Chapter 21
EMILY
After my conversation with Gina, I spend the rest of the day studying this Chef Antonio Rodriguez “The Rod” she’s so fond of.
Gina’s right. Research shows he’s one of the most innovative pizza chefs in the USA right now.
But Gina’s all wide-eyed enthusiasm and innocence. As much as she has her heart set on this chef, it will take a lot more than a famous chef’s name to have the restaurant succeed.
For me, step one is to visit the restaurant and see “The Rod” in action. This is especially valuable because reviews praise the fun of watching him work at a chair in front of his open kitchen.
But at the same time, The New York Times review highlighted that getting a reservation at this place was near impossible.
No problem.
I scroll through my phone contacts. Clearly, I’ll need to call in a favor to one of my highly connected BU restaurant school professors.
On my first call, the prof tells me he’ll arrange things so I’m on the list for tonight.
Perfect.
All that apple polishing at BU paid off.
Now, as I sit in the back of the taxi, my phone pings.
It’s Anna.
“Em?” My bestie says. “Why have you been such a stranger? Too busy making whoopie with that hot new husband of yours?”
An image of Lorenzo surfaces unbidden. Especially the way he looked that first night, in those sexy black briefs.
“What I do with my sexy new husband is a private matter,” I tease, quickly changing the subject.
I spend enough mental bandwidth thinking about Lorenzo without having to discuss him with Anna.
“Fair enough. Where are you right now?”
“In a taxi headed to a very cool underground restaurant,” I say, trying to find a more comfortable position on the cracked vinyl seat.
“A taxi? What happened to the limousines? You’re moving down in the world, Em.”
“Guess so,” I laugh, watching a new part of the city blur past.
“I’m actually on a clandestine adventure right now. Gina’s excited about this trendy pizza chef. I’m checking him out tonight.”
“Is Gina with you now?”
“No. I need to check him out privately before giving her my opinion.”
I shift the phone to my other ear before filling her in on Gina’s restaurant project—the vision, the timeline, the kind of effort it would take to pull the whole thing off.
But even as I speak, my thoughts drift to Lorenzo.
The VIP room last night. The low light, the thud of bass through the walls.
And this morning, there was that cocktail napkin with a woman’s name on it. The one with that ridiculous heart over the vowel in her name
I want to hear my husband explain himself.
Ha! Here I am, even thinking about him as ‘my husband.’
Ridiculous. We’re married in name only.
He can do what he wants with ridiculous women who sign their names with little hearts.
“Okay,” Anna says. “But what’s all this pizza chef mania about? Pizza is pizza. Can’t you just mosey on down to your local Pizza Hut?”
“Gina’s plan is to elevate pizza to a fine dining experience. This chef I’m seeing tonight, Antonio Rodriguez, is supposed to be at the top of his game.”
“Is he a ‘cute chef’ at least?”
I think of Chef Antonio Rodriguez’s intense eyes peering up at me from that newspaper column I saw first in the New York Times and again in Manhattan Social.
“Cute, but in a very intense way. They call him ‘The Rod.’ He’s rumored to be an arrogant prick. But he has this new way of elevating pizza to a luxury item. Fermented yeast. Desiccated scallions …”
“Ugh, desiccated scallions! That sounds disgusting, Em.”
Anna emulates the drawn-out, death rattle of someone slowly dying a dried scallion-related death.
“Yet if anyone can sniff out whether this hotrod guy’s the real deal, it’s you.”
The cab comes to a sudden stop.
“Here we are, lady.”
I look up from my phone in surprise. What happened to glitzy Manhattan? This block is narrow and shadowed.
It’s squeezed between a check-cashing place with a busted neon sign and a bodega with a hand-lettered cardboard special taped to the glass.
This is as far from touristy NYC as one can get.
Yet I recognize the low-key restaurant from the pictures in Gina’s file, as well as the Restaurant News trade publication.
Like the best underground restaurants, it has no signage. You either know it’s here or you don’t.
“Okay, Anna, I’m here. I’ll call you later,” I say, paying the driver and stepping outside to the uneven sidewalk.