The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  Lefty greeted me in his usual formal style. “Hello, ma’am,” he said as he nodded politely and shook my hand. In spite of all the times I’d hung out with Lefty, he still insisted on calling me ma’am and treating me with old-fashioned courtesy, even though he was only a few years older than I was.

  “When are you going to start using my name?” I asked him.

  “I can’t do that, ma’am.”

  I smiled at him. Lefty’s formality suggested that he had grown up in the South or had been in the military, but he was from Lynn, Massachusetts, and spent his working life as a civilian in Boston. He was charming and incredibly sweet.

  Digger sat next to Josh, and Lefty next to me.

  “S’up, Dig? Good to finally see you!” Josh gave him a manly clap on the back. “How’s the restaurant going? Lefty giving you problems as usual?”

  “Yeah, you know him. That pain in the ass is full of back talk and can’t cook his way out of a hole. Right, dude?”

  “That is correct, Chef.” Lefty cracked a smile.

  “Nah, it’s all good there. The usual shit, but it’s good. I’ve still got that moron Pete working for me, but mostly I’ve got a solid staff.” Digger downed his entire glassful of water. “God, I’m thirsty. We were hustling tonight at work.”

  “Which one is Pete again?” Josh asked.

  “Pete’s that guy who talked his way into the cook job. He’s Lefty’s backup. Anyway, he talked a good game, and, like an asshole, I hired him. When it came time to put on the coat, it turns out he can’t boil water without screwing something up. No matter how many times I show him how to do something, he always screws it up. Last week he sent out seven rare cods in a row. I mean, Jesus, who wants to eat uncooked cod, right? I just walked out of service. I said, ‘I’m done. Nobody call me. The rest of you can deal with this.’ And so I left. But Pete hasn’t undercooked the cod since. His latest problem is that he keeps sending out the tuna without the balsamic reduction. He’s unbelievable.”

  “So how are you going to fix that problem?” I wondered aloud. Digger presumably couldn’t keep walking out of dinner service.

  “Easy. I told Pete that every time he sends the tuna out without the sauce, I’m gonna kick him in the shins.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You are not going to do that, are you?”

  “I already have. I don’t knock him to the floor or anything, but yeah, I kick him in the shins. He’s doing much better.”

  I looked at Josh, expecting him to be at least somewhat startled, but he nodded in understanding. “You gotta do what you gotta do, man. There are always idiots in a kitchen. Speaking of raw food, remember the chicken story?” Josh and Digger started laughing.

  “What’s the chicken story?” I asked.

  “You tell it, Josh,” said Digger, grinning. “I can’t. I’ll get too pissed off again.”

  “Chloe doesn’t want to hear that story,” Lefty said.

  “Yes, I do. Tell it!” I demanded, always eager for insider kitchen tales.

  Josh leaned back in his chair. “Digger and I were working together at this family-style place, and the owner had booked a rehearsal dinner party. Now, the bride was the daughter of the bank manager from the bank that had the note on the restaurant, so obviously we were supposed to do a bang-up job, right? Digger and I were basically running the show, but we weren’t doing much of the actual cooking that night, although we’d done all the prep the day before. Everything was fine until the entrées were served, and all of sudden the kitchen door goes flying open, and the bank manager comes in practically breathing fire and screaming that we’ve ruined his daughter’s wedding. Turns out all the chicken is perfectly browned on the outside and still clucking on the inside. The guy in charge of cooking the chicken had the temperature too hot and browned the birds off too fast.”

  “Oh, God. That is really disgusting. The bank guy must’ve been furious,” I said.

  “He was good and mad, and we were shaking in our clogs because the owner was going to know about this, too. So this guy doesn’t hit us or anything, which was lucky, and he ends up just saying, ‘We are done for the night.’ And the whole party left.”

  “Did you guys get fired for that? Or your cook?”

  Digger shook his head. “No, no one got fired. We blamed the cook, but obviously it was our fault, too. We had to accept some of the responsibility, right?”

  “What happened to the cook?” I asked, giggling. “Sounds like it was really all his fault.”

  Josh looked at Lefty. “He’s sitting right next to you.”

  I turned to Lefty, embarrassed for him. “I’m sorry I laughed at you.”

  “Ma’am, it was my fault. There was no excuse.”

  Digger reached across the table to mess up Lefty’s neat hair. “Yeah, but I took him with me when I left anyhow, right, dude? You know when someone deserves a second chance. And he hasn’t undercooked a chicken since. It’s just Pete I gotta worry about now. Who knows what he’s doing tonight? But at least we’d stopped serving when Lefty and I came to meet you guys.”

  “What’re you losers doing here?” Chef Mark Porcaro appeared at our table. “Chloe excluded from that, of course.” He smiled at me and then shook hands all around.

  Mark had the same rough, nearly fireproof, hands that Josh did. Josh called them asbestos hands. Chefs could dunk their fingers into simmering sauces, test the heat on griddles, or pick up hot-from-the-oven food with their bare hands. It never failed to make me cringe when Josh dipped a finger into a boiling pot.

  “Did you guys order yet?” Porcaro asked. Many restaurants stopped serving dinner at ten or offered only limited menus in the late evening. Because Top of the Hub offered a full menu until one in the morning, it was the perfect meeting spot for chefs when they got off work at their own restaurants.

  “Not yet. What should we get?” Josh asked. “I think Chloe might want one of everything you got.”

  I held up my hand to stop him. “Very funny. That might be a little much, even for me. Although I have to try the crispy calamari dish.”

  “You want me to just send out whatever?” That’s exactly what you want to hear from a chef like Mark Porcaro.

  “Anything you want. Thanks, man.” Josh shook Mark’s hand again and let him go back into the kitchen to work on whatever treats he was going to create for us.

  Our server arrived to take our drink orders. We got Heinekens all around.

  “Josh, how’s Simmer doing? Do you guys have steady business yet?” Lefty asked.

  “It’s coming along. Still unpredictable. One night we’re swamped, the next we’re empty. But I think the warm weather is really going to help us, especially with the patio area we have.”

  “Yeah, if those Newbury Street shoppers can put down their Gucci bags long enough to eat anything.” Digger snorted. “I’m just kidding. But I’d think you’ve got an interesting crowd coming in there, to say the least.”

  “You’re not kidding,” Josh agreed. “Chloe, I don’t know if I told you this one, but last week these two couples come in late. At like nine thirty, right, when we’re basically starting to break down. Two business-type men with their wives—all dolled up. So they get liquored up and make it through their apps fine. And the problems start. So one of the men had ordered the swordfish, and I had one piece of it left. Would have been fine except that I wasn’t paying attention, and I burned it. Seriously burned it beyond recognition. Their server went out and explained that, in fact, there wasn’t any swordfish. And this guy just flips out and demands to see me. So I go out covered in grease, I’m all sweaty and smelly, to talk to this group of dressed-up tight-asses. I said to the guy, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I lost your swordfish. What else can I get for you?’ and he completely doesn’t get what I’m saying because he’s had too much top-shelf liquor. He starts yelling at me because he truly believes that I literally lost his damn fish. ‘You don’t just lose a piece of swordfish! It must be there! How can you not find it?
I can’t believe you call yourself a chef. The appetizers were shit anyway!’ This guy was a piece of work.”

  “So what happened?” I had no idea that customers ever behaved that way.

  “Well, then he takes the wine bottle that had been chilling in a marble cooler on their table, and he smashes the bottle on the cooler and continues screaming at me, and there I am, having just worked fourteen hours, and I’ve got to deal with this punk. Wade and Kevin came and threw him out before he got it together to do anything with the broken bottle.”

  “Dude, that sucks!” Digger clapped his hands together. “Everybody is entitled to be unhappy with their food, right? But that is out of control. I’ve never had anything that bad happen. Usually it’s just someone saying nasty stuff like I need to learn how to cook, or the plate doesn’t match the description on the menu. Your food must blow to have made that guy so mad!” Digger leaned to the side before Josh could whack his arm.

  Porcaro returned with two servers, all carrying plates of beautiful food. One tray held an absolutely delectable-looking assortment of sashimi and maki complete with splays of finely cut vegetables, wasabi paste, and thinly sliced pickled ginger. What else? Swordfish with a mango salad and coconut jasmine rice; smoked duck confit with a goat cheese tart, golden raisin sauce, and fig syrup; pan-seared halibut with roasted tomato, baby artichoke, a potato truffle hash, and vegetable bouillon. Also, the foie gras, the scallops, and the salmon that I’d noticed on the menu. Wow! Oh, and the crispy calamari with the Asian slaw and roasted pineapple dressing!

  “I’ll see if I can pop back out in a few minutes, okay? Enjoy! And I hope everything is all right,” Porcaro said with completely false modesty. He knew he was good.

  Lefty, of course, gestured for me to help myself first. I didn’t protest. But I did have to fight my way around Josh and Digger. I bit into a ring of chewy calamari and moaned with delight. The calamari had been tossed into the slaw with the sweet pineapple dressing to become the ultimate spring salad. Phenomenal.

  “Mmm … Hey, did you guys hear about Leandra?” Josh asked as he noshed on a piece of fresh yellowtail that he’d piled with wasabi and ginger.

  “We were just talking about that on the way over.” Lefty nodded. “That is awful. Wait! She worked for you, didn’t she?”

  Josh’s mouth was too full to answer, so I spoke for him. “Yes. She was a server there. Actually, I was one of the people who found her. Did you know her?”

  “Lefty and I have both worked with Leandra before, only at different restaurants. She’s worked all over the place, so the odds are we would’ve run into her at some point. Pretty nasty story. Do they know what happened yet?”

  I shook my head. “No, although it seems pretty clear she didn’t die from natural causes.” Those marks on her neck? I still had no idea what had caused them. “And, well, since you two knew her, maybe you could help me with something.” I popped a piece of duck into my mouth. “I don’t know if you knew that Gavin and Leandra were dating, but he asked me to try to gather some stories, memories, thoughts, that kind of thing, to put together into a book. Maybe you guys have something I could put in?” I was pleading.

  “I’m not sure most of the memories I have of her are going to work for your book,” Lefty informed me politely.

  “Why wouldn’t they work?”

  “Leandra had her moments. She could be a little difficult.” Lefty looked at Digger for help.

  “She was a bitch,” said Digger.

  “How do you mean? Did a lot of people hate her?” If Digger or Lefty could point out anyone who might have hated Leandra enough to kill her, it might take the heat off of poor Owen.

  “It’s not like I wished her dead or anything,” Digger began. “But she was nasty and rude a lot of the time. She was one of those people that would kiss the customers’ asses and then treat the kitchen staff like shit. She’d flirt with the front-of-the-house guys and then make fun of them behind their back. Act like she was too good for them.”

  Lefty agreed. “Leandra hurt a lot of feelings everywhere she worked. She was pretty good at her job, but she could be a monster to work with. Restaurant people like to have fun. Plain and simple. And Leandra did her best to ruin that. For instance, we always play practical jokes on the new staff, okay? Nothing too awful, and it’s all in fun. So when Dig and I worked with her, we made a batch of cayenne cookies one time. Chefs cook for the staff a lot as a way to say thank you for their work and all that, but this time we baked up a bunch of nasty cookies. Spicy. Everyone else who ate them got mad at us, sure, but they eventually laughed and didn’t hold a grudge. Leandra threw a hissy fit and started telling us what a bunch of juvenile assholes we all were, and then she told the owner. Pardon my language, ma’am. Not that he was going to fire us or anything, but still. Then the weird thing was, the next time a new girl was hired, Leandra got her a soda and laced the straw with Tabasco sauce. Leandra laughed so hard she almost choked. That’s the kind of person she was.” Lefty bit into a scallop and took a swig of his beer.

  Digger jumped in. “She might have been good at her job, but she was the first person to point a finger at someone else. Like, at a restaurant, the chef’s food cost gets blown to shit from things like bad servers who take forever with their tables or let food sit out so long that we can’t serve it anymore. People make mistakes with orders, and food has to get thrown out. Stuff like that. Leandra didn’t do that, but she had no problem shouting about who fouled what up. You just don’t do that. Maybe you bitch about it with a few other people, but Leandra was the one who was always ratting people out to the GM or the owner. Again, not that she deserved to die for that, but she wasn’t liked much. Damn, this swordfish is kickin’!” Digger licked mango salsa off his lips. “Oh, sorry, Josh. Maybe I shouldn’t mention swordfish. Don’t want to give you flashbacks.”

  “Thanks for the sensitivity. I think I’ll be okay,” Josh assured him.

  “Josh, was Leandra like that at Simmer?” I asked him.

  “Yes and no. I mean, she and Blythe hated each other, but I think that was because they are so similar in some ways. They both get a lot of attention from the guys and all that and they’re both pretty outspoken. Were, I guess. Were. But, yeah, Leandra was good at pushing people’s buttons. Just a general snottiness and bitchiness. But once she and Gavin started dating, she calmed down a little.”

  “He must have seen something in her, though,” I said. “Leandra must’ve had some good qualities. Otherwise, Gavin would’ve dumped her right away. He seems like a normal enough guy. I can’t imagine he’d put up with constant awful behavior.”

  Or, I wondered, had Gavin discovered that Leandra wasn’t the woman he’d thought she was?

  “I don’t think Gavin knew about everything she did,” Josh said. “Like, Leandra called Isabelle ‘rat girl’ all the time because she used to live on the streets, but I don’t think she said that in front of her boyfriend and boss.”

  Now I was pissed. It was one thing to call Blythe flat-chested but quite another thing to call Isabelle “rat girl.” Leandra was a bitch! Poor Isabelle! It ticked me off to think that I’d found her a job in Josh’s kitchen only to have her subjected to name-calling. “Didn’t you do anything?” I demanded.

  “There wasn’t much to do except tell her to lay off, which I did. But Isabelle has to learn to fight her own battles. And it’s not like we have an HR department.”

  That was true. Was it ever! Very few workplaces of any kind would have tolerated the kind of behavior that the chefs had just described. I couldn’t imagine that employees at Goldman Sachs, for instance, would be allowed to kick each other in the shins or lace straws with Tabasco in between managing assets. I’d spent the past year interning at the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace. Although I was in the habit of referring to it as the BO, I’d actually learned a lot about handling inappropriate workplace conduct. In the world of restaurants, however, conduct that would have been
outrageous elsewhere was considered normal. There was an unspoken rule about paying dues: You had to put up with abuse to prove yourself worthy of your position and to move up in the ranks. If you complained about how you were treated, you faced a serious uphill battle that you’d fight with little or no support. Restaurants run by big corporations didn’t allow that kind of hazing, but it flourished in small independent establishments, which, sadly enough, were often the places that served the best food. The macho quality of the initiation rites wasn’t surprising, since most professional chefs were men. There were exceptions: Julia Child, Jody Adams, and Lydia Shire came to mind, as did the female chefs featured on the Food Network. Even so, and in spite of the stereotype of home cooking as women’s work, the culinary world was dominated by men. Why? That’s exactly what I asked the table.

  “You’re right,” Digger agreed. “It’s dominated by men, and it probably comes from a couple things. The kitchen can have a pretty nasty caveman attitude. Culinary school is brutal, and I think a lot of women drop out of the profession then. Like, when I was there, I had this crazy old Swiss chef as one of my instructors. Real bastard, that guy. And one day I went to go change the oil in the Frialator. So the oil is kept in this big vat in a stainless steel cabinet right next to the Frialator. Well, someone had rigged it so that when I opened the door, the whole goddamn thing fell out and spilled dirty oil all over this twenty-by-ten area. Okay, obviously not my fault, but this Swiss chef made me clean the whole frickin’ thing up by myself. You can imagine how much fun that was.” Digger snorted at the memory. “Then he made me spend the next two days doing nothing but peeling vegetables. Not fair, right, since I didn’t monkey with the oil vat?”

  I nodded.

  Digger continued. “Now, how many women would put up with that?”