Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

  “Thanks, Frank,” he said. I was surprised that he knew the manager—­who wasn’t wearing a name tag—­personally, and that he was taking the blame for the egg. But I was even more surprised when he stuck around with me and smiled a full, toothy, letter-­D-­shaped movie star grin.

  The magazines said he was only twenty-­eight, which was young for an executive chef but felt old to me. He looked like a man. Even when Elliott turned twenty-­eight, I doubted he would look as manly as Pascal. Somehow, in the supermarket lighting, Pascal seemed hotter—­more capable and more real. In restaurants, he blended in with the scenery of the meal. But here, holding his basket just like everyone else, looking at the discounted produce, getting lost in the aisles, his presence became even more magical, as if I were seeing a beautiful, powerful animal in the wild instead of at the zoo.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?” he teased.

  “I was eating with my friend at Tellicherry,” I said, which was kind of true. Michael Saltz was most certainly not a boyfriend. I hoped Pascal wouldn’t mention a “boyfriend” again so we could continue like this, talking in a safe, cordoned-­off ring away from Elliott and Michael Saltz. Could Michael Saltz blame me for running into him here?

  “Girls’ night at Tellicherry? You know how to live, then. Aren’t you in school?”

  “Well . . . yeah . . .” I started, wondering how he’d known. I was wearing regular jeans, a toggle coat, and ballet flats—­standard grad school wear. And it was midday, so clearly I wasn’t at work. “School’s okay,” I said, “but I prefer being around this stuff.”

  “Gigantic cracked eggs?”

  I giggled, a high-­pitched girly trill, an uncharacteristic sound that momentarily startled me. Was he really talking to me this much? Again? “No, I mean I like being around food and learning about it and stuff.”

  Learning about it and stuff? Apparently I always had grade-­A babble for Pascal.

  “Yeah, me too,” he said. He spoke like he was just another NYU student, low-­key and modest, some guy shopping for groceries. Not some super-­hot celebrity chef, the preferred topic for every food magazine and blog.

  “Well, see you around,” he said, then bowed his head in the courtly manner that I knew from Madison Park Tavern was the mark of a fine restaurant.

  “Yeah.” I gulped. “See you around.”

  He picked up his basket of mushrooms, herbs, and heavy cream, and walked away.

  I looked down at my outfit. It was one thing to see him in the dark lights of Tellicherry when I’d worn that Vivienne Tam, but unlike Pascal, supermarket lighting wasn’t doing me any favors. Michael Saltz didn’t want me wearing my Bergdorf clothing out, but how would he know? I had a whole closet of shiny, new, sexy, impressive things that deserved to be seen. It wasn’t like I was telling ­people where I was eating dinner. No one besides Elliott knew that I had barely touched designer clothing. Emerald and Melinda were somewhat aware I was a fashion dilettante, but they were two ­people in a city of 8.5 million. I just needed to keep them at arm’s length. Everyone else would assume I had always had these privileges.

  But I could only self-­loathe for a second or two because then I saw Pascal Fox turn back toward me, like he’d just thought of something. Maybe he wanted yams, or cauliflower, or oranges. Not me again.

  “Hey, Tia,” he said.

  He remembered my name. Now I felt like that ostrich egg, rolling around, oozing goo. He whistled slightly as he spoke, a part of his accent that made him seem like he was whispering something to me and only me.

  I suddenly thought of Elliott. He and I had started dating in freshman year. He was my first love, my first—­and only—­lover. Early in our relationship, he had given me a list titled: “59 Reasons Elliott Loves Tia.” Once I had read it, I’d recited a list of my own, right off the cuff. Fifty-­nine to his fifty-­nine, and we kept building on that list in our minds and in our hearts for the next four years.

  This was fresh in my mind as Pascal inched nearer, every millimeter burning into that memory. When was the last time I’d had these red-­hot feelings for Elliott? Maybe never. We had started as friends, temperate water that had worked itself to a simmer.

  But with Pascal, I was already at a full boil.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I get your opinion on something?” He bit his lip and sounded adorably unsure. His chef’s coat was unbuttoned at the top, and I was disappointed to see a T-­shirt instead of his bare skin.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Come on.” He nodded his head toward the spice aisle and I followed, practically skipping behind him because apparently my feet didn’t know how to play it cool.

  “I’m working on a new dish with fluke and lovage, but it’s falling a little flat for me,” he said. “What do you think?”

  I scanned the spices. Something to pull them together . . . “Hmm, okay. Let me think.”

  We stayed silent for a while, pondering the selection.

  “You know what lovage is, yes?” he asked finally.

  I shot him a face. “Um, yeah. It’s been written up all over the place.”

  He laughed. “Sure. I should have known you’d know. But do you like it?”

  “Well . . . actually.” Normally, in any room, I was the food expert. But this was New York City. And here was Pascal Fox. And I was just one of thousands of ­people like me, ­people who had curiosity and a computer. “I’ve never had lovage,” I admitted. “I know it’s like celery, but milder. And I know it looks like fennel. And I know it comes in giant stalks and . . .”

  “Whoa, whoa, hold on right there! You can talk all you want, but that doesn’t tell you everything about love—­”

  I kept expecting him to finish the word, but he let it hang until I interjected, my voice trapped in my throat. “Lovage?” I said.

  “Love-­age.” He smiled. “What do your book smarts tell you goes well with lovage?”

  I felt him watching me as I reconsidered the spices, trying—­and failing—­to keep my heartbeat soft and steady. “You said fluke, right? Well, I’d stay away from the stronger spices that would otherwise pair with lovage—­cumin, coriander, etc. And I see you already have dill in your basket.” As I thought, I got calmer. I didn’t even need to look at him; I felt Pascal warming up, smiling at my knowledge.

  God, I loved that—­being challenged and appreciated and heard. As much fun as I had with Elliott, I could never talk to him directly about food. He’d listen, sure. He’d try to understand, of course. But I’d always hold back, curbing my passion. What if I didn’t have to?

  “So I think . . .” I picked up a jar from the spice rack. “Nigella.”

  “Nigella! A daring pick. Why nigella?” Pascal asked, taking the jar from my hands.

  “Because the oniony flavors will complement the lovage. Onion, celery, fennel. It all goes. And it has that sort of prickly pungency to it. The taste matches the texture.” I looked up at him, but he kept his lips tightly sealed, as if words were about ready to come out . . . but didn’t. Did he want to correct me? Say “never mind”?

  “But . . .” I looked back on the shelf. “If you’re not looking for textural contrast, maybe a whisper of white peppercorn?” Strain had entered my voice because he wasn’t giving me any feedback. He was the chef, not me.

  Finally, he put me at ease. “Why did you stop?” he asked. “You were giving me free ideas!”

  I blushed. “Oh, I guess I didn’t know if you liked my suggestions.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “I liked them very much. Pretty good for never having tasted love-­age ever.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to beam. All I thought was, Thank you, you get it.

  “Well, why don’t we pop your lovage cherry?” he said.

  Under any other circumstances combining lovage and cherries would have repulsed me, but
now I simply melted.

  “Come to Bakushan now. I’ll try out the dish and you tell me what you think.”

  I gasped and leaped up in the air. “Really?”

  He touched me on the shoulder and a chill zipped to my toes. “Really,” he said.

  Before I knew it, we were in the checkout line together. I briefly checked my phone to see if Elliott or Michael Saltz had called or texted, but thankfully neither had. For now, I pretended that I was in another world without them.

  “OKAY, GIVE ME fifteen minutes,” he said. “Study up, book smarts girl!”

  The restaurant was closed until five P.M., so it was only us plus some prep cooks in the back. The dining room looked oddly inert and uncool in the light. I heaved my books up and tried to do my reading, but I couldn’t concentrate, not with Pascal clanking around in the open kitchen.

  I kept my head down and my eyes up, watching him. The situation was at once strange and homey. We barely knew each other and yet the moment now felt tender, like he was my boyfriend making me breakfast while I worked.

  I closed my book and walked up to the kitchen pass.

  “Hey, brainiac,” he said upon seeing me. “Sick of the books and wanting to do some hard labor, huh?”

  “Ha! Yes. Over books any day,” I said, and walked in. I saw him take me in, from head to toe. Not the once-­over that I’d gotten at Yale or from Emerald, but another sort of thing, a look that said, I’m glad you’re here.

  He put me to work.

  “Smaller,” he said, looking at my lovage chunks. “Like this.” His knife vibrated up and down, and before I knew it he’d tada-ed a mound of perfect translucent green cubes.

  “Oh, jeez! I’ve never learned knife skills. I guess I’ve sort of faked it this whole time.”

  He leaned his hand on the counter and looked at me curiously, licking his soft, ribbonlike lips in thought. I had to hold on to the ledge for balance.

  Then he came up behind me, so we were both facing the counter. “Well, faking it is fine for amateurs. But I know you’re a professional. I’ll show you. Get the knife,” he whispered in my ear. He picked up a stalk of lovage, holding on to my shoulder as he side-­stepped. We gripped the knife together. With his thumb, he pressed my thumb against the blade, as if the knife were a fanned deck of cards. “Just light pressure. Always come back to the tip. Use the curvature and keep rocking.”

  We practiced, the knife dipping in and out over the cutting board, his hand pressing harder as we swept into the downswings. Then he put the lovage underneath our knife and we started. The knife slipped through it like skis on snow, not like the clomp clomp of my regular slicing.

  “See? Easy.”

  He pulled away and—­just like at our meeting at Tellicherry—­my skin sizzled with the memory of his touch. I still felt his chest against my shoulder blades, my butt against his hips, his arm curved around mine.

  I couldn’t decipher what he was doing with me. We had accidentally bumped into each other at Tellicherry and Whole Foods, but this, now, was intentional. But on whose part? The way he talked to me, looked at me . . . This morning, I never would have thought that I’d end up here, in Bakushan, with Chef Pascal Fox practically spooning me while teaching me knife skills.

  I heard my phone ring in the dining room but decided not to answer it. I didn’t want to break the spell. All the other cooks had left, the calm before the dinner storm. The kitchen bloomed with the full smells of roasting onions and garlic. In the back, a duck on a spit. Where Michael Saltz’s apartment was prickly and cacophonous, here everything swelled and harmonized.

  While he sautéed the lovage, my eye caught on a framed newspaper article. It was just two lines, but it was the only thing in the room not designed to make or serve food, and it had choice placement on the door between the kitchen and the dining room, next to the two-­person chef’s table.

  PASCAL FOX of Antoinette has left his Executive Chef position to pursue other projects. Chef Fox says multiple investors have approached him and he is weighing options.

  “Why did you frame this article?” I asked.

  “Well, why not?”

  “Because it doesn’t really say anything.”

  He stopped tending the stove and looked back at me. “Actually,” he said, “it’s what it doesn’t say that matters. What comes next? What are the possibilities? It’s easy to rest on your laurels, but this tiny mention inspires me.”

  “Right. Because you’re on the line to do something good and prove yourself.” I thought of the reviews—­so many ­people lived on those words: the diners, the chefs, the owners, the waitstaff.

  “No, no,” he said. “I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. Just me.” He pointed to his chest and he would have sounded cheesy had he not seemed so genuine. “But, here,” he said. “Try this.” He handed me a fork.

  I poked the fluke, a cube of lovage, and hay-like strands of some dried root vegetable, and dragged it through a sauce studded with nigella.

  Before I took my bite, I asked, “Did you try? What did you think?”

  He grinned and took off his apron. “I don’t care what I think, I care what you think.”

  “Sounds like you want to prove something to me,” I teased. Where I was coming up with this saucy tone?

  “Maybe I do,” he said with an arched brow, his gaze never leaving mine.

  I tasted. “It’s great,” I squeaked. What did I think? I thought he was the hottest guy I had ever talked to, maybe even seen. It didn’t matter what I thought of the dish.

  I heard my phone ring again and groaned. Not now! I just wanted this moment a little longer. Who knew if I’d ever live anything like this dream again?

  “Is that you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s fine,” I said as the ringing stopped. I took another bite. It didn’t follow any normal standards. The fluke was slippery, cold. The lovage’s potency poked through, funked it up. But it felt incomplete.

  “It’s missing something . . . right?” Pascal asked, reading my mind.

  I tipped back on my heels and considered him. He barely knew me and yet he seemed in tune with my thoughts. Even in the tiny kitchen, we somehow danced around each other without stepping on each other’s toes.

  “Right,” I said. “But I’m not sure what it is.”

  Pascal put his hand on his hip. “Come now, Tia. This is the creative process and I want your input. We have to remember those words on that wall.”

  We? We who? We the restaurant, or we us? Like, him and me?

  “Who wrote that, anyway?”

  “A woman named Helen Lansky.”

  “Helen?” I nearly hiccupped. I studied the article again, but it was still two lines, the same two lines I had read before. Of course Helen Lansky knew who he was. He wasn’t some random grad student like me. “You know Helen?”

  “Yes,” he said. “She’s a prize unto herself, separate from restaurant reviews and that blogger shit.” Annoyance overtook his voice, but he shook it off. “Helen is magnifique. I have all her cookbooks; her flavor combinations are classic, eternal.”

  I couldn’t help staring at him, slurping up every atom and utterance and whistle in his voice. He’d become more relaxed in the kitchen, relaxed yet assertive. He bit his thumb in thought and the contrast between his big, strong hands and this adorable, boyish habit made me woozy.

  “Well . . . what are we doing with this dish?”

  “Let me think,” I said, letting my exhalations calm me down yet again. “I think the dish needs something more to ground it. Something earthy.”

  “That’s the lovage,” he said, now looking in the fridge, his jean-­clad butt poking out.

  “No, the lovage is the wild card,” I said, as steadily as I could, even though I was intensely distracted and slightly astonished that a man’s butt excited me so much.
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  “That flavor remains suspended in your mouth,” I continued. “You need something that goes deeper.” As I said it, he slowly approached me. I lifted my hand to make way for him but he caught it midair.

  “I need something?” he asked, tightening his grip with a little smile and a little threat. He walked one inch closer and that inch set my heart fluttering again, the air between us compressed and tickling.

  “Yes. Um, I mean . . .”

  Still holding my hand, he grabbed a bowl of toasted almonds. “Like this?” He dropped one in my mouth with his free hand, his fingers barely touching my lips.

  I didn’t feel like eating. I felt like either running back to my apartment and hiding under the covers, or maybe just pretending I was someone else and kissing him right then and there.

  But I ate the almond and resigned myself to imagining his lips on mine. His hand was still around my wrist . . . his finger on my lips . . .

  “Or, maybe this.” He gripped me tighter and, with his other hand, picked up a frond of dehydrated kale, as big and light as a feather. He touched the end of my lips, but when I opened my mouth, he pulled it away. “Careful,” he said. “It crumbles.” He placed it on my lips once more and I took a bite, little flakes of kale falling like green fairy dust.

  Now my heart was taking off and I was gripping his hand, too. Was this what cheating felt like? Like the wind is being sucked out of you and replaced with something volatile and hot, something that saps you but leaves you invigorated all the same? My breaths shortened. I leaned all my weight on the wall. One nudge and I’d fall to the ground—­or into Pascal’s arms.

  “Or this might do the trick.” He reached for a plastic container and plunged his pointer finger in. Out came a puff of white on the tip of his finger. “It’s a sesame-­yogurt mousse, with a hint of sumac.”

  Yes, that would go well with the dish, that was perfect. Cheating tasted like helium. You can breathe it, but it makes your insides go awry. It flushes out the oxygen to make way for something new, something false.

  But maybe if you’re starved for air, you’ll breathe anything.