Spiced

Hi, Doll, Joey’s voice on my machine announced. Gimme a buzz when you get this. [Long pause.] There’s something I want to talk to you about. Again with the cryptic messages.

Cursed with terminal punctuality, I arrived fifteen minutes early for my meeting with Joey at a bar in west Soho on that late summer afternoon. Fifteen minutes to prepare myself for the possibility that Joey was finally opening his own place and was going to offer me a job. Fifteen minutes to consider and reconsider the pros and cons of reentering the restaurant world. I ordered a pint of wheat beer, grabbed a small table outside, and waited.

“Hi, Doll.” He bent down to kiss my cheek. I suddenly realized that I had no idea how old Joey was. He could have been thirty, thirty-five. Maybe forty. Forty-five would be a stretch, a big one, but it was possible.

“Jenny gave me visitation rights,” he explained. He slipped Sassy’s leash under a chair leg and set her under the small table while he got a beer. I gave Sassy my finger to sniff and she gave me a noncommittal dog kiss in return.

I gulped down what was left of my first beer, hoping the alcohol would calm my jumpy brain. I still wasn’t sure if he had asked me there for a job. All of my mental straining might have been a complete waste of energy.

“She’s okay,” I answered, suddenly worried that my every word carried an inordinate amount of weight. “There’s good and bad, you know. I like the variety, meeting all the different chefs and stuff. But,” I said, flipping the coin, “it’s not, like, really cooking, you know? And the commute is sort of getting to me.”

The two-hour commute hadn’t been nearly as relaxing or conducive to reading as I’d anticipated. More often than not I was grumpy that I got home so late or that I had to get up at four a.m. to make the occasional seven a.m. start time. I was oversimplifying my ambivalence horrendously, but I wanted to leave every door open.

Being with Joey again reminded me of how much I’d enjoyed working for him. His quiet confidence, his aura of nonjudgment. Since my only real cooking job had been with him, he’d had an enormous impact on my confidence and capabilities. In my year at Layla, he’d not only encouraged me to progress and grow but had always found time for my questions and never condescended. When he joined us cooks for drinks after work, he left whatever friction had come up during service back in the kitchen and instead bought us rounds of beer and led the high fives. After working in a few restaurants, catering, and television, I realized that what I really, really wanted in a job—any job—was to be respected, guided, taught, and treated fairly. Joey had provided all of this.

Clearly excited, he went on to tell me all the details. He’d been introduced to his partner, Stan, a former maître d’ of Restaurant Daniel, one of New York’s very top restaurants, by a mutual friend. Joey would run the back of the house, and Stan, who had gathered all the financing and was the owner, would run the front. They’d found a space (and in New York City, opening a restaurant is all about the space, its location, and rent) that had been a restaurant before and were giving it a complete makeover, top to bottom, prep kitchen to dining room. They’d already been working on it for months and finally had a target opening date just six weeks away.

“I figure,” he went on, “you learned enough pastry at Nobu, La Côte Basque, and the TV show to do the desserts. Plus, I have some ideas we can work on. I’ll help you out.”

“And, you already know my style of food and how I like to work, and that’s really important. Frankie’s coming on as sous-chef, so I’d want you to help him out, too.” Frankie and I had overlapped at Layla for just a few weeks, but he had stayed on with Joey long after I left. I knew Frank was not only a good cook but a good guy all around.

“But mostly you’ll be taking care of the desserts. Like I said, I have some ideas I want you to work on. Like . . .” he explained excitedly. “Like, I definitely want to have a rosewater crème brûlée, and we’ll do the same almond milk ice that we had at Layla. Other than that, you’re gonna come up with the rest of the menu. Your title,” he finally said, “will be Pastry Chef.” He paused.

“It’s gonna be a lot of work, Dolly. A lot of work. Openings always are. You’ll be back in the Wild, Wild West of the restaurant world, but I think you, Frankie, and I will make a great team. Plus,” he assured me, “you’re a natural.”

“The name is my partner’s idea,” he explained, shrugging. “And he’s set on it. It’s the one thing he won’t compromise on. I can live with it.” He kept looking at me.

Think about it. He said the same thing when he offered me the position of garde-manger and again when he suggested I move up to the grill position. It’s gonna be a challenge for you, Doll, working the grill. But think about it. His challenges had always appealed to my ego. I’d taken the garde-manger job, and I’d worked the grill. But pastry chef? It was an entirely different ball game.

Despite my prejudice toward pastry early on in my career, I’d been drifting back into the dessert world ever since. Maybe it was kismet. Still, didn’t most people work for many years toward the goal of earning the title of pastry chef? What about all the knowledge and techniques I needed to execute a full dessert menu? Had working at Nobu, La Côte Basque, and even MSLTV, where we did a fair amount of desserts, been enough?

I contemplated the prospect of returning to the Wild, Wild West of the restaurant world, as Joey called it. Was I ready to give up my three-day work week? Ready to deal with the pressure, once again, of performing at top speed every single day? The long hours?

The restaurant would be a big step for Joey, and it would surely receive press. What if I disappointed? “Downtown chef opens midtown spot . . . Hires unknown pastry chef who doesn’t deliver . . . Jurgensen’s desserts suck.” But that was the worst-case scenario. What if I was actually good at it? I did have a lot of faith in the quality of my taste buds. I knew what tasted good, and that had to be worth something.

I realized that Joey wouldn’t risk his own reputation if he didn’t think I was up to the task. I started getting excited, and ideas kept popping into my head: chilled cherry-vanilla soup with mascarpone panna cotta, chocolate mousse with a white chocolate mousse center, warm pear tarte Tatin with fromage blanc ice cream. I’d always thought the tangy fromage blanc that Drew used in his cheesecake would make a great ice cream. I would have the chance to try it out for myself if I became Joey’s pastry chef. Most exciting was the prospect of being responsible for my own menu, of really having an impact on a restaurant. I’d get to execute my own ideas, my own vision, all with Joey’s lengthy and superlative experience as guidance, support, and safety net. Would there ever be a better scenario under which to take that sort of step?

Up to then, I’d gone back and forth between the two worlds, sweet and savory. I started out believing that I’d be better suited to working in the savory realm but eventually came to realize that my personality was ill-suited to becoming a chef, to being a leader in that sense. There was less power and prestige in the title of pastry chef, but there was also less pressure, and it was starting to feel like a perfect compromise. We hadn’t talked about salary, health insurance, or any other particulars that were supposed to matter, but before I fell asleep that night, I knew my answer. I was going to be a pastry chef.