Off the Menu (9 page)

“Good. You like him.” Another mandate.

“I suppose I am hopeful in the liking him direction.”

“Excellent,
mi amorrrr
, excellent. You know I never really like this thing with the Brrrruce. Sex is fine, but you need boyfrrrrriend. And good sex makes you lazy.”

“I know you think that. Bennie says the same thing. I prefer to think that good sex makes me smart and clearheaded to make decisions about who I date and why. If I am being taken care of in that way, I never will rush a new relationship or try to make someone the right someone just
because I want sex. I can take the time to get to know someone, and trust them, and then decide if they are the right person for me to be with.” It is my standard response for the handful of people who know about my current arrangement. I try to ignore that it sounds a little bit like a justification.

“Hmm.” Maria looks at me pointedly. “And exactly ’ow many men have you taken the time to get to know while you sleep with the Brrrruce?”

Gulp. “Um, none really, but …”

Maria puts up her hand, one finger pointing in the air. “No ‘but.’ You ’ave no buts to give. You arrrrre busy with work, spend all your time with friends and family at people’s ’ouses, you arrrrre cooking for Patrick at all hourrrrrs of the night, and you have sex with the Brrrruce. No dating. No new men. No going out to meet people or have blind dates. I am glad you meet this man online. Do not let the Brrrruce distrrrract you.”

I laugh. She is right, of course, as always. “I promise, I won’t let Bruce distract me.”

“Or Patrick.”

“Patrick is not a distraction.”

“He crosses lines.” Maria is as leery of Patrick as my dad, but for different reasons.

“He is fine. He is the same as he ever was.”

“Ay, this is what I am afrrrraid of!” Maria spears a grape tomato and piece of feta with purpose, and pops them in her mouth, wagging her fork at me.

I suppose I should probably mention that I did actually once sleep with Patrick, much to my embarrassment, and it is essential to my whole existence that we both pretend he doesn’t remember it.

A
fter Maria reached a level of fame that made eating out an exercise in fending off fans, she frequently asked both superfamous and up-and-coming chefs alike to cook for her and a few guests in her home. That way she could partake of their wonderful skills without anyone asking for pictures or autographs or hugs or advice or money. On these occasions, I would serve as sous chef, helping the chefs find their way around the kitchen, and assisting in any way I could. Usually they would provide recipes ahead of time, so that I could shop for ingredients and do prep work before they arrived. It was an amazing time for me. I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan.

Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action
is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and
Top Chef
winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil’s hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac ’n’ cheese, Stephanie’s roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale’s honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over hair products, since we have the same thick brown curls with a tendency to frizz, and the general dumbness of boys, and ended up giggling over glasses of bourbon till nearly two in the morning. She is even more awesome, funny, sweet, and genuine in person than she was on her rock-star winning season on Bravo. Plus, her food is spectacular all day. I sort of wish she would go into food television and steal me from Patrick. Allen Sternweiler did a game menu with all local proteins he had hunted himself, including a pheasant breast over caramelized brussels sprouts and mushrooms that melted in your mouth (despite the occasional bit of buckshot). Michelle Bernstein came up from Miami and taught me her white gazpacho, which I have since made a gajillion times, as it is probably one of the world’s perfect foods. Those nights, cooking in Maria’s kitchen, were some of my favorite.

But one of them I’d prefer to erase.

When Patrick first began getting rave reviews, Maria asked me to set up one of these dinners for a few friends. Patrick had not yet built his empire, wasn’t on television, and was just a young hotshot chef making waves on the Chicago
culinary scene. He sent over his recipes, with complex and obsessively complete instructions. A half-dead platypus could have cooked his dishes from those recipes. They practically listed the number of grains of salt.

Which was a good thing, because Patrick was in no condition to cook them.

He arrived two hours later than we had agreed upon, suffering from a hangover so powerful that I thought he was going to gag every time he opened his mouth. Deciding that he was essentially useless, I made him a large glass of
sangre del tigre
—“blood of the tiger”—a lethal Bloody Mary that I had picked up in Mexico City. Tomato juice, clam juice, raw egg, fresh horseradish, hot sauce, ground white and black pepper, salt, the juice from pickled jalapeños, orange zest, and a large slug of mezcal. He drank it down, put on his headphones, and immediately fell asleep on the couch in the back of the kitchen. I prepared the meal for him, making every one of his recipes, seething at his arrogance and inappropriateness, and mentally writing him off, while he snored away across the room. He might be hot shit for the moment, but you can’t be a party boy while you are supposed to be working and maintain the necessary standards to keep a fine dining restaurant running. I don’t care what you do after or before work, how hard you party after the people go home, but you had better be up to speed while on the clock. I know plenty of chefs who will have a snoot or two during service, a few more who rely on some unconventional pharmaceuticals to get them through the day. But I don’t know anyone who can maintain a serious party habit that infringes on the work who gets anywhere. The fact that he had been so unprofessional to Maria, of whom I was always enormously protective,
potentially putting her in a difficult position with important guests, made my blood practically boil.

But damned if his recipes weren’t spectacular. A chilled pea soup of insane simplicity, garnished with crème fraîche and celery leaves. Roasted beet salad with poached pears and goat cheese. Rack of lamb wrapped in crispy prosciutto, served over a celery root and horseradish puree, with sautéed spicy black kale. A thin-as-paper apple galette with fig glaze. Everything turned out brilliantly, including Patrick, who roused himself as I was pulling the lamb from the oven to rest before carving. He disappeared into the bathroom for ten minutes and came out shiny; green pallor and under-eye bags gone like magic. Pink with health and vitality, polished and ridiculously handsome, he looked as if he could run a marathon, and I was gobsmacked. He came up behind me just as I was finishing his port sauce for the lamb with a sprinkle of honey vinegar and a bit of butter, the only changes I made to any of his recipes, finding the sauce without them a bit one-dimensional and in need of edge smoothing. He leaned over me, dipped a spoon in the sauce, tasted it, and then kissed the side of my neck right below my ear.

“You’re amazing. Perfect fix, it’s been eluding me for weeks.”

I hated the way my nipples got hard when he did that. Down girls. We hate this smug fartweasel.

He followed the plates out to the dining room, where I soon heard both laughter and applause. I rolled my eyes, and turned to plate the galette. He returned, wordlessly helped get the plates together, and as soon as the waitstaff took them, turned to me and said, “I’m going to need another one of those magic concoctions.” Whatever bit of respite he had
gotten from his condition had started to wane, and I was still so shocked by his behavior, I could do nothing but make him another drink and hand it over.

It revived him almost immediately, and he was summoned to the living room to join the guests for coffee and cognac. I cleaned the kitchen, packed up leftovers, and made Maria’s lunch for the next day. In the guest bedroom that I used on nights like this when the act of driving home was a recipe for disaster, I changed out of my chef whites and into the pajamas I kept there, taking my hair down from the severe bun I favor while cooking. I headed to the kitchen, suddenly starving, and in need of a little snack and a glass of wine. Patrick was sitting on the kitchen island, waiting for me.

“My little savior.” He oozed off the counter, sidled over to me, put his arms around me and literally bent me over in a dip and kissed me firmly and a little wetly on the mouth. He tasted of cognac and chocolate. He smelled like freshly mown grass. He was a really good kisser. I’m not really sure to this day why I took him back to that room. Probably a little of it was that it had been a long time since I had slept with anyone. Maybe a little of the cachet: bagging the hot-stuff pretty boy. Some of it was that in the moment I simply couldn’t come up with a good reason not to, which in and of itself should have been the reason, but I was in my twenties and didn’t know better yet.

The sex was brief and, frankly, unmemorable. I was too tired and he was clearly suffering from some diminished capacity. We didn’t really speak. Patrick got up soon after we finished (or I should say, after
he
finished), to go to the bathroom, and I fell asleep while he was gone. When I woke it was morning, and there was no trace of him beyond whisker
burn on my chin, a condom wrapper on the floor, and a sinking feeling of mortification.

When I went to the kitchen to rustle up breakfast, I found Maria getting ready to head out to the studio.

“Good morrrrrning,” she said with a smirk.

I must have blushed the color of cabernet. “Good morning.”

“And how did you sleep?” She was enjoying the heck out of this.

“Fairly well, thank you.”

She raised one eyebrow at me, and then we both burst into laughter. I told her the whole story, she thanked me for saving the meal and the night, and we promised never to speak of it. Flash forward eight years, and she was recommending I work for Patrick. “You go meet him. ’E needs a new assistant now that ’e is adding a second show.”

“Um, Maria. I don’t think that is such a good idea.”

“Why not? The job is perrrrrfect for you. You cannot stay with me, you will be borrrrrrred of the salads and steamed vegetables and you hate the sad diet chicken brrrrrrrreast.”

It’s true. I think boneless, skinless chicken breasts are the devil. The idea of cooking them with any regularity makes my spine lock up. But not enough to leave Maria, and especially not enough to work for that smug, drunk fucksack. Especially after what had happened. Which was essentially nothing. He sent Maria a huge floral arrangement with a gushy card to thank her for allowing him to cook for her, which made me throw up a little in my mouth. He called and told her that anytime she wanted, he would open his restaurant on their day off to entertain her and her friends. He did not ask her about me, acknowledge me in any way, did not call or send me flowers. Which said to me that he was either
as embarrassed as I at our little assignation, which pissed me off, since there was nothing at all embarrassing about sleeping with me—I’m adorable. Or it meant that he was so accustomed to any female within arm’s-length falling into bed with him, that there was no need to even pretend that it was necessary to follow even the basest bit of postcoital politeness, as if sleeping with him once was reward enough for some nothing like me.

“Maria, perfect or no, how could I ever work for him? After what happened?”

“To be ’onest, and don’ be mad, I don’ think he remembers. When I talked to him, ’e says anyone I would recommend would be welcome, and that he looked forward to meeting you. ’E did not say that it would be good to
see
you
again
, but to
meet
you. It was so long ago, and you said ’e was verrrrry dronk. I know it is not the best, but you would rather it ’ave not ’appened. If ’e does not rrrrrrememberrrr, it did not ’appen! Clean slate.”

I thought about that for a moment. And she was right. Whatever blow it might be to my ego that the arrogant bastard could actually have sex with me, even minor, quick, drunken sex, and completely not remember it, it did free me up to consider the job.