“I know,” I say, pouring the last drops of the wine into my glass.
One of the dishwashers comes into view, poking his head beyond the kitchen doors.
“Uh, boss? We’re done.”
I raise a hand.
“Sure.”
“Should we leave the door open out back?”
“No. Lock it up. We’ll leave out front. Oh…wait. Could you bring a bottle of wine from the office?”
“Sure. Which one?”
I pause for a second, try to think, then realize it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Whatever. I don’t care.”
This makes Martin glare at me, almost fearfully. He watches with a kind of macabre pity as the bottle comes and I pour it lazily into the glass, down it, then pour again. For a moment, I can tell he wants to question it, but then he lets it pass, present problems still occupying the forefront of his thoughts.
“I suppose you’ll want to keep Michelle here, then?” he says, eventually.
“No. She’s still going. She raised her hopes—she likes the idea. Least I can do for her.”
Martin nods. “Maybe that’s smart. She’ll get Fork to hit the ground running—and by the way, we still need to come up with a name. At this rate we’re gonna be stuck with ‘Fork’—which I don’t mind—but you did say you hated it.”
I watch the red liquid swirl in my glass a little, allow the viscous way it clings to the glass to hypnotize me a little, then raise it to my lips.
“I’m gonna call it ‘Vérité.’”
Martin studies my face for signs I’m joking.
“Truth? You want to call the place Truth?”
“Mm-hmm,” I hum into my glass. “We need a little more of that in this world.”
Once again Martin stares at me like a concerned teacher, likely considering whether he should make an intervention. Eventually he decides against it, stiffening up in his chair instead and putting his palms on the table, the way he always does when he’s galvanizing himself to deal with a problem.
“Ok,” he says, his voice a little sturdier now. “So then the first thing we need to solve is the head chef for Knife. I’d narrowed my list down to two when I was looking for Fork—I mean, Vérité—but one of them is in Europe now, and the other is not going anywhere. There was a third chef up in Oregon that—”
“I’ll do it,” I say, putting my glass down and topping it up.
Martin looks at me for a second.
“You want to take over the search?”
“No. I said I’ll do it,” I repeat. “If you want something done properly, you’ve got to do it yourself. You and Michelle can handle Vérité. I’ll take over here.”
Martin takes another considered pause before speaking.
“You want to get back into cooking again?”
I nod. “I wanna revamp the menu too,” I say, taking my glass and standing up to pace around the table a little, looking around at the place as if with new eyes. “It’s too accessible, too simple. Too many potatoes. People could make our cassoulet at home. It needs to be more sophisticated.”
Martin gives out an incredulous sigh.
“What do you mean? You won your Michelin stars on this menu. We already have a hard enough time finding chefs capable of doing even the most basic dishes on it.”
“You don’t get anywhere by resting on your laurels,” I say, still ambling around the place, listening to the way my voice reverberates around the room. “I’m getting sick of this décor, as well. It’s so…California. Have somebody come by my place. I have a Lautrec that would work better. Maybe put a couple of the Cartier-Bresson prints up, too. And another thing: We’ll do a taster menu. A dozen small plates, charge a few hundred bucks a head.”
Martin’s incredulity reaches intense levels now, and when he speaks I can hear how dry his throat is.
“A taster menu? You said that they were too pretentious—even for you.”
“Yeah, well, things are different now,” I say, ruminating on the woodgrain of the ma?tre’d counter. “We’re gonna raise prices, roll out a new menu, and start producing food sophisticated enough to win literary awards.”
I drop myself back into the seat opposite Martin and allow his astonished gaze to take in my sincerity.
“The food is sophisticated,” he says, shaking his head. “And we already charge some of the highest prices in the city.”
I open my arms wide.
“I’m cooking here now. People would pay a hundred bucks for a glass of water if they thought I poured it. They’d probably say it’s the best they’ve ever had, too.”
He’s silent for a minute, and I pour myself another glass of wine and start thinking more in depth about the new menu, where I can source the most difficult-to-find ingredients, how soon I can schedule a nice long research trip to Paris.
“Cole…I know we don’t usually talk personal stuff,” Martin finally says, tentatively. “You and I have never really…you know…opened up, or anything. It’s not really my place. But I have to ask you, ‘cause this is…well, these changes you’re talking are pretty dramatic. Are you sure your head is in the right place for this right now? I know that you and, uh, Willow had…well…something going on, and...”
“You’re right, Martin,” I say, staring at him humorlessly. “It’s not your place. Yours is the ‘how,’ not the ‘why.’ So don’t ask me anything like that again. Oh, and I want you to fire Leo. Tell him he might be the best saucier in America, but his bouillabaisse still tastes like fresh sewage. He’s welcome to drop by and taste mine if he wants to learn how it’s done.”
It takes Martin a few seconds to digest what I’m saying, but when he does he pulls out his notepad officiously and starts writing.
“Yes, boss.”
For the next few months I work harder than I’ve done since I built the place. I turn up to the restaurant before sunrise and leave by moonlight, a flurry of swearing and high standards as I whip the kitchen into better shape than it’s ever been. I kill items from the menu like traitors to a dictatorship—the Basque burgers go first, of course—and replace them with items evermore complicated. Truffled chicken quenelles over cured seabass, hand dived scallops with shiso and dried Japanese mushrooms, clay-baked young ginger, fennel, and candied beetroot, smoked bone marrow, pork, and blanched quince.