Chapter 6 #2
They’re clearly just making things up now, because what could possibly be the difference between cleaning and sanitizing?
Mebel tries to pay attention to Chef Clarke, but the thing about being a trophy wife is Mebel has never had to do cleaning or sanitizing for a single day in her life.
Back home in Jakarta, the house is kept spotless, and Mebel has never once thought: I wonder what brand of cleaning solution I should buy for the sink.
The irony is she often watches cleaning videos when she mindlessly scrolls on social media.
In theory, Mebel knows that the best way to clean your kitchen sink is by pouring salt on a half lemon and using it as a scrub.
She also knows that you should pour baking soda and vinegar down your sink once in a while.
Maybe. But her sink never seems to require those things, and also, Chef Clarke has been talking about the art of cleaning a kitchen sink for over ten minutes now, and not once has he mentioned lemons or baking soda.
This whole thing is nowhere near as relaxing as a TikTok.
The class goes on for two more interminable hours, during which Mebel fidgets endlessly in her seat and half listens to the lecture.
Then finally, thank god, they break for lunch.
The students file out, some of them chatting with one another, down the hallway and to the dining hall.
Mebel has to admit that she is pleasantly surprised by the vastness of the building.
From the outside, it is a humble affair that can’t possibly be compared to the flagship school in Paris, but on the inside, it’s turning out to be much larger than she expected.
The dining hall is large, easily fitting over fifty people, with large windows on either side that let in a generous amount of sunlight.
There are rows of long tables where students from other courses are seated, and the food is served buffet style.
And this is where Mebel stops and appreciates, for the first time since her arrival, the fact that she is in a culinary school.
There are tureen after tureen of international dishes, each one looking more delectable than the last. The first few tureens have obviously come from the Meat Identification and Preparation class.
They contain roast chicken and cuts of minute steak, all of them meticulously butchered by the students and cooked to perfection.
As Mebel walks on, she comes to the results of the Seafood Identification and Fabrication class.
The tureens are filled with freshly shucked oysters and beautifully filleted seared fish.
The baked goods section is even more impressive.
The school offers a wide range of baking classes, from basic ones that go over foundational methods of creaming, blending, foaming, and so on, to advanced classes that go into food science and methods that are so complicated they require a basic grasp of molecular chemistry.
There is a wide selection of freshly baked breads as well as pastries that range from humble café fare to pristinely decorated little cakes that look like they belong at Harrods.
Mebel helps herself to a small piece of chicken and some roasted vegetables, then makes her way to the tables.
And here, she pauses. It has been decades since she last found herself in a school cafeteria, and the last time she was in one, she was in a very different position.
It was at USC, where she had long established herself as the queen bee of the Chinese-Indo society, and wherever she turned up, people would bend over backward to ensure there was a spot at the table for her.
But here, at the Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts, Mebel is not only a new student but also—ugh—the oldest student in the school.
She scans the room and adjusts the thought to: Not only the oldest student here, but the oldest by at least two decades.
It is official; she is at least one, if not two, whole generations older than the toddlers in here.
If Mebel didn’t know any better, she would mistake the chest tightness she’s currently experiencing as social anxiety.
But, no, that’s not possible, because trophy wives do not have social anxiety; they have Gucci.
Taking a deep breath, Mebel keeps her chin up and plunges into the crowd with her tray of food.
She passes by a long table that is half-empty and ignores the instinctive reaction to perch at the very end of that table and eat quietly while training her eyes on nothing but her food.
It would be comforting, yes, but she did not become the president of the Chinese-Indo Club at USC by seeking comfort.
And she is not about to allow herself to backslide like this, not when she’s just arrived at a whole new school.
What is this place but a chance for her to establish dominance?
And so she finds the loudest table filled with the most gregarious students and slides her tray right in the center of it. She smiles. These kids are not going to know what hit them.