Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

  Suddenly I saw Elliott through a stranger’s eyes. Elliott was hot. He wouldn’t be seen as the geeky, sweet college kid with the scary encyclopedic knowledge of worms and plants for long. He’d be Elliott Chambers, a naturally handsome guy who charmed naturally lovely girls . . . girls like Emerald Grace.

  “Elliott,” I finally said in a just-­loud-­enough squeak. “I didn’t get Helen Lansky.”

  He turned to me, and his beaming smile fizzled into a confused line.

  “Who?” he asked.

  My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?” My voice was louder than it needed to be. I didn’t want to lash out in front of Emerald, especially since they were having such a chummy time together. But this was Helen. And he was Elliott. I’m not super-­friendly, and I don’t go around trusting everyone. But I trusted Elliott and I never thought I’d ever have to second-­guess him, of all ­people.

  “Helen. Lansky. My idol?”

  “Oh, God, of course. Helen! Sorry, I thought you said something else.” He hugged me and became just as puzzled and aggrieved as I was. Finally, we were on the same page again.

  But he had scared me a little.

  Chapter 3

  DEAN CHANG OPENED HER OFFICE DOOR. SHE WAS A TALL Asian woman who wore a perfectly tailored black skirt suit with a long slit up the side. Maybe it would have looked tawdry on anyone else, but on her and her I-­hope-­I’ll-­have-­those-­when-­I’m-­forty legs, it looked like pure power.

  “Tia. Hello. Nice to meet you.” She seemed kind but distracted. “I’m happy to chat with you now if it’s urgent, but I’m finishing up some grading. Can this wait?”

  “No, it can’t,” I said, then walked in and took a seat. Dean Chang sighed and went back to her desk.

  Her office was a shrine to the classics. Hanging on the wall were old menus featuring dishes like Cherries Jubilee and Lobsters Thermidor, and chummy photos of her and Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and Alice Waters.

  “Dean Chang, I received my placement notification yesterday. May I ask why I didn’t get the Helen Lansky internship? I’m so honored to be in this program, I am. But coat check? I don’t understand. It doesn’t seem like a graduate-­level placement.”

  I wanted to present myself as coming from a place of strength, to negotiate something better from her. But instead, something scared and desperate emerged and I had to fight to remain strong.

  “Oh, please don’t be upset, Tia,” she said, momentarily pushing her papers aside.

  I’d talked to her like she was a friend, and it was the wrong approach. She remained administrator-­distanced. I began again, this time with more control.

  “It’s just that the coat check position has nothing to do with food. Or with writing. I was planning on pursuing a different course of study.” In that moment, I wished I could be more like Emerald, breezily saying things that sounded calm and clever, but I was just me.

  “Tia, I understand your confusion,” Dean Chang said with stern warmth, a clear indication she had spent her whole professional career soothing anxious students like me. “Madison Park Tavern is a fabulous restaurant—­four stars, among the best in New York, as I’m sure you already know. Your semester will be fantastic, I promise.” Then she picked up her heavy pen and looked at me like there was nothing else to say on the matter.

  “But why?” I persisted. “I didn’t even put any restaurants on my application. I want to be a cookbook writer. Maybe I could be placed with another writer? Or even a blog?” I preferred Helen over every other option, but I was trying to stay open. I liked nice restaurants, sure. But they weren’t my passion. When I was growing up, my dad was notorious for his “restaurants are a rip-­off” tirade. My parents were inventive cooks and they never considered restaurant food to be worth the cost.

  For a moment, Dean Chang looked unsettled. “Wait a second. You didn’t select Madison Park Tavern as one of your choices?”

  I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. I chose Helen. Helen Lansky first and foremost. And then some other publications.”

  “Oh, but when you resubmitted your essay in that email . . .” She seemed about to open her filing cabinet, but then apparently changed her mind. “I’m afraid the decision has been made. You are a bright young woman, Tia. You’ll be fine. If you remember nothing else from this conversation, I want you to remember this: grad school is a marathon, not a sprint.”

  I fidgeted in my chair. This wasn’t how grad school was supposed to happen.

  “I mean . . . it’s a slow roast rather than a sear,” she tried again. I attempted a smile to at least acknowledge her effort, but it came out like a scowl.

  “But . . . there’s always next semester, right?”

  Dean Chang sighed, looking sorry for me. “Right. There’s always next semester, and the semester after that, and the semester after that. Though many of our mentors have erratic schedules and I can never know for sure. I can’t promise anything, so I think the key is to enjoy the placement you have now.”

  I left her office in shock.

  So, Helen Lansky: not happening. My whole idea of graduate school: rerouted.

  And Michael Saltz . . . not only had he hijacked my valuable time with Helen and sabotaged my cookies, but he also hadn’t helped in the way he’d said he would. I wished the world would play by my rules, instead of whatever was happening now.

  The walk back to my apartment was crowded with incoming NYU undergrads, their parents, and some overflow tourists enjoying the last bits of summer. I sat on a bench in Washington Square Park and watched a baby—­too young to walk but old enough to bop up and down—­dance to a New Orleans–style brass band. I saw lovers holding hands, friends drinking giant green juices, and three homeless ­people sunning on the lawn.

  I looked again at my course catalog:

  Food and Food Management Internship

  Practical work experience in food studies or food management tailored to the specific interests & career goals of each student. Work is supported by in-­class discussion, written projects & presentations.

  I was a twenty-­two-­year-­old graduate student, working coat check. I had failed.

  A girl wheeled her ice pop cart through the park toward me. It looked like a traveling Bali, with cool blues that shimmered in the sun, a tasseled white-­and-­gold parasol, and a bouquet of birds of paradise.

  “Pineapple-­ginger? Mango with coconut tapioca pearls?”

  I tossed the course catalog back into my bag and looked at the menu. “Taro and kemangi leaf? Tamarind-­turmeric? Snake fruit with mangosteen gelée? Wow, you’re making some amazing stuff.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Thank you!” she squealed. “Have you been to Asia? Are you a chef?” Despite her exotic artisanal ice pops, she was a bubbly blonde with blue doe eyes.

  “No, no, I haven’t, ” I admitted. “But . . . I’d love to. I’m a home cook, though, and in grad school for Food Studies.”

  “Oh, grad school!” she said, plopping down on the bench beside me. “I had planned on grad school, too. A joint program at London Business School and Oxford. But I decided to travel, and it was the best decision of my life.”

  “Oh, why?” Only in New York could you find a scholar who’d turned down one of the best educations in the world to hand-­sell ice pops.

  “Well, I knew that I’d be able to learn more while seeing the world. In school, your life is on hold. Don’t get me wrong, learning is essential. But you can learn anywhere. You reap more from the world than from books, especially when that world is New York City.”

  I stayed quiet and looked out over the park. I had assumed that grad school was right for me. It had seemed the natural, obvious path. But maybe that was the problem. It was a path. It offered no detours or side excursions. And where would it even lead me? Suddenly I felt choked, living in a city of possibility, but with no choices ahead of me.

&
nbsp; The girl seemed to pick up on my worry and handed me an ice pop. “Here, this is on the more experimental side of the spectrum. Nutmeg and smoked jackfruit.”

  I unpeeled the wrapper, looking at the brown, bark-like surface steaming its chill into the late summer air. I look a bite, then spit it out. It tasted like an ashtray mixed with stale marmalade.

  The girl shrugged. “You win some, you lose some.” We smiled at each other. I had to give her credit for trying. Then she wheeled her cart away, her sandals flip-­flopping behind her.

  So Madison Park Tavern wasn’t what I’d had in mind, but maybe a forced detour could be good. I’d keep Helen Lansky in my heart, but it wouldn’t hurt to see what else was out there. Worst case, I could just spit it out like that vile nutmeg and jackfruit ice pop and move on.

  Chapter 4

  A WEEK LATER, I RECEIVED AN EMAIL ABOUT MY INTERNSHIP.

  SUBJECT: Your First Day at Madison Park Tavern

  Hello, Tia. My name is Jake Ferguson. I am the maitre d’ of Madison Park Tavern. Welcome to the staff. While your first day isn’t until tomorrow, we are having a small tasting session this afternoon. I hope you can join us. It’s critical to me, Gary Oscars, and Chef Darling that staff members know each new dish. Do you have any allergies? Hope to see you soon.

  —­JF

  He also included some sort of access info to an internal Madison Park Tavern website at the bottom.

  I wrote back:

  Hi, Jake—­Sure, I can come today. I’m allergic to some shellfish—­crustaceans and bivalves, specifically.

  Sincerely,

  Tia Monroe

  And then, him again:

  You’re precise. See you soon.

  And just like that, I said hello to the New York dining world.

  I FELT LIKE an intruder. First, I had arrived underdressed in jeans, a black V-­neck sweater, and loafers with barely attached soles. Second, I had no idea what working at a restaurant entailed. I had spent the last year mapping out my career with Helen: I’d run to the bodega while Helen did the prep work. We’d make a mess in her tiny home kitchen. We’d compare notes over just-­out-­of-­the-­oven pound cake, eaten off vintage cloth napkins.

  This was not that. The restaurant was all grand dining room and decorum. The aprons were crisp and snow white. The glassware and china pinged with a sharp perfection. The place sparkled with class.

  I shot a text to Elliott saying that I was way out of my league. He responded not to worry and that I could choose a restaurant for dinner that night and tell him about my experience then. I instantly relaxed. Even if the afternoon was a disaster, at least I had Elliott.

  “Are you Tia?” a small, narrow-­hipped man asked. He wore a blue-­and-­white-­striped French-­cuffed shirt and a navy sport jacket with a slight nubby texture, like the underside of a thin-­crust pizza. “I’m Jake Ferguson. Welcome to the restaurant. Come this way.” He moved his hand toward my elbow, not quite touching it, and I took his lead.

  ­People filed in as Jake showed me the coatroom, the kitchen, and parts of the dining room hidden from public view.

  “This is the water station; this is where we hide the washcloths. Here’s where we leave notes for the rest of the staff and keep pictures of key critics.”

  He revealed a cabinet lined with labeled photos of food writers and their media outlets: Kane Hart, critic at New York, Richard Callahan at the Village Voice, Aria Ramos from the blog Sexy & Hungry in NYC, and others. But there was one face and name that took precedence over them all: Michael Saltz, New York Times.

  They had two pages of bullet points about him and seven photos. But they sure weren’t of the same skinny, serpent-like man I had met almost two weeks ago. The Michael Saltz in these pictures was plump, formidable, his shirt barely stretching over his belly. But the pictures were faded. The most recent one was dated from last summer.

  “Yes, the Big Guy. Public Enemy Number One, Michael Saltz,” Jake said, then closed the cabinet.

  Did he realize these photos were totally off?

  He gestured toward a banquette and I sat as more ­people spun themselves through the rotating door. The women wore trim black suits on their identically shaped bodies. They all had different colored hair, but it didn’t matter, since they hid any diversity by pulling their hair back tight with rubber bands and gel and bobby pins. They had, literally, not one stray hair. I re-­did my ponytail self-­consciously, but my hair has its moments of thick and thin. When it’s not being prickly, it’s superfine and flying away.

  Next to me sat a girl who was an outlier in every way, too. Her hair was frizzy, her suit was fussy, and she had a busy-­bee quality I liked right away. Plus, she didn’t make me feel like such a slouch.

  The men were more mixed. Among the kitchen staff, there were two Hispanic guys, a large French guy with big hands, and a gangly mustached man. The waiters matched the waitresses—­meticulous and precise.

  I recognized Matthew Darling and to my surprise, I got a bit of a thrill from seeing him in the flesh. He was just a regular-­looking guy, with a round, pale face and buzzed auburn hair.

  Helen had profiled him in the Times two years ago, when Chef Darling was the executive chef at Vrai and known for microcalibrating the menu to the seasons. Not just tomatoes in the summer, but grape tomatoes in the early summer, because they’re more tender in their youth; heirloom tomatoes in the middle of the summer, at the peak of their gnarliness; and then Jersey tomatoes in the late summer, when they’ve come around to ripeness, like vacationers returning from the beach. Matthew didn’t mess with foams and air and such—­he was a man of the grill and the hearth.

  And now I remembered—­Helen had said that Matthew Darling was one of her favorite chefs in New York. He was a purist and a thinker, an unflashy experimentalist. And now he had taken the reins of Madison Park Tavern, a bigger stage. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

  Chef Darling cleared his throat and Jake moved to cede the floor.

  “First up,” Chef said, holding a bowl of lustrous burgundy liquid with a rogue white squiggle, “is a cold roasted beet soup, laced with a horseradish crème fraîche.” The line cooks passed along teacups filled with the same concoction.

  The girl with the frizzy hair handed me mine without looking at me, then cradled the teacup as if the cold soup were warm hot chocolate. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back so the soup coated her top lip.

  I did the same, not because I was copying her, but because that’s how the soup wanted to be eaten. First, it hit you, cold and bracing. It was almost too vegetal, too pungent. But then you licked your lips, and the soup transformed into something sweet and profound. It pierced you, like a deep back scratch by a warm hand.

  Next to me, a waiter with salt-­and-­pepper hair raised his hand.

  “Yes, Angel?” Jake said from across the room.

  “Chef, am I tasting heat in here?”

  Chef Darling was about to speak when Jake interrupted. “What do you think, Mr. Martinez?”

  The waiter didn’t miss a beat. “Yes. White pepper. From Ceylon.”

  Jake started to talk, but this time Chef Darling interrupted. “Correct. Very good.”

  “Next dish, Chef?” Jake said.

  “As you wish, Jacob,” Chef Darling said after waiting a few beats, as if he couldn’t stand his voice to be that close to Jake’s. I felt the tension between the two men, and it seemed like everyone else did, too. We braced ourselves for a confrontation but relaxed when Chef Darling held up a black earthenware pot.

  “These are short ribs, black-­eyed peas, and kale braised in apple cider and garnished with pistachios and green garlic. Our official fall short-rib dish. After this, I’d like to take a break from short ribs.”

  “Chef,” implored an older waiter. “Chef Tate had a short-rib dish year-­round. Will you at least do an appetizer?” H
e held an elegant notepad and pen.

  “No, I’m phasing it out. No short ribs anywhere.”

  “Phasing it out?” the waiter responded. “That’s what everyone who comes here wants to eat.”

  Chef Darling scratched his head and fumbled for a response. I wanted him to have more confidence. This was his restaurant. Who cared what the previous chef, Anthony Tate, had done? This was Matthew Darling’s time.

  “Ahem, let’s hand the dishes out now, Chef,” Jake said.

  I had only tasted bite-­size Chinese-­style short ribs at home, so I was surprised that Matthew’s cuts were much bigger and that the meat melted into the kale in the sultry, complete way cheese melts into pasta. The apple cider gave the dish a sweetened edge, somehow making the short ribs and kale more comfortable with their match. I didn’t love the dish for reasons I couldn’t quite determine. But I appreciated it.

  “Do you like it?” the girl next to me asked.

  “Oh, yes, I do,” I said reflexively. She hadn’t looked at me the whole time, and her friendliness caught me off guard.

  “I love it,” she said, then smiled so widely there was something lusty and embarrassing about it.

  Next, we moved to dessert with a bite of berry torte, passed out in shallow bowls meant for sauce.

  “There are over fifteen individually prepared components in this,” Matthew started.

  “And you must know them all!” Jake added.

  Matthew cleared his throat. “The important ones are: berry cake, chia seed brittle, mint-­honey glaze, preserved orange peel, burnt sugar whipped cream, almond tuiles, almond-­Riesling gelato, and rose meringues. Then everything is set ablaze with bay leaf–infused brandy.”

  “Bay leaf!” the girl next to me whispered to herself in astonishment. She hovered her face over the little bowl and sucked the bite into her mouth, like an alien abduction.