She was red and flustered and sputtered an apology, but I didn’t have time for these kinds of mistakes. Nor did I have the energy to go through the interview process to try and findanothercompetent sous chef. Not like Landon would let me fire another one so soon, anyway. He’d insist I find a way to work with her.
“Do it right this time.Blue,” I snapped, and she hurried off to try and fix what she’d already messed up.
I didn’t care that it was her first day. She knew what she signed up for. This was The Pacific, a place known across the globe for its food. I didn’t get that Michelin star for no reason.
“Move, people!” I shouted to the rest of the kitchen. “Why are you all being so slow today? Are you all on Prozac?”
Nobody answered, nor did I expect them to. But at least they all added a bit of speed to the way they were moving.
Luckily for her, the new sous chef, whose name I hadn’t yet bothered to learn, returned with the correct lobster fairly quickly. If only she could actually listen when I spoke to her, we might get along better.
“Go; get moving on getting that blanched,” I barked at her. “You do know how to blanch a lobster, don’t you?”
“Yes, Chef,” she muttered, turning on her heel and heading for the stoves.
I rushed to the other end of the kitchen to start preparing my well-known hibiscus-poached pears and yogurt. As always, I was planning on blowing the minds of the guests who had chosen our hotel. I was the best, and it would stay that way, no matter what.
“Asparagus!” I yelled over my shoulder, realizing that no one had started prepping the third dish in the line-up quite yet. This was ridiculous. It was as if everyone in the kitchen had suddenly been replaced by a sloth. “Someone, check on the bar progress; we need that Chiblis ready as soon as we move!”
One of the assistants hurried out of the kitchen, likely a bit relieved that he got to escape for a minute or two. I heard the sound of someone else peeling the spears of asparagus for my saffron-infused side.
We were still on track to be finished in time, but there were other dishes waiting to be made, other bookings that had to be kept to. Letting anything slip through the cracks could be destructive. To my career, the hotel’s reputation, and the possibilities for everyone in the kitchen’s future.
“Blanched!” The sous chef announced from near the stove, less convincingly than I would have liked.
“Take over here,” I ordered her, and she rushed in my direction while I headed toward the lobster. She seemed to wait for me to chastise her, but I didn’t say anything. It was done well enough;not as perfectly as it would have been if I had done it myself, but it wasn’t a disaster.
I began working on the shells, continuing to shout orders alongside a few insults over my shoulder as I did so. At some point, it felt as if the kitchen had gotten into a more acceptable rhythm, and I could focus on what I was doing.
That was until I heard familiar high-heeled footsteps coming through the doors. I closed my eyes for a second, halfway through my sauté of the lobster shells, hoping that Adriana was not about to tell me the entire group had changed their minds about the menu.
Frankly, hearing her approach had become something I dreaded on a daily basis. Not because she’d screwed up my kitchen again after that first day, but because it almost always meant that someone, somewhere, had had some obscure request that the kitchen had to fulfill.
“Nolan!” Adriana’s voice, though pleasant enough, made me sigh as I turned around, still keeping an eye on the pan. I had just added white wine and tomato paste, and it was nearly time to add the veal glaze.
“What is it now?” I asked, already frustrated and knowing that whatever it was, I wasn’t going to be happy about it.
“Actually, I’m just checking in,” she said, smiling at me.
“On schedule,” I grumbled, getting the glaze and starting to add it. “Anything else?”
When I looked over at her with one raised eyebrow, she seemed to have frozen for a moment. I paused as a frown started forming on her face. “What?”
“What’s in that?” she asked, sounding as if she had just seen me add rat poison to the dish.
I looked down at the glaze, and back up at her. “It’s a veal glaze. To add richness to the lobster.”
I said this as if it should have been obvious to anyone listening. In this hotel, it was supposed to be. But Adriana had previously shown her lack of culinary knowledge, and I wasn’t sure she knew the first thing about gourmet cooking.
“Veal?” she repeated the word as if it was something horrifying, and pulled her tablet out. That damn tablet. She started scrolling and tapping furiously.
“Yeah, it’s meat from—” I began explaining with a tinge of sarcasm in my voice. But the look on Adriana’s face silenced me quickly. Something was definitely off here, and that was a problem.
“A member of the group has a red meat allergy,” she said, her tone almost dead. “She can’t eat this.”
It felt as if the entire kitchen came to a stop there and then. I went over the brief in my head, but I couldn’t remember that restriction ever coming up. My jaw tightened.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, slamming a fist onto the counter. Everyone in the kitchen took that as a sign to get back to work, and they hurried to get the other two dishes in shape.