“Oh my god,” said Evan. “This is just like onFriendswhen Monica gives that restaurant a bad review and the owner offers her a job.”
“It’s not… Well, okay, it is exactly like that. But this is not an episode ofFriends.”
“You’re not allowed to watchFriendsanymore,” Paige told Evan.
“Okay, fine,” said Evan, “but what an incredible opportunity. And you’re a great chef, Linds. You’ll kick ass at this.”
“It’s not just about making good food. Running a restaurant means managing people and logistics and all that.” There was so much to this job that overwhelmed Lindsay. Sure, she could cook a meal, but she’d have to cook a few hundred every night, or coordinate a kitchen staff to cook them. And they’d have to get done in a timely manner, and they’d have to be consistent, and they’d have to go out to the right tables. She’d have to manage supplies and order food and troubleshoot and problem solve. She had just enough restaurant experience to know how chaotic a busy kitchen could be. It hadn’t occurred to her until she’d left Pepper that the challenge was not cooking, but everything else that came with running a restaurant.
She was not at all confident she could do this job.
But what if she had an ally like Brad at her side? What if he were the executive pastry chef and they ran the kitchen together? He had more experience with the executive part of the executive chef job.
“I just don’t know. It was a very nice offer, but I don’t know if I can do it.”
“I know it would be a lot of work.” Evan tilted his head as if he were thinking. “I mean, I don’t know anything about how restaurants are run, but you’re smart and talented and you can figure it out. And it’s not like it would be just you in the kitchen, right? You’d have other chefs working for you, right?”
“Yeah, I assume there would be a team of people in the kitchen. That’s actually the part I’m worried about.”
“Why did you quit working in restaurants, anyway?” Paige asked.
Lindsay frowned. Her stock answer was that she’d hated being a line cook and flipping hamburgers. The monotonous work of her first job wasn’t great, but she could have stuck it out and then started working her way up the ranks of the city’s best kitchens, the way Brad had. She had culinary school friends who were doing great things now, working in fine restaurants, building their own spaces. That could have been her.
She’d pushed a lot of that aside because she knew it wasn’t fair to blame Brad for her bad choices. She was a smart, independent woman who had been living and working and making her own way in New York City for a long time. And yet, at some point, she’d decided that if she couldn’t have the future she wanted, she just wouldn’t cook at all.
But what if she could have that future now?
“Does it make me a bad feminist if I say that when Brad and I broke up, some of the magic went out of cooking? Our relationship was over and I just…didn’t want to cook anymore.”
“No,” said Paige. “I think it means you really loved him.”
Lindsay sighed.
“So now that he’s back, you want to cook again?” asked Evan.
“It’s not even that. I was in that kitchen at Pepper cooking a couple of steaks, and I realized at one point as I was putting together the meal and picking out the sides and getting just the right sear on the steaks that I was really enjoying what I was doing. The mechanics of cooking and thinking about how to make a complete meal werefun. And I’mgoodat this. So, yeah, even though it terrifies me, the offer is kind of tempting.”
“I think you should go for it,” said Paige.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. When are you ever going to get another opportunity like this? And then you could probably talk to Lauren about managing people, because she’s the best boss I’ve ever worked for. I’m not just saying that. She’ll tell you straight when you’re doing something wrong, but she also leaves you with the sense that she’ll defend you to the death if anyone else tells you you’re doing something wrong.” Paige smiled. “Like, the other day, this customer came in to complain about Monique. He’d ordered a latte and had neglected to tell Monique he needed it to be soy, and he actually came back to complain about his stomachache because he was lactose intolerant, andthenhe tried to claim that Monique was angry and yelled at him when he’d ordered soy.”
“And Lauren listened to this whole screed but because obviously Monique is the calmest, most mild-mannered person who works in the whole café, Lauren asked her if the man had ordered a soy latte. Monique asserted that he had not. I was working at the counter and can verify that he just asked for a latte. And Lauren just turned to this guy and said he was a racist and he could leave and never come back.”
“Yeah, the old ‘angry Black woman’ stereotype does not fit Monique at all, except for the ‘Black woman’ part,” said Evan. “I’ve never heard her lose her temper with anyone.”
“I didn’t know people in New York City could be so blatantly racist,” said Paige.
“Oh, you sweet honey child,” said Evan. “A man on the street called me a faggot yesterday, merely because I was walking down the street while gay. If you think there are no bigots in this city, you are sadly mistaken.”
Paige sighed. “Anyway, I was just trying to say, Lindsay, that I think you should take the job. It’ll be really hard, I’m sure, but also really rewarding.”
“Paige is right,” said Evan. “Normally, I would say, only take the job if you really want it, because I know you also love your job at theForum. But the way you just talked about cooking a steak convinced me this is what you really want. So, yeah, I think you should take the job.”
Lindsay was still not at all confident she could do the job, but she was touched that her friends were so encouraging. “I’m definitely considering it. I have to give Joey an answer by Monday.”
Evan laughed. “So you and Little Joey Maguire are on a first-name basis?”
