CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Kyle wanted to punch the air after pronouncingmi amorcorrectly.
First, he’d had a fabulous call with Chef Fourier and now he’d gotten praised by his Spanish teacher for mastering rolling hisR’s in Spanish.
The nuance had proven his hardest challenge after years of speaking French, a language that favored softer, rounder sounds. Being able to call Madisonmy lovein Spanish with a good accent had been one of his goals. His online Spanish teacher smiled as she gave him the next phrase.
Someone pounded on the door.“Kyle!”
He recognized Brooke’s urgent voice. Shooting out of the chair, he leaned into the screen. “Excuse me. I need to see what’s wrong. Let’s reschedule.”
His tutor only nodded before clicking off. He rushed to the door, which he’d made a practice of locking ever since Dean had barged in during one of his lessons. Flinging it open, he scanned her shocked face. “What happened? Is it Nanine?”
She shoved her phone in his face. “The William Silver review dropped twenty minutes ago, and it’sso hot my phone started ringing with A-listers calling to see if I could use my influence to get them a table. I even had a crown prince’s secretary call me! I tried to call you again and again, but your phone went to voicemail. You didn’t respond to my texts. What are you doing? Why is your door locked?”
His mind was already spinning. “I was in a Spanish lesson with my tutor. Shit! So the article was that great, huh?”
Brooke clicked on her screen. “This makesLe Monde’sreview look like child’s play. Listen to this.”
Nanine’s is the Paris restaurant no one can currently get into quickly, with reservations of nine months out making it one of the most coveted restaurants currently in the world.
I’m about to make that situation even worse for prospective diners.
Being fortunate enough to have a dear friend in Paris who’d wisely secured a table before Nanine’s reopened after a major remodeling and installation of a new chef de cuisine hailing from Miami’s renowned La Fleur, Chef Madison Garcia, I arrived with unusual excitement.
I have never had a meal with bread pairings before, and with Paris being a city renowned for bread, the combination was intriguing, especially in a world where gluten issues have redefined fine dining.
The avant-garde addition of specialty breads alongside French classics didn’t merely tantalize the senses. What Nanine’s maverick menu has done is redefine French cooking, the kind of culinary supernova that makes me want to secure my next reservation.
Restaurants hailing their own experimentation with culinary boundaries have become so banal I steer clear. Yet Nanine’s quietly serves you with the kind of gourmet honesty I have rarely encountered in my thirty years as a food critic.
Chef Nanine Laurent cooked with the kind of heart andpassion that delighted diners for decades until her recent heart attack. This critic has always wondered why Nanine’s did not receive more august praise from the culinary gods. I can only hope that travesty is firmly in the past.
This new menu reaches that touted excellent standard of French cooking previously only secured by greats like Paul Bocuse, Alain Ducasse, and Joël Robuchon, the latter of which is the perfect comparison.
Chef Robuchon made art of mashed potatoes. Nanine’s makes art of bread, as a powerful and universal call to the one food humans have enjoyed across the world since time began.
Paired perfectly with soul-nourishing French dishes, interspersed with plates that revolutionize in their boldness of flavor and simplicity, Nanine’s brilliance is a standout on the restaurant scene—one that will redefine an entire generation of restaurants that will try and fail to copy its imagination and soul.
Kyle couldn’t close his mouth. He’d received plenty of positive reviews before, but this one was culinary gold.
“Then he goes on to talk more about the meal, which you can read later.” Brooke pushed her phone into his chest. “Kyle! We need a plan. I cannot turn down crown princes, Oscar winners, and the hottest singer on the planet and her fiancé.”
“Them too?”He chuckled shakily. “Holy shit. This is huge. I mean, we knew…but… I need to get to the restaurant. Does Madison know?”
“I called Nanine to tell her to go down to the kitchen since Madison doesn’t touch her phone during work, but I imagine the calls started coming into the restaurant. Dean told me the online reservation system has so many hits, Nanine’s suddenly jumped from a nine-month wait to fifteen months.”
He walked back to his desk, shrugged into his coat, andpicked up his phone. “We need to grab a bottle of champagne.”
Brooke shook her head as she straightened her navy pantsuit jacket. “You let Madison decide on that. She and the staff still have to prep for tonight. You and I need to figure out how to handle the calls and the media because we’re now under siege in the best way.”
She was right. When he checked his phone, he had messages from major news media outlets, from print to television.
“We’re going to need a publicist,” he told Brooke after sifting through the first twenty.
“I have a few people in mind,” she responded quickly after tapping something into her phone, working quietly in front of his desk. “So does Axel.”
