“Good liver smell,” she said, almost to herself. “Not iron-heavy. Fresh.”
“They source local,” he said, poking a liver from his plate onto his fork. “Have for years.”
“I can tell.” She cut into it, checked the color, and ate a bite at the same time he did, though he didn’t cut his first.
She closed her eyes a second while she tasted it, and then chewed and swallowed, clearly enjoying it.
“Cooked through but not punished,” she said. “Perfect, through and through. Kinda makes me want to meet the cook.”
He ate his own and didn’t say anything, because there was nothing he could add to how good it was.
The chicken hearts arrived next, sautéed with butter, garlic, and what smelled like a little Worcestershire. She moved the plate between them without asking, the way you moved food between people you’d already decided to share food with, and he took that in alongside everything else.
He speared one. Rich, slightly mineral, the texture firm without being chewy — properly cleaned and properly cooked.
“These are better than they have any right to be,” he said.
“Right? You don’t expect a place with tater tots on the sides board to nail chicken hearts.”
He grinned at the food snob finally coming out. “Maybe you should.”
She considered that. “Maybe. If they’re doing liver this well, the hearts make sense. Same philosophy. Don’t be afraid of what the ingredient is. Most people cook them to death to be safe, but they’ve kept them tender and scrumptious.”
He grinned. “Scrumptious? Is that a technical term?”
“No, but this food is… it’s real food, you know? I can’t use all the fake-sounding terms to describe it.”
He looked at her across the table and rethought thefood snobjudgment. This woman who’d shown up at his butcher shop in four-inch heels and known how to read a tenderloin on the rail, who’d made trail mix with Maldon salt and candied ginger and carried it in a silicone bag because glass wasn’t practical, who’d moved through the Fruit Bowl like she’d been doing it all her life, and ordered chicken hearts in a Tracy City diner without a second thought.
He’d expected her wolf to be fine here. The wolf was a predator who ate rabbit and deer on the pack lands, and her inner animal wasn’t going to be snobby about organ meat in a country diner.
But he realized he’d expected Tuesday to be a snob about this place from the start, and was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. Tuesday was genuinely pleased with her meal. The culinary consultant who undoubtedly charged New York restaurants serious money for her expertise was sitting before a paper placemat eating liver and onions, and talking about confidence in a bowl of chili, and she meant every word of it.
He’d considered taking her to the fancy restaurant a few miles away in the old Al Capone mansion, but nothing on the mountain compared to the food here. Now, he could be honest enough with himself to admit he was hoping to find a strike against her when she was too good for the cooking here.
In retrospect, he probably should have considered she’d be impressed by good cooking, no matter the style.
All the side dishes arrived together, and she tasted the collard greens first, declaring, “Fatback. Long cooked.” Another bite, and then, “I’m going to need to think about whether I resent these or love them.”
“Why would you resent them?”
“Because they’re better than mine. Better than my grandmother’s, but I could never tell her that.” She said it simply, no drama. “I make good collard greens. These are better. I’m going to need to figure out why.”
He found himself smiling.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She gave him the look she’d given him when she thought he was about to make fun of the Maldon salt — the preemptivedon’t— and he shook his head.
“I’m not laughing at you. I do the same thing with a good cut. Try to figure out the source, the handling, what I’d do different.” He speared a tater tot. “It’s a compliment to the food. Means it’s worth thinking about.”
She looked at him for a moment with an expression he couldn’t entirely read, and then looked back at her plate.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what it is.”
They ate in the easy silence of two people who were comfortable with food and comfortable enough with each other not to fill every pause, and outside the window, the parking lot filled.
