Out of the Frying Pan

by Robin Allen

  I heard grumbles and mumbles from Dana’s detractors. “She stole this election.” “Doesn’t she have a restaurant to run into the ground?” “She looks like a Cornhusker.”

  Dana sipped from the measuring cup, then continued, “As you all know, I’m a James Beard Award winner, a Texas Ex, and a longtime member of ABRA … ” She waited while the applause from her supporters rose and fell, then raised the spatula into the air and said, “And I am now your president!”

  More applause, more grumbles. “She’s not my president.” “Randy was robbed.” “I’m so hungry, I could eat a Cornhusker.”

  Dana thanked a few people by name, including her husband and business partner, Herb Wolff, whom she said was managing their restaurants that night and couldn’t make the dinner. Then she said, “I’m going to make a very special announcement after dinner, so don’t eat and run.” She looked at Perry, who smiled and winked at her. “Now let me get back to work so I can finish deviling your eggs,” she said.

  The egg hunt at the chicken coop earlier was just for show. Pre-gathered eggs had been boiled, cooled, sliced, and deviled that morning, or even the day before. That’s what I would have done. Actually, I would have skipped such a labor-intensive, time-­consuming appetizer altogether, but one of the promises of Feast in the Field is that all main ingredients, except the meat, come from the farm. It’s kind of an Iron Chef challenge for the guest chef preparing the dinner because they never know which crops will thrive and which will fail. I remember a dinner a few years ago comprised of nothing but eggs, eggplant, tomatoes, and winter squash.

  “Okay, folks,” Perry said, waving another index card, “according to the schedule, it’s time for aprerit- … aperti- … drinks and appetizers in the Field.”

  The bar and dining areas were set off from the washing shed, kitchen, and farm’s office by a chest-high hedgerow wall that enclosed the Field. Guests came and went through an ivy-covered archway as wide as a vegetable-oil powered microbus is long. The Field is available for rent, which is how they can justify keeping it permanently fallow, and they have hosted a lot of weddings in the Field, reunions in the Field, and once, a birth in the Field.

  I had lost track of my stepmother during the demonstration, and I estimated a ninety-six percent chance that she had skipped the demo and made an early appearance at the bar. The other four percent chance was that she had skipped the demo and gone to the bathroom to refresh her hair and makeup before she made an appearance at the bar. My reprieve wouldn’t last long. Nina would find me soon enough to complain that her champagne cocktail wasn’t fizzy enough or to ask where she could see the pigs in their blankets.

  The only reason I was babysitting Nina was because my father, Mitch—who hasn’t done much of anything lately except hire one of my old boyfriends to manage our family’s restaurant, Markham’s Grille & Cocktails, and schedule appointments with his heart doctor around golf games at his country club—told me he wanted to attend the dinner, too. Except he didn’t say exactly that, and I had been so thrilled at the prospect of spending time with him that I hadn’t paid attention to his semantics.

  What he said was that he wanted me to attend the dinner with him, which is different from him attending the dinner with me. (“I’ll buy a table,” Mitch said after I accepted. “We’ll make it a family affair.”) By agreeing to that sneaky word arrangement, I had also agreed to spend the evening with Nina; Nina’s daughter, Ursula York, which makes her my stepsister, who is the locally famous chef at Markham’s and was once falsely accused of killing the world-famous chef, Évariste Bontecou; Ursula’s much younger sous chef and secret paramour, Trevor Shaw, whom I like and don’t mind hanging out with; my cousin and best girlfriend, Daisy Forrest, and her husband, Erik, ditto on the hanging out part; and Markham’s general manager, Drew Cooper.

  But because Mitch was still golfing with his attorneys; and Ursula, Trevor, and Drew were at Markham’s finishing up with Sunday brunch; and Daisy and Erik had lingered in the corn field to enjoy some rare kidless time together; and Nina had misread Tour of the Farm as Pour of the Farm and thought she had come early for a wine tasting, it was left to me to keep her upright and leaf-free as she hobbled and griped about humidity, bugs, and scents that are not found in day spas, department stores, or hair salons.

  The bar was on the left side of the Field, near a stretch of mature pecan trees strung with tiny white lights that would look romantic later after sunset, but looked like tree spores in the sunshine. Randy Dove stood behind a long cloth-draped table lined with several clear plastic highball cups of red and white wine, and a galvanized metal tub filled with ice and cans of soda and Lone Star and Shiner Bock beer that people could serve themselves. At previous dinners, he had poured tastings of two-hundred dollar wines, which was what I was looking forward to tonight.

  So I waited while Randy spoke with the sales rep he had brought with him, a tall, dumpy guy with curly blond hair and brown eyes, dressed like his boss in khaki dress shorts and a maroon polo shirt. I thought I recognized him, but he seemed to belong in another context and I couldn’t think of his name. Randy bent down to open an ice chest and pulled out a bottle of champagne then handed it to the guy. “Take this to Dana with my congratulations and compliments,” he said.

  “Come on, Randy,” the guy said uneasily. “Not tonight.”

  Randy handed him a champagne flute. “Yes, tonight.”

  I thought Randy had made a nice peace offering by congratulating Dana so extravagantly. Perhaps I had misread his reaction to the announcement earlier and he felt relieved of the presidential burden.

  When the rep left, Randy asked for my order by raising his dark eyebrows at me. “A glass of Meritage, please.”

  “I have the best,” he said, uncorking a bottle of something with lots of scrollwork on the label. He first splashed some into his

  almost-empty glass, then poured a few glugs into a plastic cup and handed it to me. Had he owned a restaurant, I would have assumed his generosity to be a scratch of my back in hopes that I would go easy on the next health inspection. But Weird Austin Spirits does not prepare food, so they do not get surprise inspected by the health department, so he had no reason to bribe me. The gesture would have been pointless anyway. Every food service professional in the city knows that my fingernails are too sharp to scratch anyone’s back.

  I’m a Special Projects Inspector with the Austin/Travis County Health Department. As a SPI, I don’t have an assigned division, and my schedule and duties fluctuate depending on what I’m working on. After growing up in the family restaurant working as a bus girl, waitress, manager, and cook, I’m used to working odd hours, and I perform a lot of late-night surprise inspections, overnight stakeouts, and other time-critical investigations.

  “Sorry about the election,” I said.

  Randy slurped what sounded like ten tablespoons of wine and swallowed hard. “Win some, lose some.”

  I raised my glass. “À votre santé,” I said, then sipped my wine. The man had not lied—it was good stuff.

  Randy raised his eyebrows at another customer, and I saw Daisy and Erik waving at me from our dinner table a few feet from the bar. As I walked over to them, I turned my head to look around for my father, so I didn’t see Erik raise his arms to hug me until I reached them, which put my wine in spilling range—and it did. All that good, expensive Meritage seeping into the grass.

  “Sorry, Poppy,” Erik said. He picked up the empty cup and handed it to me. “I’ll go get you a napkin.”

  “And more wine,” Daisy called after him.

  I sat next to my cousin at a round, white-clothed table marked Markham with a hand-lettered sign and decorated with a centerpiece of a lit white candle inside a hurricane glass surrounded by fresh rosemary sprigs.

  “Where’s Drew?” Daisy asked. “I thought y’all would be here together.”

  Three

  In the orig
inal plan from months ago, the eighth person at our table was supposed to be freelance food writer Jamie Sherwood, my ex-boyfriend twice removed. Jamie runs a foodie website called Amooze-Boosh (the Texas spelling of the French amuse-bouche, which means “mouth amuser”). His unique take on such things as recipe theft accusations, mobile food cart wars, and the results of the Friends of the Farm presidential election is why he has readers in all four corners of the world.

  He also writes a monthly column called “Taste Buds” for Deliciousness Magazine that helps people write their own food reviews, the idea being that it would help make them better home cooks. The magazine had taken several of their columnists on tour for the summer to give workshops on such topics as reviewing meals, styling food for photographs, and writing recipes for publication. They recently added several European cities to the tour, which would keep Jamie away for another few weeks.

  To help him maintain his finger as the most important one on the pulse of Austin’s food world, I had fed him regular updates on hirings, firings, openings, and closings, and occasionally chased down leads and information for him when my schedule allowed. I had agreed to be his eyes, ears, and Girl Friday at the dinner.

  Jamie is twice removed because we had broken up earlier in the year when I discovered that he had forgotten to be faithful to me one night. After a couple of months, I found a way to begin to forgive him, and we were in the middle of a tentative reunion when I had been gobsmacked by who he cheated with. He had so far refused to discuss things with me, saying only that he made a mistake and it will never happen again. Which is why I had so far refused to recommit to him.

  In the meantime, my boyfriend before Jamie, Drew Cooper, the one Mitch hired to run Markham’s—the one I had once thought I would spend the rest of my life with until he disappeared one day without a word—returned a few months ago with a really good reason for his three-year absence and a proclamation that he intended to wait for me as long as he had to. With Jamie gone and our relationship undefined, I had allowed myself to interact with Drew in ways other than as our restaurant’s general manager. At first I wanted only comfort and friendship, but it soon turned into more, a sort of test drive of our compatibility after so many years apart.

  And that’s why Drew Cooper was our eighth at the dinner table.

  “He’s finishing up brunch,” I said. “He’ll be here later.”

  “Things are going well?” Daisy asked.

  I nodded and sighed. “Yeah.”

  “You’re going to have to choose pretty soon.”

  “Why? Why can’t I date both of them?”

  “Because dating two men is not a complication you can handle,” she said. “And they’re men. Territorial men.” Sunlight ricocheted through her wine as she swirled her glass. What was taking Erik so long?

  “Jamie won’t be in town until after Thanksgiving, so I still have some time.”

  “It’s not like you to not know what you want,” Daisy said.

  “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m as rigorous about the people I let close to me as I am about enforcing health codes. Quadruply so for the men I date. I would rather remain single than spend time with a man I cannot see a future with. Usually it’s not a problem because once I break up with someone, things stay broken. But this was different.

  I could see a future with both Drew and Jamie. Different ones, for sure, so my decision rested between the life of safety and tenderness that Drew offered versus the energy and intrigue that a life with Jamie promised. Thank goodness it would be weeks before I had to make that monster decision.

  Ian and Tanya’s son, Kevin McDougal, stopped in front of our table holding a doily-lined silver tray with deviled eggs on one side and cucumber crudités on the other. The guest chef traditionally brings their restaurant’s wait staff to these dinners, but Perry told us in a newsletter that the families and farm help would act as waiters at the dinner.

  Kevin’s dark red windblown hair and freckles on a pudgy white face offered the illusion of a sweet young boy, but, like his cousins Brandon and Cory, he too was in his early thirties. He may have also been the only baby ever born without sweetness. He looked past us at the other Friends and guests as Daisy took an egg and I took a cucumber topped with something that looked like tomato coulis.

  “Great turnout, Kevi,” I said.

  “Kevin,” he said, correcting my use of his nickname from a Memorial Day picnic an era ago when all us kids decided to switch our name endings. Poppy became Pop, my little brother Luke became Lukie, Daisy became Daze, Cory, Core, Brandon, Brandy and Kevin, Kevi. I rather liked that tie to the past. It reminded me of when we spent summer nights playing hide-and-seek in the barn and eating fresh cherries until our clothes were as stained as a Civil War re-enactor’s. “It’s a big night for us,” he said.

  “I haven’t seen you out here the past few months,” I said.

  “I’ve been busy with my thesis. Finally got my MBA from UT.” He smiled for the first time but continued to look around.

  “Oh, right. I remember your mom telling me that,” I said. “Did you learn anything?”

  He finally turned to us. “Of course I did,” he said, as if I hadn’t asked it as a joke. “I have so many plans for this place.”

  “Congratulations, Kevin,” Daisy said. “I’m sure Ian and Tanya are proud of you. I have a couple of kids and hope they—”

  “I need to mingle,” Kevin said.

  “—don’t turn out anything like you,” Daisy finished as Kevin jilted us to do his mingling with Randy Dove. “He always thought he was better than us.”

  “An advanced degree from UT and he’s still so dopey,” I said. “It’s so obvious that we’re better than him.”

  Daisy laughed, then bit into her egg. “I taste horseradish in this. Shoot.”

  “I think it’s in the coulis, too,” I said. “Why shoot?”

  “Erik’s deviled egg recipe has horseradish.”

  Another feature of this dinner is the recipe contest. Anyone can submit a recipe if they’re a Friend of the Farm, they’re not an industry professional, and the recipe uses one of the ingredients specified by the farm, usually the bumper crop for that season. The guest chef chooses the winning recipe and prepares it for the dinner. The winner is announced by the chef during dessert, but until then, much clucking and guessing goes on as to whose recipe was chosen. For this year’s contest, the ingredients were eggs and sweet potatoes.

  “Again, why shoot?” I asked.

  “If Erik’s recipe wins, I have to teach the kids math until Christ-

  mas.”

  Daisy and Erik home school their fourteen-year-old daughter, Logan, and twelve-year-old son, Jacob. Daisy teaches English and sociology, and Erik covers math and science.

  “Did you enter a recipe?” I asked.

  “Logan did. Sweet potato pie. If it wins, Erik has to weed the garden by himself next spring.”

  “That’s some kind of wild and crazy life y’all lead,” I said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Daisy said. “Erik’s got Logan doing trig this year.” She sipped her wine. “So tell me why half the people here can’t stand Dana White.”

  “You noticed, huh?”

  “Even Erik noticed, and he still hasn’t noticed that his own daughter has started wearing makeup.”

  “Mama Natural is letting her daughter wear makeup?”

  “Just mascara.”

  I told Daisy the stories I had heard about Dana firsthand, from media reports, and through gossip.

  “Is it true she drinks vodka on the rocks for breakfast?” Daisy asked.

  “That’s a new one,” I said. “Where did you hear it?”

  “Some strange little guy wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap.”

  I laughed. “That’s Jerr
y Potter. He was a line cook in Dana’s kitchen a couple of years ago. She fired him for spitting—”

  “No!” Daisy said, putting her hand over my mouth. “Just … no. I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “—on the sidewalk.”

  “Parle du diablo,” Daisy said.

  I twisted around to follow her line of sight and saw Dana White coming through the archway. She and her staff had worked in the kitchen all day chopping, marinating, basting, and broiling chicken, lamb, and pork for her famous Great White Skewers. Most chefs remove their dirty apron—something that busts the illusion that their job is all food tastings and artful garnishes—before they greet the public, but Dana still wore hers. She seemed surprised when people wanted to speak with her, which told me that she was Chef Dana at the moment rather than President Dana, and she had left the kitchen on a mission.

  She gave forced smiles and quick waves to people as she continued to—oh, goodness!—the bar. I hoped she wasn’t going to gloat over her win. Well, maybe I wanted her to a little. Way back, Dana was a sous chef at Markham’s, so my feelings for her were softer than they were for Randy. I don’t remember her from that time because I was just old enough to sit in the office and draw pictures of my Siamese cat, Pandora, dining on asparagus and goldfish, but she told me she used to sneak French fries and bread pudding to my brother and me. Mitch and my late mother attended her wedding to Herb Wolff and worked with both of them to help get their restaurants established. Dana, in turn, occasionally mentored me during my reluctant reign as Markham’s executive chef.

  Randy leaned against a pecan tree and crossed his arms. He appeared to be whistling as he waited for her first move.