Chef Cutegirl: A Sweet Lesbian Romance

by Nicolette Dane

  “Yeah, before we announce the winner,” said Tim. “I just want to say that this was one of the more successful Unruly Restaurants we’ve had on Hot Chef, so I wanted to commend both teams for really doing a bang up job. You should all be proud.”

  All of us happily said “thank you,” smiling, feeling good about ourselves. Though it still lingered above us that one person would be eliminated, even if both teams did well.

  “The winner of Unruly Restaurant is…” said Pema, looking at us all with excited eyes. “The girls!” The judges quickly began clapping as we celebrated. Maggie, Tina, and I hugged each other, laughing excitedly, grinning. All the exhaustion we felt was suddenly and completely wiped away as we discovered our success. It felt amazing. It was all you expect it to be when you watch the show at home but so much more. I only wished Raina could be there with us to hear the good news.

  “Boys, why don’t you step to the side for a moment,” said Pema. The guys followed her direction, all 3 of them beginning to look distraught. They knew that one of them would soon be cut from the competition.

  “Ladies,” began Tim. “You played it very smart leaning on Emily and Tina’s knowledge of French classical and the way you brought a casual air to it, made it more rustic and fast casual, just smart. Excellent job. We all really enjoyed every dish.”

  “Let’s start with the appetizer course,” said Pema.

  “You know,” said Tim. “People look at steak tartare and think nothing of it. They think it’s really easy to make.”

  “No way,” interjected Tony, leaning over slightly and looking down the table at Tim. “No, that takes some real skill to work with raw meat and not make people sick.”

  “Exactly,” said Tim. “You need to have excellent knife skills, the freshest beef, I mean… you really have to know what you’re doing. And you ladies certainly did.”

  “Was having Raina a help for you all in the kitchen?” asked Gretel.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “She fired the bulk of the entrees and did a ton of prep work for us. She’s a workhorse.”

  “Yeah,” said Tim. “It’s sad that she’s no longer with us.”

  “Who’s dish was the lamb?” said Pema. I was taken aback by this question for a moment because they all knew who did what, as we had explained when we served them. But then it struck me at how repetitive the show could sometimes be when you watched on TV. Just one of those “keep the viewers involved” type of things, I guess.

  “I did,” I said, raising my hand.

  “Perfectly executed,” said Tony.

  “And you let it rest for a good amount of time,” said Tim. “As you should. Really tender. Not chewy at all.”

  “You know, I really loved the dessert course,” said Gretel. “The beignets weren’t greasy at all, just a nice crunch on the outside, airy in the inside. And the blackberry compote was a nice touch.”

  “Chefs,” said Tim. “You all were the clear winners in this. Not to downplay what the guys achieved, of course, with their menu, but we think you ladies took Unruly Restaurant to another level. Subsequent seasons of Hot Chef are going to have a lot to live up to.”

  “Tony,” said Pema. “Would you like to announce the winner of Unruly Restaurant?”

  “Sure Pema,” said Tony. “The chef that won today’s challenge not only showed exceptional foresight in their dish design but they also demonstrated themselves as a highly skilled leader for their team. The win tonight goes to…”

  I closed my eyes. I could feel my heart racing. Everything seemed to get fuzzy. My breath quickened.

  “Emily,” said Tony.

  “Oh shit!” I said aloud reflexively. Maggie and Tina laughed, the judges tittering along with them, and my teammates hugged me tightly.

  “Congratulations, Emily,” said Pema.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. I knew that I had worked so hard, as hard as I had done while on the show — or ever, for that matter — but to hear my name called as the winner, it was just stunningly wonderful.

  “Is this your first win?” asked Tim.

  “It is,” I said.

  “I can’t believe it took you this long to get a win,” he said. “But really, you earned it. You did a superb job in the kitchen today and you should be incredibly proud of yourself.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Then I turned back to my teammates and beamed. “I can’t fucking believe it.” We laughed together and hugged once more.

  “Thank you ladies,” said Pema. “You can step to the side. Now we’d like to talk to the guys.”

  It was over. I had won. I was so ecstatic, I just wanted to jump around and hoot and holler. It made me want to wrap my arms around Raina and hug her so tightly and feel my lips press into hers. I wanted to share this all with her. I yearned for her love.

  *

  It was Jason who was sent packing that night. Although the guys had put together a good performance with their dishes, they were having problems getting their plates out at the appropriate time and ended up having a back up in the dining room. Jason was running front of house and this was all pinned on him by the judges. He was quite unhappy about it, understandably, but we all knew going into Unruly Restaurant that the competition was getting more intense as we were all quite good.

  I couldn’t dwell too much on losing Jason. I didn’t really care. I cared more that I had won, my first win, and I was happily basking in the glory of my substantial success. Once I got back to the loft, safely tucked away in my bedroom, I eagerly texted Raina to let her know that I had won. Although contact with eliminated players, as Raina had so dutifully recited to me, was forbidden by our contract, I just really didn’t care about that either. And when I saw that she was texting me back, the little notable ellipses popping up in my text window indicating she was typing, I knew she was on the same page with this whole thing.

  “Yay!” Raina typed back. “That’s amazing, Em!”

  “We really couldn’t have done it with out,” I wrote. “You were so important to our win.”

  “Nah,” she texted. “Just got lucky I was put on a good team.”

  I stared down into my phone for a minute. I really missed Raina. As I laid there in my bed, post-shower, sleepy, exhausted from the day, I wished she was in bed with me. We would cuddle and kiss and just fall asleep together. That would have made my win so much sweeter.

  “I really miss you,” I wrote after a moment’s pause. “I wish you were still here.”

  “Same,” Raina typed back. “You might not have seen the last of me.”

  “Are you still winning Rebound?!” I wrote. “Did you beat Jason?” I had no idea if Rebound Kitchen happened immediately after the Cutthroat or the next day. But I was eager to know what was going on.

  “Can’t say,” she wrote, punctuated with a devil emoticon.

  “I hope so,” I texted. “I’d love to eliminate you for real this time.”

  “Funny,” Raina typed. “You must be riding high on that easy win against the boys. Or maybe you inhaled too much gas from the oven today.”

  I melted there in my bed, a happy grin etched into my face as I looked down into my phone and reread my and Raina’s flirty repartee. It made me so ecstatic to be back on her good side, to have cleared up our little misunderstanding. The only thing left for me was to win. Then, with Raina by my side, I could go on to open my own restaurant, do talk shows, prove to the world that I was a talented and worthy chef. This win really rekindled the flame burning inside of me. My confidence was stoked. I felt all sparkly and bright.

  “I really do hope you make it back in,” I wrote her, getting serious. “You deserve it.”

  “Thank you, Em,” Raina wrote, dotting her gratitude with a smiley face.

  I snuggled deeper into bed now, pulling the covers over top of me, relaxing into the mellow light of the lamp in the darkened evening. I was so beat and even though I wanted to keep my conversation alive with Raina, I knew I had to get some sleep in so that I could kill
it in the competition tomorrow.

  “Maybe after the show is over,” I wrote to her, nestling into the blankets and releasing a contented sigh. “I could visit you in NYC?”

  “I’d really like that,” Raina texted.

  “OK,” I typed. “I’ll go to sleep dreaming of being in NYC with you.”

  “LOL,” Raina wrote. “Me too. Goodnight Em.”

  “Night Raina.”

  Even though my bed felt empty without Raina in it, I knew that all would be well soon enough. Emily Gold was on the rise. Soon the whole country and the culinary world would know me and all this hard work, all the pain and sacrifice, it would have so much meaning. And that meaning, it could all be summed up by Raina. She was just what I needed and just what I was searching for.

  *

  Time really began to fly by. After we finished Unruly Restaurant, Hot Chef began airing on television though we were barred from watching it until the show was completely over. I had no idea how they would portray me, or my character, on TV and I was a little nervous that I might come off as a boisterous lout or something. And anything that the cameras happened to catch of me and Raina being sweet to one another, well, that would certainly end up as some sort of dramatic storyline. I worried, too, that they would make it seem like I screwed with Raina’s heat and got her eliminated, that the public would hate me. But worry never solved anything. I just had to press on and keep cooking my heart out.

  The next chef to fall was Julio. Poor Julio. What a sweet guy. I wouldn’t have been against facing him in the finale. I liked him a lot and, honestly, I felt I could pretty handily beat him. After Julio went Tina. Tina really shouldn’t have lost, in my opinion, but the end of the competition was just getting so damned tough. Nobody was making any mistakes. It really came down to technicalities. If your haricot vert was just a smidgen overcooked, you were done. Didn’t add enough salt to appease the over-salted palette of a seasoned celebrity chef judge? Chopped. In the beginning of the show you could get away with rookie mistakes, but as we neared the finale you really had to bring your A game or you were most certainly headed home.

  The biggest thing I was learning about myself through the intensity that was Hot Chef was that I was good enough. I’ll be honest with you. Us chefs tend to put up a pretty hard exterior. I think that’s especially so for women chefs. I mean, there’s a lot of competition in the culinary world, a lot of people vying for a finite number of chef jobs. And so many restaurants fail, so many people get tossed around to the next venture. You really need a thick skin if you want to succeed. But that doesn’t mean we’re not hurting under that thick skin. Sometimes you might be standing there at your station, expediting, directing traffic in a busy kitchen and you think to yourself, “oh shit, is this new menu item just a jumbled mess? If this flops, are they all going to think I’m a phony?”

  And the natural progression from there… will the owner lose faith in me? Will I get fired? Will I ever find another head chef job again? Don’t send me back to line cook, I just can’t handle that. I’ve got to be in charge or this whole thing comes crashing down.

  But being on Hot Chef, surviving some incredibly strenuous challenges, cooking better than I’ve ever cooked before, this all demonstrated to me that I could do it. I was a good chef. Possibly a great chef. I had the talent necessary to win on the grand stage and, provided I maintained my composure, my grace, my skill, I could make it to the finale and show the world what a tremendous chef I actually was.

  It came down to me, Maggie, and Richard. Oh, and whoever had won Rebound Kitchen. Production told us that the way it would shake out is that in the next filming we would see who won Rebound, the three of us would face off with that person in an intense Cutthroat Challenge and not one, but two chefs would be eliminated thus sending the final two chefs left standing to the finale.

  It was enough pressure to make you vomit.

  They had brought us to the Chicago Lyric Opera House for the showdown to determine who made to the finale. The opera stage had been outfitted as a kitchen, complete with four stations. The three of us left in the competition stood on that stage, I’m sure everybody’s heart palpitating hard enough to burst out of our chests, with Pema and Tim standing with us. Cameras rolling. We had been told the challenge in advance, which was to make a dish that we felt totally represented us as chefs, and all our requested ingredients had been gathered for us.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever stood on stage at a grand opera house, the seats completely empty, sounds reverberating off the walls, but to say that it was intimidating was an understatement.

  Of course we had speculated who might be joining us in this penultimate challenge but we just couldn’t be sure. Hot Chef had so many surprises. They wanted to keep you nervy. That was part of the draw. Every home viewer, by this point in the competition, would have picked their favorite to win the whole thing and the producers wanted to keep the audience guessing for the sake of drama. But I was so over drama. I just wanted to cook.

  “Chefs,” said Tim, after getting the cue to begin his lines. “You’ve made it far in this competition but you’re not out of the fire yet. As you know, your eliminated competitors have been playing a side game called Rebound Kitchen. Whoever won Rebound Kitchen on a particular day would face the next eliminated chef and whoever was left standing at the end, well, they would come here to face you.”

  “One chef showed they really had what it took to best all challengers,” said Pema. “Would you like to see which chef won Rebound Kitchen?”

  “Yes!” we all intoned together, excitement apparent in our faces.

  “Come on out!” called Tim. With cameras trained to the wing of the stage, we waited to see who would step out from backstage. It was nerve-wracking. I couldn’t barely hold it all in.

  “Chef Cutegirl,” I mumbled to myself under my breath, muttering an intonation like if I kept repeating my chant it would come true. “Chef Cutegirl, Chef Cutegirl.”

  And it came true. Raina walked out slowly, a demure smile on her face, eyes somewhat averted. We all began clapping, both Pema and Tim joining in.

  “Could it have been anybody else?” said Tim.

  “Raina,” said Pema. “Please join your fellow chefs.” Raina bowed her head slightly at Pema and then walked up to us. I looked at her, absolutely beaming I’m sure, with a stupid grin on my face. As she approached, I eagerly wrapped an arm around her waist and gave her a firm side hug. Raina happily emitted that cute rolling giggle of hers. I was so elated to have her back.

  “Looks like the Tremendous Twosome is back together,” remarked Tim, smiling at Raina and I.

  “These ladies are going to be hard to beat,” said Pema.

  Raina and I just grinned at each other. I was so pumped to see her smiling face. She calmed me in that moment, just when I needed her most.

  “Chefs,” continued Pema. “You’ll have just 1 hour to prepare for us the dish that represents you best. The pantry backstage is stocked with all the ingredients you requested of us. You’ll have the overwhelming quiet of this beautiful opera house to help you focus. This final challenge will determine who makes it to the finals.”

  “Remember chefs,” said Tim. “Only two of you will make it beyond this challenge. And here’s an incentive for each of you to win.”

  “Whoever wins this challenge today,” said Pema. “Will determine where we film the finale.”

  “What?” was the chorus that came from the four of us, uncertain as to what Pema was saying. “Huh?”

  “The winner will get home field advantage for the finale,” clarified Pema. “If Emily wins, we stay here in Chicago. If it’s Raina, we go to New York. Maggie, we go to Detroit. And if it’s Richard, we’re flying out to LA.”

  We all began to laugh and applaud. It certainly was a boon to cook in your hometown. It just gave you that extra level of comfort, as I had felt for the entire competition filming in Chicago.

  “And to make it even more worth your while
to win,” said Tim. “The finale will be judged by some of your hometown chefs. We’ve got some tricks up our sleeves.”

  We again applauded and hooted.

  “That could be bad, though,” remarked Richard with a laugh.

  “True!” said Tim. “They might hold you to a higher standard.”

  “So with all this on the line, chefs,” said Pema. “Know that this challenge is going to be tough. We expect nothing less than perfection.”

  “Listen,” said Tim. “One final bit of advice. Cook with your heart, not with your mind. I know the four of you have been doing that all season, but I just want to hammer it home. If you love what you do, if you have love in your heart, in really shows in the final product. We want to see that love on the plate.”

  “Get ready, chefs,” said Pema. “Your time starts… now!”

  *

  Walking down the long carpeted hallway of the hotel, a fancy place just off the Park, I dragged my rolling suitcase behind me feeling an immense sense of relief. I had made it. Whether I won or lost in the finale, I would be known throughout the culinary world as someone who reached the top of Hot Chef through determination and talent. I had shown that if you work hard, you could make your dreams come true. I had already won in my mind. The outcome of the finale almost didn’t matter. The money would be nice. The title, of course. The magazine feature. The endorsements that would follow. That would all be wonderful.

  But it wouldn’t be necessary for me to feel happy about myself.

  If you would have asked me when I started out on Hot Chef what I coveted most about winning the whole thing, I probably would have told you the title. The title of Hot Chef would be a justification for everything that would come next in my life. It would be irrefutable proof that I was good. Don’t like my dish? Well, you know I’m a Hot Chef right? It would almost put me beyond criticism in a way. It would propel me into some upper eschaton of culinary masters that would convince people that what I said was scripture. It would tell people I was worthy.