ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, when business was slow, Kara Hsu got together with her chef cronies for a tipple. Most of them were former classmates from Le Cordon Bleu. Tomasina’s Pub in Nolita was a favourite joint. The IPA was on tap, Tomasina herself likely to draw up a chair, offering up free nibbles, and lewd jokes she’d collected over the years from patrons.
One particular Sunday, a food writer from Williamsburg had joined them (a writer always spelled trouble to Kara). She was also a food critic/blogger and she boasted a thirty-thousand following on her blog and an average of ten-thousand hits a day. Bernard Allard was also there. He’d been bugging Kara to hire him in her kitchen at Lumière but she had resisted. He too had studied at Le Cordon Bleu. They even cooked together on one group project, but she didn’t like his food—frequently over-seasoned and he cut corners wherever he could (such as, overcrowding the pan with pieces of meat to save time). He was also a womaniser, flirting with anybody who wore a skirt in his vicinity. Luckily, at cooking school, the women wore trousers.
The food blogger’s name was Leena Lewisham. Her food blog, leaning on alliteration as it were, was called The Lean Pantry. Leena was telling them how she loved ferreting out the secret ingredients in what made a dish ‘divine’. Her blog was all about new, undiscovered culinary gems in the city, value-for-money meals. On the flip side, she didn’t mince words. Mince, get it? In her Food Crimes section, chefs too big for their boots were fleeced with regularity and bilious metaphors. As she gleefully boasted, as an example, ‘meat so overcooked it was the equivalent of leather roadkill, run over multiple times.’
‘Lettuce that limped and onions that singed.’
‘The chef seemed to have forgotten which part was the oyster and which the shell.’
Ouch. We get it. Bernard sniggered next to Kara.
At some point in the night, there was a row of lemon drops each for Bernard and Kara. ‘Whoever reaches the end of the line first.’ Bernard leaned in close. Kara could smell his aftershave. ‘If you lose, I kiss you. We’ll go on a date.’
Leena looked over with interest. ‘Do you two work together?’
Kara ignored Leena, scoffed at Bernard. She hated losing at anything. ‘I won’t. If I win,’ she paused to think. ‘Hmm…what do I even want from you if I win?’
Leena said, ‘Where do you cook?’
Kara threw back a shot. Another and another in quick succession. ‘At Lumière.’
Bernard was following her shot for shot. Leena looked at Bernard simperingly. ‘And are you the executive chef there?’
Bernard laughed. Snorted rather. It gave Kara those precious few seconds to pull ahead. She downed two more shots. Liquid seared her oesophagus. She suppressed a hiccup. Kept going.
Leena said, ‘I’ve heard good things. I’d love to come by some day.’ The food blogger’s way of wangling a free meal.
Kara won. It wasn’t even close. Eight shots in quick succession and her head now felt like mushy swollen fruit. Nausea, which she suppressed.
Bernard’s tone was slurred. And sour. ‘Well, it’s in the red.’
It was true, Lumière was already in debt. Massive capital injection was needed for a restaurant this ambitious. Kara wanted New York Times star-review glory. Kara and her sisters had had to mortgage the family home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, sending their dear mother into such harried conniptions she’d flown back to Singapore (where the relatives lived) for six months of passive-aggressive avoidance. Every two days, their mother called to shoot some of her incipient darts of hostility, like an Iban with a blowpipe. Then, a fire broke out in the kitchen during the early days, and Vanessa turned to loan sharks in Chinatown for an emergency loan. The Woon Leong Benevolent Chinese Association (benevolent, my ass) was keen to help. Ever since then, loose-limbed, scary-looking thugs came by once every week to eat and ‘keep an eye on things’. What did Bernard know about any of it, but the gossip-monger he no doubt was, he’d probably heard that Kara couldn’t pay her seafood supplier this week and had to resort to Chinatown garoupa.
Leena was saying, ‘With my clout, I’ll have you back in the black with a single good review. Watch me, Handsome. And you can kiss my hand later.’ She held out a hand bedecked with fat clusters of jewels. At least she wasn’t dressed like a tarot card reader.
Bernard giggled, drunk out of his skull.
Kara tipped her chair too far backwards and fell over.
Leena turned up the very next week wearing a hat sculpture and Jacqueline Onassis glasses. She came with a friend in tow, and her friend too was dressed to the nines, in a taupe silk-satin suit and brown stilettos. Sharks with their gleaming teeth and silky fabrics. The friend glanced around her, making eye contact with the front of house (FOH) staff, to alert them that a VIP had just made her entrance.
Quentin, Kara’s maître d’, rushed into the kitchen with his usual pigeon-toed gait, all fluttery motions and high-pitched voice, ‘Oh my god, oh my god, do you know who that is?’
Halfway through searing a piece of expensive Atlantic halibut, Kara barely glanced up. ‘It ain’t JayZ, is it?’ A ripple of smirks from the line cooks—hip-hop music was banned in Kara’s kitchen. It didn’t go with French haute cuisine. But it was a losing battle, Kara knew. The machismo and heat and knives and short tempers demanded a channel for release, and rapping seemed to go with the machismo.
‘No, it’s Leena from The Lean Pantry!’ Quentin was a very literal person, and he rushed back out to begin his fawning and fussing. He might transmit the mother-hen vibe, but he had an uncanny nose for fawning and fussing over the right people.
Vanessa, obscured by a potted cactus at the cubbyhole desk in the corner, cast her eyes at Kara over her reading glasses. Vanessa was the oldest of the three Hsu sisters. Sensible and sharp as a tack with numbers. She was balancing last week’s takings against receipts in the ledger and making annoying, effortful sighs. Kara had told her what had happened at Tomasina’s, and all week they’d been wrangling whether or not to call Bernard if Leena did show up.
‘Single-Good-Review is here?’
‘Don’t,’ Kara said as she served up the halibut and dinged the bell. Normally, she would be at the pass putting on the garnishes and checking dishes as they went out, but the grillardin hadn’t shown up for work, and in any case, there’d been complaints last week about overdone fish. Ramon, her sous chef, was in charge of the pass that evening, one of those ‘freebie-honours’ Kara gave to her male sous chef to maintain gender peace in the kitchen. Ramon chafed at Kara’s authority, even if ethnically, they were on the same level, like that rap parody song Ramon loved so much—‘Brown and Yellow’. In French gastronomy, hierarchy was everything. It is instilled in you from the first potato you brunoise.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Vanessa said. ‘Call Bernard.’
‘No.’
‘Kara, don’t be a martyr. Forget you’re Chinese for a second. Do us a favour.’
‘No.’
Kara sauntered over to the porthole in the kitchen swinging door to peep at the dining room. Who should she see strolling in through the lobby and past the bar but two of the Woon Leong loan-shark goons she owed money to. Pigman and Small Dragon. On first-name basis now, since they came by so often. These two weren’t your usual thugs. No shiny black suits and MIB sunglasses. Instead, they wore matching banana-yellow tracksuits. They loped in as if they were animals from the zoo, arms hanging down their sides. They would eat her food as if they were on a culinary pilgrimage, oohing and aahing, licking their thick chops. Kara watched as Pigman and Small Dragon tilted their chins up at Quentin in greeting and sat themselves down at a table. Pigman flicked the Jheri curls on his head with his fingers. Small Dragon caressed the slithering dragon tattooed all over his neck. Kara watched her younger sister, Elvie, up front, pause over the reservation book and gesture with alarm towards her peeping face framed by the porthole.
‘Crouching dragon,’ Kara called out. These were their code words for when Woon Leong thugs showed up. The more senior ones, the ones who came in wearing mandarin-collared jackets, those were ‘hidden tigers’. Kara didn’t serve them her expensive halibuts or pigeon de Bresse from the Rhône-Alpes. No, Kara served them deconstructed lobster noodles. Her sous chef would quickly run down to Chinatown and find the largest lobster dozing in a tank, and Kara would kill, boil, sear, soup-up, sauté, sauce, serve.
‘Call him.’
Kara jumped. It was Vanessa. Words advisedly and quietly said so close to her ears they were wraiths of her thoughts. Kara gave Vanessa the stink-eye and called Bernard.
‘Mais oui, mon ami?’ He sounded as if he was grinning.
It irked Kara. ‘I’m calling in my win. Here’s what I want.’
Bernard listened. Then he chuckled.
Meanwhile, there was the menu to think about for Leena and her friend. Should Kara do their usual French fare, or demonstrate her culinary showmanship?
In truth, Kara had been devising a ‘salt-and-pepper’ five-course prix fixe. Still on an experimental basis, hence not on the menu as yet. It elucidated the taste of a particular specialty salt, that most lowly of ingredients. So lowly in kitchen parlance it was just referred to as ‘seasoning’. It was Kara’s way of thumbing her nose at culinary elitism, even though she was part of it. The dishes were all simply prepared, so simple it was akin to pulling the wool over one’s eyes, until one took the first exquisite taste. Or so she hoped. That it would be exquisite. No classically trained French chef in a Manhattan establishment had done it yet. Was it too arrogant-cheeky-daring-risky? Who did she think she was?
The thing with being a French chef as a Chinese woman in the battleground of Manhattan could be summed up thus: throw in the towel already if you’re going to piss all over yourself before you even got started. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t assailed with self-doubt. Just don’t share it with your male culinary staff. It would be career suicide. What Kara did was to go to the staff bathroom and stare at herself in the mirror for a full minute. A peptalk. Some mindfuck talk. Gah, did Leena think she was testing her? Oh no, the reverse: Kara was testing Leena. Let’s see what you’re made of, Leena Lean Pantry. A true food connoisseur would be able to suss out the secret ingredient without an explanatory spiel from the food runner or server.
She came back out, tightened her apron by pulling the tie straps round to the front and double knotting. ‘Quentin!’
‘Oui, Chef!’ He materialised like a convivial genie.
‘Ask Table 26 if they are happy to have omakase. Chef’s choice.’
‘Right away, Chef!’
Elvie bustled into the kitchen all in a tizzy, making the swinging door flap. ‘Pigman wants moo goo gai pan and Small Dragon wants General Tso’s chicken.’
Kara swore. Only dim-witted gangstas would stroll into the epicentre, no scratch that, the temple of French gastronomy, and ask for Chinese take-out fare. ‘Tell them to get the fuck out if that’s what they want. Go down to Mott Street. Five restaurants there will serve them that.’
Elvie looked at Kara uncertainly. ‘Oui, Chef.’
For Leena and companion, omakase it was.
The menu started off with a simple tomato soup garnished with basil and seasoned with smoked sea salt and Tasmanian pepper. This wasn’t just any old tomato soup. The tomatoes were heirloom, specially chosen for their sweetness and flavour, each gently roasted by hand over a stove fire and skin peeled, seeds removed. A laborious process that no worker in the kitchen charged with making the starter dish could shirk or shortcut. Simple tomato soup. At the same time, it paid homage to a glorious cultural past in French gastronomy—from Vatel to Escoffier, Guérard to Bocuse, a tomato was treated with more respect than the batterie and brigade de cuisine.
Manuel was her trusty commis, who prepped all the ingredients for the hot appetizers station. ‘Manuel,’ Kara gave a holler. ‘Soupe à la tomate!’ Kara had just gone over the experimental menu with him last week.
‘Oui, Chef!’ came Manuel’s answering cry.
Elvie came back bearing a basket of bread with a splayed Swiss penknife embedded in one of the rolls. The penknife’s wine corkscrew, protruding at the very top, was missing the screw. The handle was embossed with a golden dragon, its spinal plates looking like tongues of fire. ‘Um…Chef…they insist,’ Elvie squeaked.
Kara adjusted her toque, then caved. Fine, moo goo gai pan it was, that simple dish of chicken stir-fried with mushrooms. But she was going to Frenchify the hell out of it. Kara had cremini, chanterelle, morel, shitake and even wood-ear in her dry goods pantry. A wild mushroom medley risotto style, and sitting in pride of place would be a square slab of chicken cooked three ways—poached, lightly smoked, and then skin deep-fried for crunch. The smokiness of chicken augmenting the woodsy taste of mushrooms. Served in a balsamic-garlicky glaze. Perfect. The mushrooms, luckily, had been prepped earlier and were ready.
Quentin came back in to report that the crouching dragons had moved tables and were now ensconced back to back with Leena and her friend. ‘Bad joss!’ Quentin muttered.
For his interview for the job, one of the first things he did to prepare was read James Clavell’s Tai-Pan. Kara had informed him, ‘Different region, yo. My family background is thirdgeneration Singaporean.’ Quentin’s face crumpled so comically Kara decided to hire him anyway. Now Kara looked at Quentin. A mind-meld passed wordlessly between them. To prevent the goons from fomenting further trouble, Kara dished up the remaining tomato soup as amuse-bouche. ‘Table 28! Pronto!’
Quentin didn’t even wait for the food runner. He bore the two shot glasses of tomato soup himself on a tray and sailed out through the swinging door.
The soup platters came back empty and Tómas the plongeur gave Manuel the commis a high-five. Next up on Kara’s salt-and-pepper menu would be Malpeque oysters with zucchini tagliatelle and Hawaiian red clay salt. It was meant to amp up the ‘chic’ level. The tagliatelle was gently poached in Kara’s trademark chicken court bouillon. Kara immediately gave orders to her garde-manger station for prepping zucchini tagliatelle. No such thing as a mandoline or V-slicer in Kara’s kitchen. You had to demonstrate serious knife cojones even to be a prep cook. Long strips of zucchini, cut uniformly, each three cm in width and ten cm in length.
Bernard breezed in, looking like a Grecian god. Tousled hair, six o’clock shadow, open-necked white shirt and jeans. The line cooks wolf-whistled. Kara growled without looking at him. ‘Go suit up!’ Then she sniffed. ‘Are you wearing cologne?’ Bernard grinned sheepishly. Kara shook her head. Another demerit in her book where Bernard was concerned. Okay, he was a little sexy but such unprofessionalism.
Kara watched as Ramon wiped off the tiny specks of vinaigrette on the plate of Malpeque oysters, but her mind was already turning to General Tso’s chicken. General Tso was likely an amalgam of a couple of infamous generals. One version had him as a Qing dynasty general from Hunan Province; another had him as a Kuomintang general who later immigrated to New York to start a Chinese restaurant. Whichever version, Kara suspected it was a name, or names (at different points, they were called General Ching, General Chai, General Mao), given to dignify a humble peasant dish of sweet and spicy deep-fried chicken, to elevate the ‘plebes’ because they dined on fare worthy of a famed general. She slid the plates over to the runner and thought she would do exactly that—elevate the humble chicken so that its essence, its jouissance, was revealed and celebrated. Instead of deep-frying, she would coat the chicken portions in a blitzed peanut and parsley panko, then roast it inside a brown paper bag—chicken en papillote. It would be accompanied by sautéed vegetables in a fiery ginger and coconut emulsion. She didn’t have an actual coconut, so concentrated coconut milk would have to suffice. General Tso might raise an eyebrow or two at how he’d been diaspora’ed south in Asia then vectored to the Western hemisphere.
Bernard was back. He tied his apron, rolled up the sleeves of his chef digs. He clapped his hands. ‘What can I help with?’
Kara ignored him. The problem with too many off-piste items is that it buckled the firing line and upset the timing. The dining room wasn’t completely filled, even so, she could see that the orders were piling up and the ticket printer was chattering. She set about prepping the ingredients for moo goo gai pan and General Tso’s chicken herself. For Leena, the fish course would be grilled Atlantic salmon on parsnip mash with a fennel butter sauce served with Maldon sea salt flakes. A dish Kara concocted during a three-month stagiaire with two-Michelin-starred Bloom in London. She’d fallen head over heels for parsnips. Her parsnip mash melted in the mouth. But it was the rub she’d made for the Atlantic salmon that was the trade secret. No one knew what ingredients and aromatics she’d put in it.
Quentin came back in, his eyes shining with excitement. He said Leena was busy scribbling notes at the table, and over her shoulder, he saw the word ‘Omakase’ and a string of punctuation marks. Never had the coupling of an exclamation point and a question mark been so telling, so eloquent. Another empty plate. Another good sign.
After the soup, Kara sent Pigman and Small Dragon a trio of sashimis—tuna, salmon and kona kampachi. Any French restaurant worth its salt would have a well-stocked fridge that would always include sashimi-grade raw fish—it’s what you use for tartare, after all. She served it with a simple cucumber and lemon vinaigrette. Bernard was making a general pest of himself, chatting with Duet and Minuetto, two of her line cooks, disrupting their flow. Quentin came back in, looking stressed. He reported that Pigman and Small Dragon seemed to be developing rapport with Leena and her friend. They were comparing notes and Leena was asking too many questions: What did Pigman do for a living? Wasn’t it wonderful that a French restaurant had this contemporary twist and Asian influence? Did Small Dragon know who the executive chef was? Lumière didn’t seem to have much of an online presence. It said it was started by a consortium only three months ago. It was one of those times Elvie’s tardiness in getting their branding and online marketing going was actually turning out to be a boon in disguise.
It was during the fourth course that the mix-up happened. For Leena and her friend, Kara had planned a sous vide pork tenderloin with a quince compote. The salt-encrusted crispy skin of the pork tenderloin produced a satisfying crunch even as the tender meat melted on the palate. Somehow, the two food runners—Piper and Crosbie—ended up serving the deconstructed moo goo gai pan and westernised General Tso to Leena and her friend, and the sous vide pork to the Woon Leong goons. While the runners had been instructed not to reveal what the secret specialty salt was, it was ordinary protocol to ‘spiel’ what was on the plate. ‘Deconstructed what?’ Leena had said, quirking an eyebrow.
Terrible as her Chinese was, there was a Chinese saying Kara knew that went something like this: shuō Cáo Cāo, Cáo Cāo dào. Speak of the devil and the devil comes. Tso, cao, it was courting trouble and no two ways about it. Quentin came bustling in saying that Leena had asked to meet the executive chef.
‘Bernard!’ Kara yelled.
‘Oui, mademoiselle.’
‘It’s Chef to you, you fuckwit.’
Bernard gave her a megawatt smile. Nothing fazed him, that bastard.
‘Come with me. I do the talking, you do the nodding, you got that?’ Kara snapped. Bernard nodded. Brown limpid eyes, docile like a child.
Off to the dining room they trooped, Vanessa and Quentin trailing behind. It hadn’t occurred to Kara then, group dynamics and tell-tale body language not being her forte, but a quartet of culinary staff showing up at a patron’s table was a sure signal something was afoot. To Kara’s horror, Leena and Pigman were sharing morsels from their entrées with each other, passing a plate back and forth. Just sacrilegious.
As they rocked up, Leena paused mid-spear. ‘Wow, what an honour! The sous chef and the executive chef, too. Nice to see you again, Bernard.’ She held out her hand. Small Dragon was picking his teeth with the end of his Swiss blade.
Bernard was the only one of them with the presence of mind to behave normally. He shook Leena’s hand. Kara and Vanessa and Quentin all looked at Leena, flummoxed and tongue-tied. Leena caught Kara staring at the half-consumed General Tso’s chicken on her plate. Her eyebrows rose into the tinted bangs sweeping her brow and then fell. Her mouth wriggled slightly, impatient.
‘This was your idea, wasn’t it?’ Leena said, her eyes hooking squarely on to Kara.
Nobody else spoke. A few immediate explanations rushed to Kara’s head.
Leena continued, ‘I thought I sort of detected a theme behind all the dishes. They’re simply constructed, I mean, tomato soup, I wasn’t quite expecting that. But it was heavenly.’ Leena paused dramatically.
Both Pigman and Small Dragon were taking an unnatural interest in the drama unfolding at Table 26. Small Dragon sucked his teeth, Pigman draped his elbow across his chair and leaned over.
Leena was saying, ‘The five-course taster is structured around a single ingredient, isn’t it? I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but I will. It all seemed coherent until this dish. The server tells me this is deconstructed moo goo gai pan? That’s just bizarre. You had something to do with this, didn’t you, Kara?’
They all froze. ‘What?’ someone spoke.
Leena snapped her fingers. ‘I’ve got it. The secret ingredient is fungi. Am I right? It’s a celebration of fungi. How brilliant—’ here, she turned to Bernard ‘—that you allow such freedom of experimentation in your demesne. We all know how important mushrooms are to Chinese cooking. But to zero in on its essence and its complementary relationship with chicken, and to whizz it around so that it’s French, but also Asian. Bravo!’ She clapped. It wasn’t at all clear that Pigman and Small Dragon understood the torrent of English, but no matter, they joined in the applause.
Leena’s friend spoke up, ‘You are the executive chef here, aren’t you, Bernard?’
Bernard looked at Kara. Kara looked back.
‘But, of course,’ he said. ‘Do you doubt it?’
‘I suppose I did,’ Leena said with a little wry laugh. ‘All these Asian notes in modernist French cuisine. I hadn’t expected that. I looked up the restaurant’s website.’ Leena actually began tapping on her phone, then scrolling and reading from it, as they stood around, trying to peer over her shoulder, trying to act nonchalant. Their supernumerary encircling of one table was beginning to draw attention from all the other diners. ‘The Hsu Consortium. Isn’t that your last name, Kara?’
Vanessa let out a small gasp.
‘If I were to put two and two together, it looks like you have a hand in the ownership of this restaurant, don’t you, Kara? But Bernard, your leadership is phenomenal. At first, omakase threw me. It’s a Japanese term, and I wasn’t sure where that came from. But now I see how open-minded you are. You are a trailblazer, Bernard.’
Kara opened her mouth and would have spoken if not for Vanessa’s quick restraining hand on her upper arm.
Bernard bowed. ‘Actually, the secret ingredient is salt. The artistic vision you see here is nothing short of gourmet pioneering. A spectacular display of culinary pizzazz. A healthy, intrepid exploration and respect of nature’s bounty.’
Kara narrowed her eyes at Bernard suspiciously. How did he know this? Had Duet and Minuetto said something to him just now?
Bernard’s tone grew expansive. ‘Even an ingredient as menial as salt has a role to play. Here, we have chosen to spotlight it. Because salt is actually the essence of life. Our bodies by weight are composed of 0.15 per cent salt. Homer called it a divine substance. Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah. Jewish culinary custom spells out that a loaf of bread piled with salt on the dinner table is a sign of hospitality. The act of sprinkling salt anticipates the taste of the food it’s paired with. It’s the art of enhancement—sour with salty, sweet with salty.’
Leena, her companion, Pigman and Small Dragon were listening to Bernard all agog. He had them in the palm of his hand.
‘Salt is associated with fertility, sexuality. It plays a part in ceremonies, rituals and covenants. The Romans called a man in love salax, a salty state, where the word salacious came from. Just think about all the things salt can do: it brightens the colour of vegetables being blanched; it pickles and brines and enables us to keep food longer; it gets more heat out of boiling water; it removes spots on clothes, puts out fires, keeps cut flowers fresh, kills poison ivy, and melts ice.’
They were all staring at Bernard. Kara’s jaw dropped. Then she remembered. This was straight out of Dean Kastner’s lecture at Le Cordon Bleu. Bernard, this copy-catting proselyte, had simply memorised it.
‘Stupendous. Sensational. It’s genius,’ Leena gushed.
Then the injustice slammed Kara. She couldn’t believe her ears. Bernard was stealing all her credit. It was Chinese salt history that had inspired Kara, factoids that now swam up from her subconscious as unverbalised repartee, factoids she’d picked up while researching her menu and that had given her a strange moment of recognition, a sense of an almost prodigal return: the Chinese were the first to evaporate ocean water through the boiling method and make salt crystals; Emperor Huangdi had the dubious honour of presiding over the first war fought over salt; the state monopolies of salt and iron became a major constitutional issue during Confucian times on the duties of good government. These factoids demanded that Kara open her mouth and speak. Instead what came out was: ‘You’ll find that even dessert is served with salt—in this case a terrine composed of poached pear, a pinch of kosher salt, champagne-soaked flan, as well as a further verjus sorbet served with pineapple caviar and kala namak, Indian black salt.’
Leena didn’t reply. Her eyes took in Kara’s expression. Quentin and Vanessa froze. Pigman interrupted, ‘Roast pork also Chinese.’
Small Dragon said, ‘Yeah. Very good here. This dish very good. I come back. Mouth, tongue, belly, everything happy.’
Bernard said, ‘The dessert is all Kara. And it is sensational. Sensational does not begin to cover it.’
Kara frowned.
Leena said, ‘Well, I look forward to it.’ This time, she held out her paw in such a way it was clear what she wanted. Bernard stooped low, bending over her hand, and kissed it. Kara stomped back to the kitchen, followed by Vanessa and Quentin.
Quentin was releasing little hot puffs of air. ‘Oh god, that was close. We are out of the woods, I hope?’
The review came out the next day. It said, ‘Chef Bernard Allard’s new restaurant, Lumière, is luminous.’ It said, scintillating, titillating food. It said, Asian accents that hinted at a bold, intrepid spirit and an all-encompassing culinary gestalt. It said, the salmon rub was enigmatic and captivating, like Chef Bernard. The roast pork tenderloin produced instant, mind-goggling drool, like Chef Bernard. This was ironic, since it wasn’t what she was served. Also, Leena the mean, lean, metaphor-churning machine had produced not a single metaphor.
But the damage was done. The phones began ringing incessantly, the reservation books were booked solid for the next three months. The salt-and-pepper prix fixe went on the menu. Pigman hadn’t cottoned on to the deception while Leena was quizzing them, but when Kara called to beg him not to reveal the truth, it all clicked. Pigman sounded pleased. ‘You owe me a favour.’ Favour was such an ominous word.
And Bernard? There was the rub. Kara had to hire him as sous chef and put up with his incessant flirting. He too claimed to have done her a favour. When clientele demanded to meet the executive chef, he fronted for them.
How long this house of cards would stand was anybody’s guess. A simple, allowed misunderstanding had somehow ballooned into all-out public deception. In her quieter moments of reflection, Kara was filled with twinges of guilt and misgiving. And yet, amidst all the trickery and fraud, Kara had never been more undilutedly herself: with the restaurant as full as it was every evening, Kara cooked, expedited, garnished and seasoned like a maniac, as only she could. When their mother called, Elvie happily chirped, ‘be satisfied, Ma. Ka-chink, ka-chink.’