Out to Lunch

by Stacey Ballis

  “Liebchen.” She cradles my face in her strong hands. “I’m so happy you’re here. Sit. I’ll make tea.”

  She wanders over to the kitchen, tossing Volnay a biscuit on her way with perfect efficiency of motion. Volnay takes the treat and clicks after her, a kitchen-floor dog if ever there was one.

  “Hey, Jenna, how are you?” Eloise floats out from behind the antique library table that serves as the front counter.

  I remember when Aimee called to tell me that a small neighborhood library on the South Side was getting a makeover and that she had snapped up a ton of beautiful old furniture, including card catalogs, tables, chairs, shelves, even a pair of ancient carrels which we put in the back of the store for the local writers who like someplace a little quieter than New Wave Coffee for their free Wi-Fi. She nailed the “Library” part of our name in one fell swoop, furnishing nearly 80 percent of the store with that one adventure.

  “Hi, El, I’m okay.”

  She reaches out with her endless slender arms, bending at the waist to envelop me in a brief hug. As short and round as Lois is, Eloise is a lithe expanse of waif, at least six feet tall with a ballerina’s body and a mane of pre-Raphaelite auburn curls that she keeps twisted into a complicated bun, little ringlets escaping around her forehead that she is always blowing out of her green eyes with their pale lashes. She is elfin-featured, has impossibly long fingers, a tiny button nose, a pointed chin. A retired dancer at thirty with a degree in library science and an epic supply of insanely delicious cookie recipes, she glides around the store in an endless series of long, flowy skirts with leotard tops, and with her calm grace, teaches all of the children’s classes and does story time. She is also in charge of research and assists with book buying.

  “Well, it’s about fucking time.” Andrea wanders down the staircase.

  “Well, hello to you too.”

  She grabs me by the shoulders and looks me in the eyes.

  “How. Are. You? Are you beyond shitty? Because we are all beyond shitty, so you must just be beyond the beyond. You must be Losing. Your. Mind. Are you losing your mind?”

  Andrea is the store manager, and after Aimee, probably the person I have been closest to the longest. She was my first sous-chef when I opened Fourchette, my catering company. She and I met doing a weeklong intensive chocolate course right after I got back from France. She is a brilliant self-taught chef, and was my right hand at Fourchette until the merger with Soiree, Aimee’s company. Then she became Vice President of Food and Beverage for StewartBrand, and when we sold to Peerless, took the generous buyout they offered to employees who did not want to stay, and asked us to install her at the Library, where she could stop dealing with demanding clients and vendors. She is store manager and head chef for the cooking classes and special events, and keeps the menagerie in line.

  She and I are the same age, both native Chicagoans, although she is a Southsider and I am a Northsider. But as long as we stay away from each other during the Cubs/Sox crosstown series, we are very similar. Both only children of driven working parents, mine a therapist and an academic, hers both doctors. Both public school educated. Both single. In many ways we have much more in common than I had with Aimee. She and I are the same height and generally the same build, which makes shopping for clothes with her much easier for both of us. She has the most gorgeous caramel skin and keeps her chestnut hair in a close-clipped natural style, accentuating her beautifully shaped head and swanlike neck.

  Andrea’s dad is African American, and her mom is Dominican, and they sort of adopted both Aimee and me over the years . . . Aimee, who lost both her parents within a year of each other in our late twenties; and me, with my folks in California for the past decade. We always spend Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve with them. Mother’s Day we always have a ladies’ lunch, and Father’s Day we have a BBQ.

  “Hey, will you give your folks my love, and tell them thank you so much for the note and flowers?”

  “You’ll tell them yourself on Sunday. You are coming to dinner.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet, but . . .”

  “You. Are. Coming. To. Dinner. Family dinner. Sunday night. Mom is making lechón and pan de coco, and Dad is making Nana’s mac ’n’ cheese. I’ll pick you up at six.”

  There is no arguing. And if I am going to feel beyond shitty, as Andrea says, I ought to be full of delicious slow-roasted pig and mac ’n’ cheese and coconut bread.

  “Thank you. Tell them I’ll bring that green slaw they love. Get a vegetable in us so our arteries don’t freeze solid before coffee.”

  She leans over and kisses my cheek. “Good girl. They’ll be delighted.”

  Lois comes over, handing us each a steaming cup of tea. She always remembers that I like mine with milk and one sugar, Andrea takes hers black; Aimee was a honey and lemon girl.

  “Go, sit.” She motions to the sitting area in the bay window, a pair of extrawide and extradeep down-filled gray linen reading chairs, with a small side table for each, and a low coffee table in between. Andrea and I settle into the chairs; Volnay jumps up to share my space. Lois comes back over with a plate of vanilla shortbread, barely cooled from the oven, with a small pot of grapefruit curd to dip the crisp, buttery fingers in. Eloise slides the doors closed, and flips the sign to “We’ll be back in 20 minutes.” She and Lois grab tea for themselves, and bring over two of the wood armchairs to join our circle. We have no sooner flicked the first crumb off our laps, when there is a clattering at the door. Benji is having a fit on the porch, scratching at the door like the stray tomcat he is. Eloise glides over to let him in.

  Our prodigal adopted son, Benji, came to us at sixteen as an intern. He’d been in a group home, taken from his addict single mom when he was fourteen, and was something of a problem child. But as he likes to say, cooking saved his life. The woman who ran the kitchen at the group home took him under her wing, and he found that he loved being in the kitchen and had a natural aptitude. He found a calling, discipline, and people who treated him with care and respect. Shavon, his mentor, served on the board of a small not-for-profit for which we were planning a pro bono benefit, and mentioned him to me. I met him the night of the party and immediately offered him an internship. He was one of the hardest workers I had ever met, and frequently saved the day when my team was in the weeds.

  When he graduated from high school, he won a scholarship to Kendall Culinary School. Aimee and I gave him a monthly stipend to cover books and equipment, and Aimee bought a small one-bedroom apartment in Lincoln Square and rented it to him cheap. Now twenty-two, and fresh out of culinary school, he’s having the classic struggle of figuring out whether he wants to focus on fine dining or casual; hotel work or restaurant or catering; whether he wants to open his own place someday, and he changes his mind every day. The fact that Aimee left him his apartment means that he has the freedom to continue training and exploring, since he just has to cover his bills with no rent hanging over him.

  Benji flies into the room and throws his arms around my neck.

  “Auntie Jenna! You’re back!”

  “Hello, darling.” I kiss the cheek he brandishes at me, trying not to poke my eye out on his heavy black-rimmed hipster glasses.

  He makes the rounds kissing the rest of his “Aunties” and collapses in Andrea’s lap, folding his long gangly legs up over the arm of the chair, and nuzzling in her neck. Volnay immediately abandons me and jumps into his lap, licking his face emphatically like he is a dirty puppy. Which, considering that he is twenty-two, completely adorable, and “sexually flexible” as he says, he probably is. I don’t understand the whole bi or “pansexual” thing, I’m old enough to think you just pick a side, but he seems happy and comfortable with himself and is having a good time.

  “Well, this is a sight,” Lois says.

  We all fall silent, take sips of tea, reach for more cookies.

  “This SUCKS,” Benji says, gray-blue eyes flashing behind thick black lashes, and blushing to the roots of his
artfully mussed dark hair.

  “Ben . . .” Eloise admonishes.

  “No, THIS SUCKS. I miss Aimee. I hate that she isn’t here. And I’m really mad about it.” Tears swim in his eyes. Benji has received a lot of group therapy over the years, is very in touch with the immediacy of his emotions, and something about this circle of care has clearly put him in a sharing mode.

  “Ben, this isn’t . . .” Andrea starts. I put my hand up.

  “Yes. This is. If not here? With us?” My voice breaks a little, surprising me. “He’s right, it sucks and we all miss her, and we all hate that she isn’t here, and we’re all angry at how unfair it is. And I’m sorry I haven’t come sooner, I just . . .” I trail off.

  They are all weeping. Lois reaches for my hand, and squeezes, pulling a hankie out of her bosom and blowing her nose like a foghorn. Eloise puts her hand on the back of my neck like a cool compress, and then gets up to find tissues for the rest of them. I’m just sort of cried out. I did a lot of late night sobbing when Aimee was first diagnosed, and again when she took her final turn for the worst. And again when we had to move her to hospice. I’m fairly well desiccated at this point.

  Andrea and Benji snuggle on the chair, and Volnay rests her chin on Benji’s shoulder.

  “We’re all miserable, and sad and pissed off, and we are just going to have to lean on each other and ask for what we need and make it okay. Because no one is more angry at this whole thing than Aimee, and if we don’t figure out how to live without her, she will never forgive us.”

  “There’s my girl,” the Voix says.

  I look at these people, my odd family, and make a decision.

  “I’m making lunch. Who wants pasta?”

  “We have leftover caramelized cauliflower and some cannellini beans soaking,” Lois says.

  “There’s a chunk of pancetta in there,” Benji pipes in.

  “I roasted a mess of garlic yesterday,” Andrea offers.

  “Perfect,” I say, smiling, the dish coming together in my head.

  Andrea smiles and nods. Benji raises his head and grins through tears. Eloise smiles a little, and Lois slaps her meaty thigh as if an important decision has been made. I stand and head for the back of the store. Because if I’m going to help these people heal at all, it’s in the kitchen.

  5

  Making dinner for Wayne is either the easiest thing or the hardest thing on the planet, depending on how you look at it. After all, Wayne’s famous Eleven are neither difficult to procure nor annoying to prepare.

  They are just.

  So.

  Boring.

  Roasted chicken

  Plain hamburgers

  Steak cooked medium

  Pork chops

  Eggs scrambled dry

  Potatoes, preferably fries, chips, baked, or mashed, and not with anything fancy mixed in

  Chili, preferably Hormel canned

  Green beans

  Carrots

  Corn

  Iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing

  That’s it. The sum total of what Wayne will put into his maw. He doesn’t even eat fricking PIZZA for chrissakes. Not including condiments, limited to ketchup and yellow mustard and Miracle Whip, and any and all forms of baked goods . . . when it comes to breads and pastries and desserts he has the palate of a gourmand, no loaf goes untouched, no sweet unexplored. It saves him, only slightly, from being a complete food wasteland. And he has no idea that it is strange to everyone that he will eat apple pie and apple cake and apple charlotte and apple brown Betty and apple dumplings and fritters and muffins and doughnuts and crisp and crumble and buckle, but will not eat AN APPLE.

  But a good chef knows that food is supposed to be about pleasure, a gift you give to your diners. I’ve never been one of those ego-driven chefs, offended if someone asks for salt, implying my seasoning palate isn’t perfect, as opposed to acknowledging that they might just like things saltier than I do, and are entitled to that opinion. I’ve never wanted to teach my diners a lesson of some kind. I appreciate the current trend of nose-to-tail; I do think there are undiscovered pleasures to introduce to a broader market. I have converted many a guest to the joys of oxtail and halibut collar. But I hate the chefly smugness that seems to come with it, that attitude of “you aren’t a real foodie unless your desert island dish is blood sausage.”

  I suppose it’s because so much of my career was spent catering and not in a restaurant. Successful catering is a thousand percent about giving the customer something they want at a level beyond what they dreamed possible. It’s about tapping into their deepest desires and delivering it perfectly to everyone at the same time. Restaurant chefs can often sneer at caterers, thinking that so much of what we do lacks creativity, isn’t as badass as working the line in a churn and burn; we don’t have the pressure of the critics or the next hot Top Cheftestant’s new place to deal with.

  But chefs who really know their shit know that the exact opposite is true. We don’t have a handful of critics or Yelpers and bloggers who may or may not like what we do, we don’t have places full of people who have chosen on purpose to come dine at our establishments; we often have five hundred people at one time who did not choose us, who love to stand around and snark about whether the tuna tartare is spicy enough or chopped too coarsely. We have to deliver an exceptional dining experience where we usually have no control over space, flow, timing, equipment, or audience. We can’t, most often, craft a perfect menu that we know will wow and flow, because menus come together by committee and the bride is afraid of anything with a sauce because it might get on her dress, or the eightysomething gala chair still thinks filet and salmon are the only two possible elegant entrée options, and no amount of prodding will get her to pick the skate wing and hanger steak instead.

  We sit through endless tastings where people with Naugahyde for palates pick apart our dishes and offer suggestions and changes that we? HAVE TO MAKE. I happen to love a braised pork cheek garnished with crispy bits of fried pig ear, or a smoked bison tongue salad. But I have yet to meet a client who wants me to make that for their daughter’s sweet sixteen.

  And at the end of the day, if I can bring integrity to one more chicken breast dinner, to the “trio of salads” ladies’ luncheon, to the surprise hot dog cart at the end of the wedding, perfectly snappy grilled Vienna Beef beauties with homemade steamed buns and all seven of the classic Chicago Dog toppings, then I have done my job and might get another.

  What’s the task that all those TV cooking competition folks fall down on? The ones that knock out the favorites and even presumed winners? The Wedding Challenge. The Quinceañera Challenge. The Fundraiser Challenge. Even the Masters, already famous and multi-restauranted and Michelin starred, competing for charity? The cake falls, the apps aren’t hot enough, the salad wilts. Because those are the CATERING challenges, and catering is just fucking hard.

  Dinner parties are just small self-catered affairs. Some people, whether chefs or just passionate home cooks, make dinner parties to show off their prowess, trying to turn their homes into restaurants with fancy plating and things assembled in ring molds, trying to replicate something they ate at some fabulous new hot spot.

  Not me. Sure, I adore the edamame dumplings at Buddakan in New York. But I don’t try to make them, because stuffing and steaming dumplings while trying to keep glasses full and dinner on schedule would make me insane. So I figured out the filling and turned it into a dip for crudités that I can put out and be done with it.

  When I have a dinner party, I want to sit with my guests and not worry about whether the caramel spirals for the dessert garnish are sagging in the kitchen humidity. I want every dinner party to feel like Thanksgiving. I want a ton of delicious food, something for everyone, with one comforting thing and one surprising thing. And this means knowing my audience.

  You’re diabetic? I’m making low-carb for everyone.

  Vegetarian? The whole party will be meat free.

  Eating Pal
eo these days? We’re having a caveman party with plenty of steak and veg and no dairy or legumes for anyone.

  Gluten-intolerant vegan?

  I’m making reservations somewhere you like, because seriously, some things I just cannot manage. Sorry. I’m not insane.

  Dinner parties with Wayne aren’t hard. I make a great roast chicken. Burgers can be fun and unexpected. I can always save his portion of beef and cook it medium and still serve everyone else medium rare. I love the challenge of making things he will eat for a whole table and not feel like some 1950s housewife serving up banal Tuesday dinner. And I can always go all out on the dessert, which helps.

  But tonight it’s just the two of us. No buffering friends or joyful noise. And no Aimee to keep him from going off on a Star Wars tangent, or asking a mortifying and inappropriate question. First time he met Andrea, he asked her if African Americans could get acne. I’m not kidding. I wanted to crawl into a hole. Aimee laughed it off, smacked him in the arm and told him to refill her wineglass and that was the end of it, but that moment haunted me for months.

  Wayne called yesterday and said he thought we should get together, so I have a couple of fat pork rib chops brining in cider that I will throw on the grill. Crisp wedges of iceberg lettuce with a homemade buttermilk ranch dressing spiked with fresh herbs. Buttery glazed carrots, steamed green beans with lemon and a little bit of chili. On the sideboard in my enormous walk-in pantry, I have fresh fig tarts cooling, shiny with fig jam glaze and ready to be dolloped with a pistachio whipped cream. A meal that Wayne will eat, and I will actually enjoy. As much as I can enjoy a meal with Wayne.

  “Suck it up, buttercup,” the Voix spits in my ear. “Get your head in the game. You have one year. One year to be his pal, to keep him from blowing through my money, and to learn why I thought he was the bee’s fricking knees, so how about you put on your game face.”