The Etiquette of Mythique Fine Dining

by Carolyn Rahaman

  November 2019 Volume 9 No

  7

  The Etiquette of Mythique Fine Dining

  by

  Carolyn Rahaman

  The protestors are the same crew as yesterday and the day before. Ava doesn’t know any of their names, of course. She doesn’t know what happened in their pasts to make them so energized about keeping people from eating the food at Mythique, so wound up with vengeance as to embarrass people every single morning as they walk to work. She knows them by face, by their outerwear that doesn’t change. The signs they hold don’t change day in and day out. There’s the “MAGICAL BLOOD DOESN’T WASH OFF” sign and the “THERE’S SO LITTLE MAGIC IN THE WORLD” sign held by a pair who Ava imagines are married and retired and have a couple cats. There’s the picture of the unicorn leg, which is supposed to be grisly, but Ava can’t get over the fine marbling of the meat. There’s the “MEAT IS MURDER” sign, which seems slightly off-message, but the other protestors don’t seem to mind.

  They aren’t in full protest mode when Ava arrives. Their signs are lowered. Someone has brought two carriers of coffee, and they’re passing them around. Although they’ll shout at anyone who uses the front door, the protestors don’t start chanting until either Chef Augustine or Hampton, the general manager, arrive, and they disband shortly thereafter. Chef Augustine spends his early mornings at the fish and produce markets and won’t arrive for another hour or so. The protestors don’t dare bother the customers. They don’t seem to realize that there’s a back entrance that the rest of the chefs and the wait staff use. Maybe they don’t realize there’s more staff.

  One of the protestors smiles at her and offers a mitten-clad wave. They see Ava every day, after all. They must think she works in the next building over.

  She smiles back as she passes and turns into the alley. She’s not afraid of the protestors.

  She won’t admit she’s afraid of the kitchen.

  In the break room, she strips off her coat and closes her eyes for a series of deep breaths before tying on her apron. Once she knots it, she’ll be on. She’ll be a cog in a machine, a tool that follows orders and cooks and sweats and does not talk back and takes it and takes it, Yes, chef, because she’s learning, by God, one day she’ll learn. Once she knots her apron, she has to be stone, she has to be rock, because rocks don’t cry. Chefs don’t cry.

  She pulls her apron tight. Knots it in front, in back, and folds the top over the strings.

  She lifts her chin. She has to be stone.

  ~

  At Ava’s interview, Chef Augustine asked her to make an omelet. She made it perfectly, deftly cracking and whisking eggs and milk in a glass bowl, whisk whisk whisk whisk. She slid butter around a pan and poured in the eggs before the butter pat finished melting. A couple quick nudges with a spatula, pulling the eggs towards center, forming little wrinkles through which runny yolks flowed. A sprinkle of salt, a line of cheese, a flip with the spatula, a twist of the pan, and the omelet flipped onto the plate. Her heart swelled at the sight of it fluffy, golden, and perfectly wrapped. Chef Augustine had nodded, taken a bite, and nodded again as he chewed with sharp, quick bites.

  Still chewing, he said, “Good.” He swallowed. “You start tomorrow.”

  “Yes, chef.”

  He pointed a finger at her, tossing the plate back onto the counter. “You’re gonna hate it.”

  “No, chef.”

  “That’s the last time you get to say that.”

  “Yes, chef.”

  She didn’t hate it. She didn’t hate it. She didn’t hate it.

  But that was a chicken egg omelet. That was before. Now she’s in a whole new world.

  Dennis, the sous chef, organizes the unpacking of a delivery truck, laughing with one of the supplier guys as he signs off on a clipboard, and barking at the commis chefs as they heft bags of flour over their shoulders. Zach, the other greenhorn and only friend she has here, grabs her by the shoulders and herds her towards the truck as if he’s a sheepdog. “Today’s the day,” he says. He nods at a violently blue crate of eggs, as if she doesn’t know what he means. He lifts a foot onto the truck’s running board to balance the crate on his bent knee, bouncing the crate once in his grip.

  “Let’s hope so,” Ava says, tugging forward a crate of olive oil.

  They hand everything off to Jade, the garde manager, in a tizzy with a clipboard, moving back and forth, back and forth in the small space of the pantry, checking off a list and shifting crates a few inches to either side for reasons only fathomable to her. She has a pencil behind her ear and one in her hand.

  Zach bounces on his toes. His T-shirt is as thin as it can possibly be and still qualify as a shirt.

  “You ready?” he asks.

  Ava rolls her shoulders. She doesn’t feel ready but says, “Always.”

  Zach shouts, “Dennis!”

  Dennis looks up from his clipboard and his discussion with the saucier, annoyed for a second, then waving Zach and Ava on and going back to his business.

  Ava and Zach dig into the blue crate, not yet put away, and select three eggs each. Golden eggs from golden geese in Wisconsin, eggs that remind Ava of crafty Easter displays. Mythique doesn’t use chicken eggs, and Ava doesn’t use any magical ingredients at all until she can prove herself by making a golden omelet just as perfect as she can make with a chicken egg. Until they prove their worth, the new people, she and Zach, are stuck peeling potatoes and washing lettuce.

  She’s been trying for two weeks. Zach’s been trying for three.

  The burner flares. She cracks the eggs. At first glance, they’re normal, the yolks a deep orange, but as she whisks (always counter-clockwise or it would froth into messy, lacy bubbles) the bowl begins to glow, light blooming from the glass bowl. She whisks to a specific tempo, with a specific beat that stutters, trips on every fifth beat. She bounces to the rhythm, and strictly does not look at Zach, who is also bouncing but doing his stutter-step off-time with her. Golden flecks pop in the mixture, rising then whisked away, startling her every time into thinking she’s cracked some shell into it, but she doesn’t falter, whisk whisk whi-isk whisk whisk. It’s a light touch with the whisk, too hard and the golden sheen dulls. Butter in the pan, pour in the eggs, again in a counter-clockwise motion that feels wrong to her wrist. The eggs cook too fast, spitting and sizzling, tiny flecks of gold spewing up to singe her hands, the sight of which can be distracting. The spatula movements have to come faster, but gentler, rippling the eggs, counter-clockwise again, and she’s so close, she’s almost got it, it’s supposed to be runny, it’s fine, it’s fine. She grabs for the cheese and her hand smacks against the side of the bowl and wobbles and she panics, losing her cool for just a moment, but long enough. The omelet’s burnt before she spreads the line of cheese, and she flips it onto the plate too fast, trying to make it before the golden hue vanishes in one final sputter.

  It comes unfolded, and--as if the egg molecules can’t exist in an imperfect state--they separate. The omelet reverts to a runny splat on a plate. There is no glowing.

  Ava swears, wipes her hands on her apron. Five minutes in the kitchen and she’s already sweating.

  A second later Zach groans. He claws fingers through his short hair and then covers his face as if he can hide from his shame. His omelet isn’t liquid, but it looks like burnt toast in an awkward trapezoid shape.

  Dennis leans over Zach’s plate with a curve to his lip, then dumps the contents into the trash and tosses the plate back to the counter with a clatter. He makes a derisive, wet sound in the back of his throat at Ava’s attempt. She knows what is coming and he does not disappoint.
“Where did you apprentice?”

  “Savant, chef.”

  He moves into her space, and she holds firm and does not scuttle backward no matter how much the back of her neck tinges. She has to be rock. She has to be stone.

  “If I call the Savant right now, would Chef Triallis answer or would I get your best friend Chrissy?”

  “Chef Triallis, chef.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes, chef.”

  “Because Chef Triallis wouldn’t put up with this shit. And that makes me think that the only explanation is that you lied on your resume. That you’re a fraud. Are you a fraud?”

  “No, chef.”

  He picks up the plate, pressing it right under her nose. “I wouldn’t ask the rats in the dumpster to eat this. Would you eat this?”

  “No, chef.”

  “You will if I tell you to,” he says. He presses closer. “Eat it.”

  She won’t. She can’t. She won’t be humiliated.

  She has to.

  “Eat. It. This is what you’re offering me. Eat it.”

  She doesn’t know how to eat it. They had a fork ready, shining on the counter in hopes that it would get used for at least one of their omelets. But the fork won’t work. A spatula might, but Dennis presses the plate in closer, and she realizes he wants her to lick it, like a dog, and she won’t, she won’t, she won’t, she doesn’t know how to not.

  She grabs the plate, runs a finger through the orange splat, and presses the finger into her mouth. The flavor pops like sweet and sour sauce with a sparkling fizzle of an aftertaste like Champagne and the golden embers that flew up to burn her hands. It tastes perfect. It’s just the consistency that’s wrong. She closes her eyes and savors it, hiding in the moment.

  Dennis tsks. “Clean that up. Get out of my sight.”

  “Yes, chef.”

  He stomps off and Ava lets herself slump.

  Zach frowns after him. He has his arms crossed over his chest--to hug and comfort himself or to look bigger, it’s hard to tell. “He’s way harsher to you than to me.”

  “You have a week on me,” she says, scraping her plate into the trash. The egg has developed a film over the top. “Congrats on your omelet. That’s three days in a row it’s held its shape.”

  “Just doesn’t seem fair, is all.”

  “Life’s not fair,” she says. “Come on. That parsley isn’t going to pluck itself.”

  His posture changes, his smile coming back out like the moon from behind a cloud. “That would be something: magical parsley that prepares itself.”

  “We’d be out of a job,” she jokes.

  “We wouldn’t have to tell anyone.”

  “And if it was magic parsley, we wouldn’t be allowed to work with it.”

  “Again,” he says, “we don’t tell anyone. Secret magic parsley. And it’s not like we’d be touching it anyway, so it’s not breaking rules.”

  “We’d just be hiding in the back and playing cards while it rips itself apart.”

  He grins. “I see no problem with that.”

  ~

  On Fridays and Saturdays, Mythique is solely table d'hôte, meaning there is one service of seven courses predetermined by Chef Augustine. They alternate between magical courses and those that are merely exquisite. The exquisite courses work as palate cleansers, or as an interlude during which customers can come down from their highs.

  Ava has come to love these services since she gets to cook actual dishes eaten by real customers. It’s the only time when she’s treated like a full commis chef and not a kitchen porter. It’s a chance for her to show off, to prove to herself and the other kitchen staff that she’s competent. Honestly, it’s to herself mostly, because the rest of the chefs view the non-magical courses as a necessary evil, as a task well beneath their status. They’re not impressed with Ava’s work, but they’re glad they don’t have to do it, not that their relief or appreciation is voiced or enacted in any way.

  Ava’s trying not to think about it too hard.

  The rest of the kitchen loves these services because Chef Augustine will on occasion showcase one of the Chef de Partie’s creations. A few of these have made it onto the dinner al a carte menu: the kraken calamari with lemon aioli, the hazelnut-crusted salmon that brings wisdom, and the salt-fried ants that bring messages from the gods. Tonight, it’s the entemetier’s big night, with the debut of his pea flourish: Avignon thrive peas marinated in the pod for weeks, soaking in the flavor of four different sauces, and served as a single pea on a plate. The diner places the pea on their tongue, and it blooms in their mouth, a shoot, roots, sprout leaves. Flavors mature one after another against the tongue as the pea grows, as it fills your mouth. It stops growing when you bite the pea, and then you chew the best salad you’ve ever had already in your mouth--all with unimpeachable table manners. There’s something invigorating in the way you never see the pea’s growth, you only track its changing form with your senses of touch and taste. There’s something thrilling in the way it could choke you, and the most refined of their customers know to wait to bite the pea until the roots tickle the back of their throats in order to get the full effect, in order to catch that last little change in taste.

  The junior chefs’ future signature dishes are a frequent topic of discussion. Evan’s had it stuck in his head that he can do four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie that will burst out when you pierce the crust, and the rest of the junior chefs debate the viability of the concept at least once a day. Ava fantasizes about the feathered design she’d mark into her own version of a four-and-twenty pie crust, perforating it so it would split open to look like a nest.

  “My dish is going to be billdad,” Zach says. He’s assisting the saucier, whisking up a cream sauce for the first course scallops. He’s back to back with Ava, who squeezes blood oranges into a strainer at the patissier station.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “It’s like if you took a turkey and a kangaroo and smooshed them together. Powerful back legs. Kind of a gamey meat, I’ve heard.”

  “You’ve heard? You want something you haven’t tasted to be your signature dish?”

  “Ah! But that’s the thing: if you eat billdad, you turn into a billdad.”

  She twists around in disbelief. “You want to turn all the diners into kangaroo-turkeys?”

  “See, I bet if I paired it with some phoenix tears in like a full-bodied red wine, it’d counteract the effect. And people would be titillated. They get to eat something dangerous. It’ll be like fugu.”

  Ava cuts another orange in half and squeezes both sides before speaking again. “Were all billdads, at one point, people?”

  He doesn’t answer as he tosses the sauce in his pan, but she can feel his smirk through his back.

  “That’s weird.”

  He shrugs and nods over towards the pantry, where four people in elbow-length rubber gloves are coaxing basilisk venom from fangs as long as forearms into shot glasses filled with custard. In small doses, basilisk venom gives people visions. In large quantities, it gives people seizures and paralysis.

  Zach has a valid point: weird is part of the job.

  “What about you? What are you going to cook for me and change my life? What’s going to make Ava Mikhail famous?”

  If she’s honest, a pomegranate sorbet has been percolating in the back of her mind. It’s been done, and pomegranate has fallen out of style lately, but there would be something lovely in its simplicity, in the lightness of the flavor. There’s something magical in a well-known dish served to perfection. The bursting tang of pomegranate is one of God’s gifts to Earth. The splash of red wakes her tongue, reminding her that it’s a good day to be alive.

  She knows better than to say this aloud.

  “Golden egg in the hole,” she says.

  He laughs, “Oh, screw you.”

  “If you ladies are done gossiping,” Mario, the saucier, s
houts, “I’m thirty seconds out on these scallops.”

  “Thirty seconds heard,” Zach sings.

  Ava hands the strained blood orange juice to Christos, the patissier, who converts them faster than she can follow into a filling and spreads it across the freshly cut triangles of croissant dough that Ava’s prepared over the past few days using the only bag of regular old flour they have, which she found hiding under a shelving unit in the pantry. As he shifts to the candied topping that will sit on the venom shot to give it a nice crunch, Ava takes his place to shape the croissants, her fingers flaring to lengthen the legs. She proofs them, brushing on a golden egg wash, which she was allowed to make, since Christos is too busy to remember she shouldn’t.

  At the butcher station, a small crowd has gathered as one Ibong Adarna after another is carved and transferred to the rotisseur. The bird is served for its healing qualities. It’s said to be particularly curative for old-rich-guy disorders, but whether that’s a quirk of the bird or a quirk of the people who tended to eat the bird is an easily solved mystery that no one cares to look into. It’s much more fun for the junior chefs to hypothesize. Tonight, it’s the fourth course, served roasted over a bed of gold leaves with lemon sauce.

  “You are going to be so juicy,” the boucher coos, holding up a plucked bird for inspection, then laying it on the block and removing its head with a chop. “Yes, you are.”

  A commis chef hums along at the newly severed head, “Look at the fat on you. Stunning. Oh, you’re gonna make good broth.”

  “For an albatross and wild rice soup maybe. Nice and subtle,” says another, touching the Ibong Adarna’s head the way he’d take a child’s face by the chin and bending to look into its eyes.

  Ava catches the eye of the garde manager, Jade, who is preparing the gold leaf salad on the other side of their shared counter. Ava rolls her eyes with a smile. Why don’t they just make out with the bird and get it over with? But Jade doesn't return the smile. Instead, she stares blankly at Ava for a moment. Then sneers, "What?"

  Ava realizes there’s no shared joke. "Nothing. Just—"