She reddens as she rights herself. “Our expo quit last week, and I’ve been doing two jobs. Dead on my feet.”
She snaps her jaw shut as she realizes she probably shouldn’t confide this in a patron.
It explains a lot. The expediter is the link between the front and back of house.
There isn’t a role more important in the running of a restaurant.
Efficient waiters and talented chefs mean little if there is no communication between the two.
To ask the host to do both roles is like asking someone to juggle flaming batons while doing figure eights on roller skates.
Technically feasible but incredibly difficult.
And disastrous when it goes wrong—which is a near certainty.
I give her a sympathetic smile, and she rushes back to the kitchen.
Get your house in order, Edward. You know better than this.
He’d do better to run expo himself and leave the cooking to his sous than to have an inexperienced host try to do two jobs at once.
And he certainly shouldn’t have taken the time to visit with me when they’re down a key staff member.
I suspect there is a fair amount of chaos in back of house, and the previous expo snapped.
Probably mid-service. Edward didn’t run a Zen kitchen fifteen years ago, and I doubt very much that has changed.
In the unlikely event I get the job here, it will be quite the hurdle to get Edward to change his ways.
I consider searching online to see if the previous GM ran screaming into the night, but high-end places like these do their best to keep their dirty laundry off the internet.
They’re classy and spread gossip by word of mouth, the way nature intended.
It’s a full twenty minutes before I see the scallops and another five after that before the waiter, just as harried as the host/expo, remembers to bring the white wine Edward selected to go with it.
The scallops appear fresh—always a concern of mine when eating seafood so far from the coast—and the vanilla cream sauce is a bold choice to accent them, especially with the strong undercurrent of rum.
The sauce is mellow enough that it doesn’t overpower the delicate flavor of the scallops and draws out their flavor without giving too “fishy” a finish on the palate.
Full marks for the tenets of “mastery of flavor and cooking techniques” and “the personality of the chef represented in the dining experience” in the entrée.
I consider those criteria the most important, so it’s a promising start.
The Alsatian Riesling, a bit on the sweet side for an aperitif wine, has a hint of citrus that cuts the sweet notes short.
A strong start overall, but the Riesling is served a few degrees too cold, which masks many of the nuances in its flavor.
Not an insurmountable problem, but one that Edward should address with his sommelier.
The lamb is brought out before I can finish the scallops, which is never ideal.
Colorado is known for its lamb, and I’m excited to see what Edward has done with it.
Vanilla again. This time it’s a vanilla balsamic glaze that is, admittedly, amazing.
His saucier is very good at their job, and I hope Edward knows this and does all he can to keep them happy and on his staff.
The vanilla in the glaze is distinct from the one used in the cream sauce.
It’s earthier and contains notes of whiskey, rather than rum, interlaced with it.
The problem is that the lamb is overcooked and far too dry to serve to a customer.
The last of Michelin’s tenets is “consistency between visits,” which I can’t yet comment on, but there isn’t even consistency between entrées, which means the kitchen needs an overhaul.
There had clearly been an issue with the scallops that resulted in them holding the lamb back too long and reheating it before bringing it out.
It’s usually fine to “fire” a dish gone cold once right before serving, but there’s been a mix-up in communication, and the poor lamb has seen the frying pan at least two times more than it should have.
The two stalks of asparagus on the side are limp and pale too.
It’ll be weeks until asparagus is in season, and he should have chosen a different side that’s in its prime.
The whole point of a frequently changing menu is to serve food in season.
The red wine shows up, only two minutes late this time, but is a rather forgettable local blend.
I snap a few photos that show the lamb’s dryer-than-sawdust texture and push the plate to the side.
Despite the excellent glaze, it’s just too overdone to finish.
The dessert arrives, beautifully presented on a comically oversized plate.
The waiter doesn’t think to clear my entrée plate, which is left moldering at the side of the table.
The vanilla bean panna cotta is more complex than I expect, with bottom notes of cinnamon and coffee that take me by surprise. The gingerbread espuma—a fancy word for “foam”—is clearly a nod to the festive season and leaves me salivating. It’s earned an entry in my top three desserts.
Ever.
It’s good enough that, for a few moments, I don’t just need, I actually want this job.
I have visions of talking Edward into an entire themed dessert menu around the espuma, a Dessert High Tea before the matinee of The Nutcracker at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
Sumptuous dishes to make the Sugar Plum Fairy and Mother Ginger proud.
It would be a sensation. Moments after I’ve taken my first bite, the bartender presents me with a vanilla-infused hot buttered rum, the likes of which I’ve never tasted.
I consider the meal through the eyes of an inspector.
Were the last course the only course, I’d insist Edward ought to get two stars immediately, and to the devil with protocol.
Taking the first and last courses into consideration, I’d give him a confident recommendation for a star.
But with a clunker of a main dish—the remains of which still sit festering on my table—I could not offer him my recommendation.
And while service isn’t an official consideration, it is a dereliction of duty not to clear a plate.
Given that a decent amount of the meal has been left untouched, the waitstaff really should have asked if it was to my liking.
Edward, you are better than this. I wish chefs’ coats had lapels so I could grab his and shake him by them. So much potential. So much talent. So many needless screwups.
I start to take some notes on my phone. There are a lot of things I want to discuss with Nora.
I don’t relish the idea of working with Edward, but I know I can help this place run better.
To get his buy-in, I would have to frame it as helping to take a lot of the day-to-day mechanics of the place off his shoulders so he can focus on his vision—which is objectively incredible.
Edward emerges and his face falls when he sees the uneaten lamb on my plate, but he says nothing about it. He arches a questioning brow.
“The dessert was absolutely incredible. The cocktail too.” It’s the truth and he deserves to hear it.
“And the lamb?” He glances down at the barely touched plate. It speaks for itself, but he is insistent I speak the words out loud.
“Subpar, I’m afraid.” It’s the closest thing to a diplomatic response I can offer without disrespecting both of us with a lie.
His eyes flash cold. No hint of sentiment or nostalgia there now.
His eyes land on my phone for a moment and then fix on me.
“I’m sorry to hear it. By the way, good luck with your interview .
. . Ms. Turner. Don’t forget to mention your little experiment with The Anonymous Epicure.
I’m sure Nora will find it fascinating.”
The glow I’d felt from the warm rum cocktail and the decadent dessert dissipate instantly into frozen mist. Play dumb, Sabrina. “Edward, I’m sure I have no idea what you mean . . .”
He cocks his head, his expression just a degree short of lethal.
“You’re not the only one keeping tabs on old chums. Your little blog got too big to go unnoticed, and you made the mistake of writing up too many restaurants in the cities where you worked.
Not to mention your voice and style are obvious to anyone who knows you.
It wasn’t too hard to make the connection. ”
Shit.
“Let me make this simple. You panned Nava, but I won’t let that happen again. You mention my restaurant in your little blog at all and I’ll make sure every chef worth their coat from Bruges to Beijing knows who you are.”
“Listen, Edward, if I did run a blog, there is no way I’d platform this”—I gesture to the uneaten food on my plate—“even to pan it. I’d hate to alert readers to the existence of this place. Unless you turn the ship around, you deserve to fail like you did in New York.”
His face goes ashen, but he regains his composure. “Appearances matter more than truth in this business, Sorensen. Plenty of people are looking for the Anonymous Epicure and would be all too happy to believe that it’s you. And once your name is out there, it will be hard to regain that anonymity.”
His cards are all on the table now. He has the power to block me from getting this job.
I’d resigned myself to this as soon as I saw his name on the menu.
But that isn’t enough for him. He is poised to take out my blog and any shot I might ever have of Michelin too.
Aside from my father, Edward is the only one I ever told about my Michelin aspirations.
And it’s clear he has no compunction about ruining all of it for me.