“He hissed at Miso one time!” I protest as the door shuts.
Chapter 49
Maillard Reaction
Jack
Fable is officially two weeks old, and I’ve barely been able to keep up with demand.
Despite all my complaining about Poppy’s social media strategy, it worked. She launched the restaurant into the public eye perfectly. With Season creeping into full form, thanks to the approach of the holidays, we’ve been booked out every day of the week. I had to close the books heading into this weekend, a problem most restaurant owners would love to have. Bret reviewed the restaurant highly, with a dry comment about the dinner theatrics that are apparently part of my brand now, and every night, it seems like a party comes in with a professional camera to photograph themselves with the food.
With the sale pending, I haven’t wanted to bring on new staff, so it’s been me, Owen, Hazel, and Herman in the kitchen, with Chester helping up front, and Kiara when she doesn’t have late clinic hours. I don’t take any of the profit, giving everything back to the crew after the bills are paid, and I let my meager savings dwindle in hotel fees; I nearly smashed one of the houseboat’s windows the first morning I woke up in it alone.
We’ve kept it simple: just dinner, no substitutions, no changes. The menu fits like a glove now, easy to execute even on a crowded night. Under other circumstances, I’d expand to lunch, start thinking of specials, but time is counting down on this place, not up. We stick to dinner, and I spend the entire day on my feet prepping. If I play loud enough music and get into the zone, I can push all the guilt and pain out of my head.
For a little while, at least. It always comes back, sometimes for the most innocuous of reasons: assembling Poppy’s trifle, easily the most popular dessert on the menu, or noticing a diner with blonde hair and a shadow of her smile. I accidentally locked myself in the walk-in for a few minutes the other day, and instead of banging until someone let me out, I closed my eyes and remembered the times I tugged Poppy inside for a kiss.
She always complained about the chill, but she kissed me back just as enthusiastically.
It’s slow in the kitchen this morning. Chester’s puttering around, going through the liquor inventory, but otherwise, I’m alone. My scrawled to-do list covers every inch of the white board. There are fresh provisions to unpack, and bills to settle, and prep to work on. We need to make fresh stock and demi-glace, for one, and break down the extra-large weekend order of meat, and figure out why the hell the sink is leaking again.
All in all, normal kitchen shit. Things I’ve done hundreds, if not thousands, of times. It’s enough to keep my hands busy. Drowning out my thoughts is another story. I don’t feel like music this early, and my head is aching from a late night spent putting the kitchen back to order. I’ve slept for approximately three hours, so coffee is the only thing keeping me upright.
I take a look at the list, sorting it out by time in my mind, and grab the first set of crates. It’s all dairy, fresh eggs and cream and butter. I unlock the walk-in.
It seems odd that the version of me that existed here with Poppy is the same as the one moving through this kitchen now.
It feels like everything has changed on a molecular level. A Maillard reaction, not of a piece of meat or fish, but of myself.
I unpack the eggs, checking to make sure none of them are cracked. A tiny, flickering part of me wants to smile. Poppy liked hearing about the science behind food.
“Explain it again,” she’d said to me one afternoon ages ago,sitting on the counter in jeans, rolled to mid-calf, and an oversize T-shirt advertising Newport Beach. “Why is it called a Maillard reaction?”
“Because a guy named Louis-Camille Maillard discovered it.”
“And it’s about browning?”
“It’s when, say, the protein compounds in a piece of steak react with reducing sugars, like glucose, during high heat.” I’d poked her with the end of my tongs. “Color is flavor, and that’s why.”
“So it’s alchemy, basically. You’re a wizard.”
I remember the way she grinned, sure that comment would get me fired up. And it did. I’d lectured her some more, and then practiced that technique with her until she wasn’t afraid to let the heat do its work, which led to a precarious moment where I molded my body to hers, showing her how to properly sear red meat. I’d wanted to kiss her then, all over, from the curves of her ears to her slender ankles. But we weren’t there yet.
You can cook something more, but not less. Add more flavor, more color, but rarely succeed in reversing it. What Poppy and I shared wasn’t finished growing—cooking, moment by moment—and now, it never will be.
“You good back here?” Chester asks, poking his head into the walk-in. Herman follows him, clocking in for the day.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” I scramble to my feet. “Help me sort the rest of the provisions?”
“I heard that this place might be knocked down entirely,” Herman says, his gaze settling on me, fishing for a reaction. My mouth tightens, but otherwise, I just keep picking through the vegetables, weighing portions and weeding out anything that looks off. “Bunch of guys at Salty Joe’s were talking about it becoming condos. Like we don’t have enough of those on Hutchinson.”
“There are lots of other restaurants.”
“There are lots of other places to build condos.”
I tuck my pencil behind my ear. “Just make your point, Herm.”
“You already know my point.”
