Small Plates (17 page)

The following week a new pastry chef started. Things in the kitchen perked up; her expertise and delight in what she was doing had spread over them like chocolate sauce on a profiterole (and hers were amazing). The fly in the crème brûlée turned out to be the chef himself. He couldn't find fault with Elise, so he redoubled his critiques of everyone else's work, all the while circling around her, sticking a finger in her mousse, shoving a Madeleine in his mouth.

And he'd begun to notice Faith, making her redo her work not just once but often twice. Her fingers were sore from wielding the knives. One dice or julienne a millimeter off the others would cause him to explode. But Faith stuck it out; she wasn't a quitter, and she knew she was good. She was there to become even better.

But then he began to get personal, making very audible asides to the others about WASP dilettantes and even speculating with a leer in her direction about whether she was a real blonde. Nervous laughter from the other males had greeted this remark. No way did they want him to turn on them.

The fourth week he'd gone too far—too far for Elise. The pastry chef had been giving Faith reassuring looks of commiseration throughout and had even whispered to her that men like the chef who had to fill the room with testosterone were usually lacking it.

Faith had been preparing mushrooms—cèpes—to go into that night's featured appetizer, the pork-based Pâté Forestier, which would also include black truffles for added richness—and an increased price. Chef Gold had come up behind her and screamed that she was slicing the mushrooms like a peasant. He'd jostled her arm and the knife came down across her thumb. Blood spurted out.

His words still reverberated, starting with the
C
word that was anathema to all women. “You c—! Do you want the board of health to close us down? How many other dishes have you contaminated behind my back? Out, out of my kitchen! Go to your mommy's and bake brownies. You will never be a chef. No woman can be a real chef! Have you ever heard of a famous female? No! Now, out!” He'd clapped his enormous hands so close to her ears that for a moment she'd thought he was about to box them. His closeness and the certain knowledge of how he viewed women, professionally and sexually, had made her feel physically ill.

She'd stood, pressing the wound with her other thumb in a vain attempt to stop the flow of blood. “Move! Are you deaf as well as dumb!” He'd laughed uproariously as his own joke. “You're fired! Done!
Finito!
Now, get out of my sight!”

Elise had come over with a wet towel, handing it to Faith as she said, “If she goes, I go.”

“You don't have to do this,” Faith had said. “I'll be fine.”

“I know that. I also know when something in a kitchen really stinks and this does to high heaven.”

Billy Gold had turned purple with rage. She could still see the room. It went dead silent. The dishwashers, most of whom didn't speak English, had huddled together in a group, aware that something was terribly, terribly wrong and figuring there was safety in numbers.

“I'm out of here too, chef,” André, the sous-chef, had then announced. “I've been turning down other offers for months now.” He undid his apron and laid it on the counter. Two others had piled theirs on as well, including the pantry chef.

Gold had screamed, “Go, all of you! I can replace you with far better by standing out on the street. And you'd better believe there won't be any references, you shits!”

N
ow in this unlikely setting so many years later, Faith and Gold were in the same room for the first time since then. He hadn't been able to replace the staff with others of the same caliber, or perhaps it was a jinx. Whatever the reason, the restaurant went under several weeks later, and the word going around was that it was all Faith Sibley's fault, at least according to the chef—and his investors. Gold didn't continue to fail, however. Since then he'd gone on to even greater fame, and fortune, hiring a canny PR firm to spin his out-of-control temper and foul mouth into culinary performance art, which Gordon Ramsay would much later perfect. Faith was sure the audience tonight was eager to watch Chef Gold explode, and she planned to keep well away from him. The look he had given her when she entered the room made it clear he hadn't forgotten, or forgiven, a thing. She'd have to watch her back.

She hoped her station was far from his, but then she also hoped it wasn't next to her former employee Chef Claudia Westell, the second chef Faith saw upon entering the greenroom. The woman was as perky-looking as the day she'd arrived at the catering kitchen in answer to an ad for an assistant four years ago. Today, as then, she wore her signature glasses—ruby-red frames—and seemed to skip into the room, a trait that Faith had found increasingly obnoxious. At the time, Niki Constantine had been taking maternity leave at Faith's insistence—“It's not like someone has to go buy milk,” Niki had protested. “I can nurse at work—the ultimate in fast food.” But Faith remembered how exhausted she had been with both her children, the handiness of the feeding notwithstanding, and Niki had reluctantly given in. Claudia had professed herself thrilled with the opportunity to work with Faith, even on a short-term basis.

By the end of the first day, the obsequious fawning—continuous use of “Chef” despite Faith's reminders to simply call her “Faith”—had begun to more than pale. By the end of the second day, Faith realized she had a much bigger problem on her hands. The woman couldn't cook. She had talked the talk during the interview and her résumé was impressive—stints in a number of restaurants in her native California, particularly the Bay Area, as well as a culinary degree from City College in San Francisco. Faith had checked two of the references, and both had emphasized her willingness to work hard. “You never have to worry that Claudia won't show up,” one had said. In the restaurant business this kind of employee was a treasure, but Faith soon had realized she should have asked more specifically about punctual Claudia's actual culinary prowess.

Preparing forty portions of panna cotta and the mixed berry coulis to go around each should have been a no-brainer. First Claudia had asked Faith for the recipe—“I know yours will be special!”—she'd enthused. Well, okay, maybe she'd thought Faith wanted something other than a basic one, tea or infused with cardamom or some other spice or made with Greek yogurt. Claudia's first pot boiled over onto the burner, leaving that horrible smell only burned milk and cream can produce. She'd cleaned it up and managed to produce a finished product, but when Faith tasted one, it was gritty. Claudia hadn't dissolved the sugar properly. Third time lucky, but the waste of ingredients was costly. (“My fault completely! I don't know where my head is today! Please deduct it from my pay.”)

And so it went. The woman lurched from disaster to disaster until by the end of the week all Faith could trust her to do was cut up vegetables, and even those would never pass muster in any restaurant kitchen Faith knew. She'd called another of the references and had her suspicions confirmed. Claudia had been great, but she'd been in the front, not in the kitchen. What Faith had hired was an extremely outgoing, competent server. The City College degree, if she actually had one, had to have been in Hospitality. Niki would be back in three weeks and Faith figured she could tough it out, using Claudia to run errands, get supplies, and clean up. Until Niki called her. She'd dropped by late in the day with the baby. Seeing an unfamiliar car parked outside—and not seeing Faith's—she'd let herself in. Claudia was in the office using the scanner.

“She had your master book of recipes!” Niki had reported immediately. “And she was going through them like crazy. Very nervy dame. Wanted to know who I was and how I had gotten in. I told her and she looked guilty as hell, started giving me a line about your telling her she could make copies.”

Faith hadn't, and a very big part of her was happy to have an excuse to fire the woman. She swore to check references more carefully in the future—and only give the keys to work to trusted employees like Niki.

And she was facing the “nervy dame” again. Claudia had given Faith what was probably supposed to be a withering look when she saw her. Ms. Westell had taken some basic cooking classes somewhere along the line and parlayed her perky little puppy act into a popular local TV show where she showed viewers how to wow guests in thirty minutes. The wow factor all had to do with elaborate presentations, while the recipes themselves relied heavily on “shortcuts” like frozen piecrust and Minute Rice—“No one goes through your trash at a party,” she was wont to say with a wink.

It had gotten back to Faith more than once that the woman had said Faith fired her because she was jealous of her skill—and her youthful good looks. Niki had come in fuming one day after hearing that Claudia had been badmouthing Faith as a “has-been” and saying that “some people don't know when it's time to quit.” Faith had laughed it off, but it smarted.

A
nd on to chef number three. Maybe the fiercest antagonist of all—Jake Barlow. Faith hadn't done anything overt to derail the other two, but there was no ducking the fact that she had with Jake. It had been in Maine, on Sanpere Island, where the Fairchilds had a summer cottage. Sanpere's population doubled by the end of August, and there were several seasonal restaurants, although the Fairchilds' favorite remained The Harbor Café, open year-round and noted for the “Seconds on Us” Friday fish fry.

That particular summer, though, Faith had been looking forward to a new restaurant. Friends of theirs, the Hortons, had made the transition from Summer People to Year-Rounders and had been working hard all winter to fulfill their dream—restoring an old farmhouse overlooking Penobscot Bay and opening a restaurant that would use local ingredients, especially those from the sea. They had hired a young culinary school graduate who had garnered every prize at graduation and was from Maine, although not from the island. Faith had barely unpacked before the phone rang with an invitation from Doreen Horton to come as guests and sample the menu. Doreen's voice had sounded slightly strained, but Faith chalked it up to the inevitable woes associated with running a restaurant. She had seen many dreams go up in a puff of applewood smoke and had never herself wanted to be anything but a caterer.

Faith and Tom had been seated by one of the front windows and their first impression was that the Hortons had a winner. The place was packed, and the work they'd done was exquisite. The dining room had all the charm of an old farmhouse, but none of the mustiness. Doreen had been scouring yard sales and auctions for years to find vintage china in good shape. She'd sensibly avoided flowers on the tables, opting instead for large arrangements of whatever was blooming outside in white ironstone pitchers, placed on the sideboards and next to the front door.

The first indication that things were not going well came almost immediately. Faith was deciding whether to order a glass of prosecco to start or the cocktail
maison
—vodka, blueberries, and cucumbers, sort of a Down East Pimm's Cup—when she suddenly smelled something like burning rubber. Fearing a mishap in the kitchen, she started to stand up when Tom pointed across the room at a server who had just taken what looked like an inverted fishbowl from a plank of wood, releasing the aroma. The guest appeared startled by the dish. Faith couldn't hear what was said, but the whole thing was immediately removed. She grabbed the menu, which she had not yet had a chance to peruse. “Planked Chanterelles and Scallops in a Mole Sauce Smoked at the Table,” she read aloud to Tom. “Oh dear, it's all molecular gastronomy. What could they be thinking? When done well, sublime, but here where people are expecting things like lobster and Blueberry Buckle?—and a chef with not much experience.”

She'd known then why Doreen had wanted them there immediately, but resolved to keep an open mind. Maybe this young man—she'd seen his name at the bottom of the menu, Jake Barlow—would be a prodigy and they'd be like some of those incredibly lucky diners who just happened by La Rive, a place in the Catskills, when a young man named Thomas Keller was starting out.

The
amuse-bouche
arrived. It appeared to be thin strips of peanut brittle stacked like Lincoln logs in a white porcelain clamshell. “Um, Pomegranate Kelp Brittle,” the server announced. Faith recognized the girl; she was an Eaton. She looked perplexed. “Enjoy!” she added. The brittle was very brittle—Faith almost lost a tooth with the first nibble and decided to wait for it to warm up. The chef had obviously used the blast chiller. Aside from the normal high cost of equipping a restaurant kitchen, Faith feared the Hortons had been persuaded to make many more purchases by their cutting-edge chef. When warm enough to eat, the brittle was sticky—Turkish pomegranate molasses, she'd decided—and the seaweed left a somewhat celluloid aftertaste.

The other courses followed the same pattern. Much use of liquid nitrogen evident and little flavor. Tom had been intrigued by his mozzarella “balloon,” but when it popped it was just a stringy mess on top of what otherwise would have been a lovely piece of halibut. And Faith's dessert was just silly—roasted balsam pine needles sprinkled on top of lobster ice cream. She'd ordered it sight unseen, or explained, after reading, “Our Signature Dessert—A Bite O' Maine.”

Albert Horton caught up with them as they were getting into their car. He didn't mince words. “It's a disaster, isn't it? He would only take the job if we agreed to give him free rein and stupidly we agreed. It all sounded great.”

“I liked that melon ball thing,” Tom had said. Faith had given him a little jab. What had looked like melon was actually a frozen quail egg yolk with bacon foam. Tom loved anything that had the faintest whiff of bacon.