Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

  At Tellicherry, Michael Saltz wore a realistic strawberry-­blond toupee that made up for all the other ridiculous toupees in the world. It turned him from a neurotic rich guy into an all-­around good guy. To complete the look, he’d worn khaki pants, a purple-­and-­white-­checked shirt, and pointed brown shoes. He looked like a guy you’d ask for directions, someone who’d happily let you take his cab. I hardly recognized him.

  We did not match at all. I wore an emerald long-­sleeved dress by Vivienne Tam and a pair of tangerine Chris­tian Louboutins. I had seen the same look in one of Emerald’s Vogues and asked Giada to overnight it. I learned quickly, though I wasn’t very original. I’d changed in a coffee shop next to my apartment, then hopped into a cab.

  “Next time we must coordinate outfits beforehand,” Michael whispered as we sat down. “I was going for ‘salt of the earth’ today.”

  “Oh, I wanted to match the décor,” I said.

  Tellicherry felt like a sexy, sinister jewel box. A rich sapphire blue stained the walls in large, meandering splotches, like dye dropped into water. Bronze silk leaped and dipped in the cushions. The waitresses wore black dresses with seductive lace panels revealing flesh-­colored bits, and the waiters slinked in semi-­sheer pajama-like outfits, conjuring bedtime escapades, none of which involved sleeping.

  Michael Saltz shook his head. “Wrong approach. Consider this—­would a restaurant critic look like I do now? Like a dad from Bergen County?”

  “No, I guess not.” I leaned over the table so no one could hear me. “Should I always dress the opposite of the décor?”

  “Not always. Think strategically. Sometimes you want to blend in. Sometimes you want to look like an aberration. When making multiple trips, you have to change your plan of attack every time.”

  “Oh, that makes sense,” I said, hiding my clutch, the same sapphire blue as the walls. “So, I wanted to tell you in person that things have gotten a little crazy for me. I got put on probation at Madison Park Tavern.”

  “Is that right?” he said, surprised, even though he was the reason I’d gotten in trouble in the first place.

  “Yeah. They think there’s something fishy with the review. They saw you and me in the basement on the security tapes, and—­”

  “Wait, what? Do they know about us?” He put his napkin on the table as if ready to leave.

  “No! Gary and Jake don’t think that. Neither does the director of the program. I told them we didn’t discuss anything important and that I had no idea who you were.”

  He tapped his fingers on the table, then flattened them with a slap when a very handsome waiter came over. The way he introduced the food, I could tell he was a nerd, though a hot nerd. Like a nerd who could also throw around a football and model for a sporting goods company.

  “Well, I suppose that was the best you could do,” Michael Saltz said after we ordered. “But a probationary period isn’t good for maintaining secrecy. Your behavior will be under stricter scrutiny. Which reminds me, where’s your phone? I thought I made it clear that I’d like it on the table, face up, when we have our dinners.”

  I brought it out and Michael Saltz nodded in acknowledgment and appreciation. Strangely, he seemed more worried about my incoming phone calls than the possibility of someone at Madison Park Tavern discovering our arrangement.

  “So, this is what I think so far,” Michael Saltz said. “I think . . .” He looked up, averted his eyes from a passing guest, then whispered under the Euro-­beat music, “I think Tellicherry has the makings of a three-­star restaurant.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  Michael Saltz blinked his eyes ten or so times. Every once in a while, he did these weird sensory wake-­ups, the way ­people scratch their head to get their ideas flowing. “You get a second sense about these things.”

  The waiter returned with a pre-­appetizer amuse-­bouche, a soup spoon filled with diced radishes, shortbread crumbs, and a black pepper gastrique. After the waiter left, Michael Saltz said, “They’re trying. Hard.”

  The flavors surged. The radishes had been pickled, articulating their peppery bite and giving them a sharpened edge. The shortbread grounded the bite with a bready, buttery mouthful and the black pepper–vinegar sauce finished it with an elegant and seductive wisp of sweet, salty, and spicy.

  “This is very, very good,” I said.

  “I know. I can see and smell the craftsmanship. You can tell where this restaurant is shooting,” he said, his spoon suspended in the air like a conductor’s wand. “It wants to be a three-­star restaurant.”

  But judging from the amuse-­bouche, this food was sensational—­why couldn’t it be four stars if the food was that great?

  Our waiter approached with several more dishes, and I adjusted my dress.

  “Here is the monkfish wrapped in yuba,” the waiter said. “Underneath you’ll find a gingerbread vinegar puree tossed with a cranberry bean ‘soil.’ And this is the rutabaga–duck confit terrine with licorice lace wrapped around an orange-­scented breadstick.”

  “Fantastic, thank you so much for this,” I said, eager for the next bite.

  “My pleasure. I’m Felix. What’s your name?”

  “Hi, Felix. I’m Tia,” I said.

  Michael Saltz kicked me.

  “I mean, Mia,” I lied, clutching the table.

  “Very good, Mia,” he said, and I thought he had a twinkle in his eye, almost as if he was flirting with me.

  “Why would he want to know your name?” Michael Saltz shook his head as Felix left. “And, Mia? You must do better than that next time.” He cut through the monkfish with the side of his fork and plunged it into his mouth.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I’m starving, but it all tastes like boiled potatoes to me, which is sadly the most appealing taste I’ve had all day. The wrinkly texture of the yuba is interesting. Does it add much to the flavor though?”

  I took my first bite. “Hm. Yes, I think so. It’s very thin and crackled, almost like chicken skin. And, look, it’s bonded to the fish somehow. But what I really like is this gingerbread puree and cranberry bean soil. It’s so unique. The gingerbread spices sort of unlock the monkfish’s meatiness and muscle. Then the bean soil scratches your tongue and sort of forces the flavors into deeper levels of taste. And I love how you can’t place it. It’s not ethnic, it’s not market-­driven, it’s its own thing.”

  “Good, good. Let’s continue.” He passed the rutabaga and duck terrine toward me with the tips of his fingers. “Isn’t this a little odd?”

  I wanted to like it, I did. I pushed the ingredients around with my knife and fork, trying to understand it and formulate an opinion.

  Then Felix swooped in. “Oh, miss. Pardon me, I was helping another table. That’s supposed to be served with something else.” He looked at Michael Saltz sheepishly, and Michael Saltz turned his toupeed head away. “We added this dish today, and I’m still getting used to serving it. The proper preparation includes just a bit of truffle.”

  He took out a fist-­size beige knot from underneath a white napkin. The shavings rained down in ruffled, translucent strands. Felix backed away as I poked my fork through the tangle of truffles, into the terrine.

  I had read about truffles—­their taste, their hormonal, almost sexual aromas, their exorbitant cost—­but I had never even seen a truffle in person before, and had a hard time understanding why ­people paid thousands of dollars an ounce for something so humble-looking.

  But at Tellicherry, I understood. I melted in my chair.

  “Mmm . . .” I couldn’t stop saying it. “Mmmm.”

  Michael Saltz, excited too, picked up a large pinch of truffle shavings and held them to his nose. “These are very good. The finest.”

  “Oh God,” I said, in a state of delirium. “This makes the dish so much better. W
hy aren’t truffles on everything?” I had forgotten about the funky terrine. Now it was just a vehicle for the magical urgings of the truffle.

  A few minutes later, Felix came out again. “Here’s your next dish, potato pearls with black, green, and crimson caviar in a cauliflower cream nage.”

  The caviar shined like little jewels among the equal-­sized potatoes. They bobbed around in the soup, glistening as if illuminated from within. I took a small spoonful and in surged a soft, sweet ribbon of cauliflower essence. I popped the caviar eggs one by one. Pop, went one, a silken fishiness. Pop, went another, a sharp, tangy brine. Pop, went a seductive one, dark and mysterious and deep.

  Michael Saltz rolled the caviar in his mouth, too. “This is quite nice, isn’t it?”

  “Really nice,” I said, feeling a million well-­fed miles away from that bodega salad bar and my idiotic tuna niçoise.

  The rest of the night proceeded like this. It didn’t seem real. We found our table filled with dishes of sausages and mousses, soups and salads, deep fried balls of this, grilled à la plancha that. None of my online research had prepared me for the quality and imagination of this restaurant. You could never completely describe the real thing, and I thought myself silly that I had thought otherwise.

  Michael Saltz barely ate anything, but after a while, I stopped feeling self-­conscious about it and devoured every dish. After each one, Michael Saltz made me render some ruling, guiding me along the way, asking me to be more precise in my wording, more rigorous with my logic.

  Needs to be sweeter, or more pumpkiny.

  The fish’s velvety sweetness is tempered by the ashy bleu cheese.

  Fabulous char on this. They must have an excellent stove and the finest, heaviest cast-­iron pans.

  My stomach felt like it was about to burst. But we still had dessert.

  “Wonderful, this is excellent material for the review,” Michael Saltz said, finishing yet another glass of Bordeaux.

  “It is? That’s great,” I said, genuinely pleased that I was doing a good job.

  We had ordered the shaved ice and candied tropical fruits, the curry ice cream with mini brioche puffs, and the lemon basil profiteroles with blueberry-­oatmeal brittle. But a small army of servers brought out even more: chocolate fondant sandwiched in coconut crisps, cinnamon apple churros with maple syrup tapioca, chocolates, macarons, marshmallows. Felix delivered the petit fours himself, and whispered to me, “I’m sorry for the delay with the truffles. Try the lavender-­peach macarons. They’re my favorite.” Then he smoothed his bangs back and gave me an extra-­long look that made my hair stand on end.

  Michael Saltz didn’t notice. “Any good?” he asked, once the fleet of servers had left.

  “Yes, very good,” I said, the dough of a churro still wedged in my cheek. “Is this the way it always is?”

  “Well, the extra desserts are a little suspect. Perhaps he was making up for being late with the truffles?” He looked around. “I can’t decide if we’ve been made.”

  “ ‘Made’?”

  “Yes, when a spy’s cover has been blown, he—­or she—­has been ‘made.’ ”

  “Oh,” I said, looking around the room. Everything seemed to be operating normally. No one was staring at us or taking our picture or anything. The restaurant looked routine, but then again, I had only ever eaten at a few fancy restaurants before I met Michael Saltz.

  Michael Saltz wiped his mouth with a satisfied grin. “I’m going to the bathroom. Don’t eat it all,” he said with a wink.

  I ate a coconut crisp and the whole thing shriveled in my mouth, evaporating into nothing but pure taste. I held another up to the golden light as someone sat down across from me.

  “I can’t figure out this cooking technique. Do you think it’s a meringue?” I asked.

  “Actually, I believe it’s freeze-­dried.”

  My gaze leaped from the coconut crisp to the source of the foreign-­sounding voice, smoother and younger than Michael Saltz’s agitated lisp. Pascal Fox.

  “They make a conventional cookie, then, shoop, in it goes with dry ice, and the thing is a mere shadow of what was before.”

  His black hair was slightly matted and spiked, hair that was—­amazingly—­a bit like mine, thick and straight in places, wispy and fine in others. He wore a cobalt-­blue button-­down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing his tattoos. In the semi-­dark, I made out a mural of forks and knives, cows and pigs, carrots and eggplants and squashes and melons, like a super-­hot, toned supermarket. He seemed to be showing off the whole mural to me.

  “Oh, hi!” I said.

  “I remember you. You came to my restaurant about three weeks ago, right?”

  “Wow,” I said. “You have a good memory.” I couldn’t stop blushing and I regretted eating all that food. It was hard to feel pretty when I felt nine months pregnant.

  “I don’t remember everyone. Just the special ­people.” He nudged his body an inch toward mine and my breath caught in my throat. Up close, I noticed he had a slightly crooked smile and somewhat stained teeth. I liked that he wasn’t the perfect model he appeared to be in all the magazines. He was almost a regular person.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tia,” I said, knowing full well that Michael Saltz would have wanted me to say Deirdre or Emily. But when you enter a raffle, you don’t write the wrong phone number. The odds aren’t in your favor anyway, so what’s the harm?

  “Are you eating dinner here?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “I took tonight off—­first night since the restaurant opened two months ago—­and I wanted to say hi to my friend Chris­tian before I go out to dinner with some friends.”

  “Chef Chris­tian Rhodes?” I asked, in a voice that came out way too geeky.

  “Yes, Chef Rhodes.” He laughed. “You know your stuff, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I just saw it written on the menu,” I said. I had told him my name, but I knew I shouldn’t take it too far. You must be incognito, discreet. Things I didn’t want to be in front of a hot guy showing interest in me.

  “I really like your restaurant,” I said.

  I really like your restaurant? For real? Why hadn’t I said, Everything was so yummy in my tummy? “Thank you, I appreciate that. Coming from someone like you.” He looked down at the massacre of dessert plates on the table. “You here with a boyfriend?”

  “A friend! A friend!” I said a little too loudly and quickly. I stuffed Elliott and Michael Saltz toward the back of my mind, making way for Pascal’s hotness and attention. It was just for a ­couple of minutes. I’d get back to reality soon enough.

  “Oh,” he said. “You should invite him—­or her—­to Bakushan. It’d be great to see you again. I have some new things on the menu that I think you’d like.”

  I spotted Michael Saltz in the bathroom hallway, waiting anxiously for Pascal Fox to get out of his chair.

  “Ask for me, and I’ll make sure you get seated right away. There’s a chef’s table, you know. Right in the kitchen with me. It’s the best seat in the house.”

  My mind did some quick computations. The stylish women at Bakushan—­they’d only sat in the front window. Little had I known, there was better currency, better social clout. You just had to know the chef. That was the ultimate in.

  “It was nice seeing you again,” Pascal continued. He stood up, walked around the table, and gave me a little kiss on my left cheek. He stayed there for a bit, and my face burned so much I was sure his lips would singe from the molten heat of my blushing.

  Then he walked out the door.

  I couldn’t move. I still sensed Pascal’s stubble on my cheek, the smell of meat and toast from his skin. “What the hell was that?” I said to myself, my lips moving, but not a sound coming out.

  I ran over the entire interaction in my mind. Partly to mak
e sure that I hadn’t accidentally cheated on Elliott. And partly to relive Pascal’s singular magic.

  Michael Saltz returned and shoved his chair in so tight the table pummeled his hollowed-­out stomach.

  “I don’t want you talking to ­people at restaurants if you don’t have to,” he said, his voice a swift jet of wind. “It draws attention to yourself. And Pascal Fox! Do you think I go around talking to chefs?”

  “Well, I . . . he came up to me. I didn’t mean to hold you up at the bathroom, but—­”

  Michael Saltz surveyed our table, locking eyes with my phone and every plate and bowl. “And don’t you have a boyfriend?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said with a pang of regret. But did I regret what had happened, or just that I’d gotten caught? “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t call out to Pascal or anything.”

  Michael Saltz gave me a look like, Sure, it may not have been your fault, but you liked it all the same. “Listen. I’ll only say this once, because I know you’re a smart young woman. This is not a joke or some idiotic after-­school program. This is my job and my name. If a single soul finds out about our arrangement, I will lose everything. That would be bad for me, and disastrous for you.”

  I suddenly felt woozy. All that food and Pascal and now this—­something that sounded like a threat.

  “If my position is compromised, I will have no choice but to bring you down with me,” he continued. “I have far-­reaching connections and will not hesitate to end your career before it’s even begun. I can do that one hundred times over.”

  His words opened like switchblades in that raucous jewel box of a restaurant. Sure, he had given me an opportunity, but he had also trapped me.

  But despite his anger, I felt relatively calm. Like he had said, we were partners, and by then I knew that he wouldn’t accept any errors from me. I’d always known this would take some necessary sacrifices.