Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
THE WOMAN WHO CONQUERS KITCHENS (EXCEPT POSSIBLY THIS ONE)
E lise Moreau had a system.
It was not, as her producer Theo liked to describe it, “ a rigid, joyless, neurosis-adjacent framework that makes people cry. ” It was a system.
It had categories. It had contingency columns.
It accounted for delays, customs variations, language differentials, and the chaos of filming in countries where pointing a camera at someone required seventeen forms of cultural navigation.
The system was good. The system had kept Beyond the Plate, her online video show, running for four years, sixty-two episodes, and three continents.
And hopefully, soon to be picked up by a network, which meant syndication, more money, more advertising, and more opportunities.
She was ready for the big time. But first, she had another episode to film.
Iceland was episode sixty-three.
She’d planned the route meticulously. Typically, she went to multiple locations in one country.
Iceland was no exception. She’d start with the first two days in Reykjavik hitting a rooftop bistro and a harbor fish market, then south for the geothermal dining experience that had been haunting her inbox for six months.
The Lava Sanctum. Every review she could find—and there weren’t many; the place was almost aggressively secretive—said the same thing, from breathless foodie blogs to a single, cryptic mention in a Scandinavian culinary journal: There is nothing like it.
Go, if you can get a reservation. Stay as long as they’ll let you .
She had a reservation. Five nights. And an immersive experience with the notoriously reclusive chef who supposedly put all temperamental chefs to shame. She’d heard that before. She’d survived some of the worse chefs in the world.
It was odd how this restaurant came to her attention, not that Iceland had not been on her radar.
She had long wanted to come here, but she needed a focal point, a destination to pull it all together.
Then, as if by magic, one appeared in her inbox one day.
The Lava Sanctum was completely unknown to her and to most online sites, despite its exclusive nature.
But the owner was persistent, demanding that she needed to experience this unique place.
The more she heard, the more intrigued she’d been. So here she was.
The rooftop bistro was amazing, with delicious food and a view of the harbor and mountains that helped her settle into the unique culture that was Iceland.
She toured the markets and even attempted the hot springs, but chickened out at the thought of sharing a public pool, even with her swimsuit. It was too public for her.
She had an itch to get on the road to The Lava Sanctum.
So, on the third morning, she left early.
The drive from Reykjavik took her through a landscape that made her want to stop every ten minutes, which she indulged a bit too often, putting her behind schedule.
The landscape was so diverse, from green fields, to lava and rocky moonscapes with mountains looming over them.
Lupine bloomed purple across the roadside in defiant, cheerful masses.
Lava fields stretched before her — black and corrugated, ancient, like the crust of a world that had been baked and never quite cooled.
In the distance, a mountain sat against the pale summer sky looming over everyone like a silent sentry.
The first sign of trouble was at the quaint inn that she’d booked for her stay.
“What do you mean you don’t have my room?”
The desk clerk gave her that universal hospitality smile, but Elise saw the lines of tension around the eyes and set of the jaw. “A pipe burst in the room, flooding it. It will take days to dry it out and repair the pipe.”
“What about another room?”
“We’re all booked for the week. All other guests have checked in. And before you ask, we don’t have another inn for thirty miles.”
She stepped outside, taking deep breaths and reminding herself of the itinerary.
There had to be an alternative. She usually has a backup for this.
Her contact said they had rooms if she needed one.
She had declined at the time, preferring to find her own space, but she would have to throw herself on their mercy and hope for the best.
She headed for her rental and continued to the restaurant to stay on schedule.
The Lava Sanctum’s address led her to a car park at the base of a lava field that led to a huge towering mountain.
She parked in a small, discreet gravel lot with a wooden sign in Icelandic and, below it in smaller letters, English: The Lava Sanctum.
Reservations only . Follow the stones . A path of flat, fitted volcanic rock wound away from the lot and disappeared between two formations of ancient black lava, as if the earth had simply swallowed it.
There was no visible building. No entrance canopy. No valet stand, no doorbell, no comfortingly human presence.
There was a path, and then there was ground, and then there was the mountain .
Elise stood at the trailhead with her shoulder bag with her laptop, her camera kit, and studied the area.
This was not expected. Was she in the right place?
Was this employee only or did customers have the same experience?
She pulled out her camera and snapped a few pictures, since it was all part of the exclusivity of the location.
Then she recorded some video and a brief commentary to ensure she captured her initial thoughts.
“Okay,” she said, hiking her bags and starting up the path.
The path wound for perhaps three minutes through the lava field before it descended—gently at first, then more sharply, following a natural crease in the rock.
Then the path split. There was a sign pointing up the hill, and to a more polished stairway for customers.
Another path through the crease in the rock for employees only.
Her email told her to follow the employee entrance.
So, she continued to the left. The formations grew taller on either side.
The air changed. It was cooler here, and carried a faint mineral tang—water, or steam, or something like the hot springs she saw in Reykjavik.
The light shifted from the relentless gold of the sun to something dimmer, filtered.
And then she saw the employee entrance.
It was not dramatic. It was, in fact, almost perversely understated for something that had been described to her as a “singular dining experience.” A wooden door, iron-banded, set into the rock face. A single lantern burning beside it. A small brass plate: The Lava Sanctum. Employee Entrance .
Her chest tightened.
She stood in front of the door and took a deep breath.
The gravity of the situation crashed over her.
She had done many immersive experiences.
It was her trademark. She had worked a lobster pound in Maine at 4 a.m., a ramen kitchen in Tokyo during the Friday service rush, and one genuinely harrowing afternoon in a Lyonnaise butcher shop where she hadn’t been sure whether she was filming or being sized up.
This was a door. She had walked through many doors. But it felt like everything was going to change if she opened it.
She pushed it open.
The first thing was the stairs. Stone steps, worn smooth, descending in a gentle curve away from the entrance.
A rope along the wall for a handrail, old iron rings holding it.
The ceiling was natural rock—low, textured, roughly four feet above her head at its highest—and the walls pressed close on either side, narrowing to perhaps five feet wide.
Elise froze.
Her breathing, which had been perfectly fine a moment ago, echoed in her ears. Loud, harsh, heavy.
The ceiling was not that low. She knew that. It was, objectively, adequate. She had sufficient headroom. The walls were stone, solid, which meant they were not closing in, because walls did not move. She knew all of this.
She also knew the exact dimensions of a London Underground car, the cubic footage of a service elevator in a Chicago hotel, and the specific measurements of the wine cellar in the Michelin-starred restaurant in Lyon that the sommelier had described as “intimate” when he planned a romantic dinner for the two of them not expecting her to flee.
She counted. One breath in. Two out. She had a plan for this. Whether it worked or not was still to be determined.
The tight band in her chest loosened, fraction by fraction.
A figure appeared at the bottom of the stairs—a woman about Elise’s age in a white shirt and dark trousers, her blonde hair in a neat French twist, smiling up the staircase with the cool professionalism of good front-of-house training.
“Ms. Moreau? Welcome to The Lava Sanctum. I’m Sigrid.
I’ll take you to the chef’s anteroom for your briefing.
” A pause, her cool expression clearly noting Elise’s panic and there was a slight softening.
“The stairs are the trickiest part. After that, it opens up considerably.”
It was the most useful thing anyone had ever said to her in a hospitality context.
“Thank you,” Elise said, and followed the younger woman, her hands clenching the rope railing.