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It should be easy to write Carrigan’s All Year off as something he wasn’t interested in and no one wanted him to be involved with, but he was drawn to the partnerships Hannah had set up with food artisans from all over Upstate New York. The calendar for the year had wine and cheese pairing classes, beekeeping classes, olive oil tastings (he hadn’t even realized you could grow olives up here), all with local ingredients.
The show he wanted to helm was all about people using their locally available ingredients to make their traditional dishes, and it tugged at him that she had created something so in line with his dreams here.
One of his best friends during the filming ofAustralia’s Next Star Chefhad been an older woman who ran a B&B with her husband in Queensland. Over many late nights in the contestant house, Levi had learned everything he probably should have learned from his parents, about how much work it took to run a place like that, and he’d begun to truly appreciate both his parents’ brilliance and his wife’s ambition. This first chance to see them in action, now that he had some distance and perspective, was illuminating and unsettling—because of how drawn he was to this work he’d disdained all his life.
He was sitting at the kitchen island, drinking a cup of coffee and reading theChristmasland Circular, imagining Hannah at all these food events without him, when his mom came in and began prepping for lunch around him. He was supposed to be finalizing the menu for the first Davenport event, the engagement party, and he stuffed the circular under his laptop, but she smirked at him. Busted.
She handed him a knife, a cutting board, and veg to prep.
“You need to order food for the engagement party, which is only one week from now. I started a list, but you’ll want to go over it. I know you, and I know you’ll have opinions.”
This seemed unfair, because Delilah had specifically asked for him, so of course he was going to put his own spin on the event, although it was mostly already planned. He didn’t say that, though, because whining to his mom about how things were unfair seemed like the opposite of proving he’d changed. Instead, he asked, “Isn’t this all pretty last minute for a big society wedding? Engagement party at the beginning of May, wedding in the middle of June?”
His mother shook her head. “Ours is not to ask the rich to explain; ours is but to feed them and take their money.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” he said.
“You want a tomato sandwich?” she asked.
He had never wanted to eat anything more. No one made a sandwich like his mother.
“So your show is filmed, and you can’t tell me if you won, but I’m guessing you got pretty far if you got a pilot off the publicity?” she asked as she got out ingredients. “What would you want the new show to look like? What are you envisioning?”
Whew. He was not going to have to talk about mooning over the Carrigan’s event calendar. Or about the fight he’d had with his wife. Or the fact that he had a wife.
“I guess I envisioned it as being boldly Jewish, boldly modern, boldly who you are, where you are?” He could see the show in his mind, and he’d pitched it to Food Network already, but he felt silly giving his mom his elevator speech. “I’d be exploring Manhattan’s diverse, multiethnic Jewish history, talking to restaurant owners, families, rabbis about what it means to them to eat Jewish food, and then re-creating traditional dishes from all over the world into modern food with bold flavors.”
“Are those the kind of recipes you’re pitching Delilah Davenport? She’s going to be thrilled.”
“Wellllll…” he said, and listed some of his ideas for her.
“Levi, these are the same old appetizers any CIA graduate leaves school with. Puff pastry with goat cheese and caramelized onion? I can buy this frozen at Costco.” She wasn’t wrong. It was delicious, but any other wedding caterer could do it in their sleep. “This isn’t going to impress the Davenports. You need to bring Blue to this table. The whole Blue.”
“I love your brain, Mom,” he told her, and she blushed. He could feel the breath in his lungs reach deeper, and his world righted itself a tiny bit.
“You should update the Carrigan’s menu while you’re here,” she said offhandedly.
He shook his head. “That’syourmenu. I’m not going to overhaul it and then leave.” He did want to update the Carrigan’s menu; he’d been imagining it for years. Had tried to go to Cass with his excitement and his new ideas, his big ambitions, and been told that’s not what they did here, not what people came for. He’d been shut right down.
“Well, I’m not going to pass on my menu to whoever we hire to replace me. And it needs updating. Of the two of us, one is a relatively recent culinary school graduate who has cooked all over the world, and one of us is a grandmother who’s been cooking the same dishes in the same kitchen for forty years.”
The same incredibly delicious, perfect dishes that she was very territorial about. What was she up to?
“If I’m going to redesign any of it, it needs to have your fingerprints all over it,” he said slowly. He wasn’t sure he trusted this, and he was wary. “I would want to update some of the old recipes from when Cass first opened, make it go with Miriam’s antiques and the aesthetic the girls are building. Appealing to young families and hipsters, but still a little nostalgic. Jewish as hell.” He couldn’t help it; his brain started designing a modern whitefish salad platter.
He chewed on his lip thoughtfully. “Hannah should help steer the new menu so she makes sure it dovetails with the rebranding. And she can figure out how to launch it to get the most local and tourist attention.”
“Are you wooing your girl with PR strategy? Because it might work.” His mother waggled her eyebrows at him. Oh, she was sneaky. This was all about matchmaking. “That’s something to have brewing in your mind as you come up with wedding ideas. Right now, let’s make a list of the events we need dishes for and come up with some sample menus you can pitch to Hannah and the Davenports.”
“So, for the engagement party, Governor Davenport called this morning to request some flavor of mandelbrot that Rosenstein’s stopped making in 1978; then his wife called back and said not to make any changes without Delilah’s express permission. If I mess up the delicate balance of this, Hannah’s going to kill me.”
“That’s one you need to hand over to her. She’s much, much better at diplomacy than you are.”
He laughed. He was shit at talking to other people without starting a fight.
“I’m glad you’re here, kid,” she said, as if she could hear his thoughts. “And I’m glad you’re throwing your whole heart in the ring. You’ve always been careful at showing your feelings, but it’s easy when you’re young to think that someone who doesn’t show you their feelings doesn’t have any. Sometimes you have to put it all out there.”
“She must have known how I felt about her, though. She’s the sun I orbit around.” Levi pulled at his hair, the ramifications of what his mom was implying too big to believe.
