“Sure,” I shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I was just wondering if you were a little too…‘down-to-earth’ for a place like this?”
His concern is obvious, so I don’t take it as an insult. Instead I look around as if checking something, then smile back at him.
“Seems to me the people here are eating and drinking just like they do in Idaho.”
Cole chuckles lightly then flicks a finger for a waiter to come over.
“You’ll like this place,” he says. “A buddy of mine set it up a couple of years ago. It’s already a staple of L.A. It’s a concept menu.”
I raise a brow. “Oh yeah? What’s the concept?”
“All the foods are hand foods. Continental fusion. Wraps, samosas. Sushi, antipasti. All of it’s good.”
I nod politely, quieting the voice inside of me that wants to express how much I hate the notion of a ‘concept’ bar. Trends like this come and go, but great food that’s made well—that’s something that lasts. I’m interested to see if this place is more the former or the latter.
When the menu comes I tell Cole to recommend a mix for us to share, and order a blueberry cider cocktail. Then I spend a while asking him about how the Vegas place is going, and what his plans are for the next time Chloe shows up for a lesson.
By the time the drinks come I realize that Cole isn’t entirely the difficult, uncompromising, and reserved person that I—and most people—make him out to be. Sure, he’s passionate about cuisine, but he’s also funny and thoughtful and charming as hell. By the time the food arrives, he’s actually telling me he agrees with what I said about the lemon thyme and that he’s considering altering the recipe. And when the second round shows up, I’m telling him the awful story of my failed restaurant back in Idaho. I can’t believe how at ease I feel, given how poorly our first meeting went and how turned on I am in his presence.
He listens intently, and I realize as I’m telling him how little I’ve actually spoken about my restaurant to anybody who wasn’t there. All the while he asks attentive questions about my business plan (I didn’t exactly have one) and day-to-day operations, nodding as he absorbs the information but never venturing an opinion, until I finish and find I’ve just recounted my spectacular failure to one of the most successful chefs in the country.
When I’m done he leans back and looks at me in a way he hasn’t done yet, as if from some deeper part of him, his narrowed eyes glistening with some new perspective.
After a pause that’s almost awkward, even after the second cider, he says cryptically, “I knew there was something about you.”
Cole picks up a cannoli, looks at it for a second, then holds it out in front of my face. “This is great. Try it.”
It’s an intimate gesture, feeding me like this, and yet somehow it feels natural to lean forward, toward those calloused hands, and take a bite from the creamy treat, our eyes never leaving each other. I swallow it and smile, deciding to change the subject before the heat inside of me makes me say something embarrassing.
“What do you mean, ‘something’ about me?”
“Something different. Something unfulfilled. Hungry. I noticed it when you walked out the other night.” He stops to spin his glass, frowning at it. “I’m curious though. What do you mean when you say you wanted to cook ‘real’ food?”
“Real food…you know, stuff that isn’t so overelaborate. Pretentious food.”
Cole turns his frown from his glass to me.
“Food like mine, you mean?” he says, a little challenge in his tone.
I hesitate for a second too long before saying, “What? No. No…I mean, Knife is basically a steakhouse at the end of the day, right? Forget I said anything.”
“Come on, say it.”
I look at him for a moment, my pulse racing under his gaze, like I just took a wrong turn somewhere and found myself trapped. Suddenly I remember that he’s my boss, that I’ve only worked at his restaurant for a week, and that I was already inches away from being fired.
“Go on,” he urges again. “We’re both adults. I can take criticism. I’m curious to hear what you actually think.”
I laugh a little nervously, hoping it’ll break the stiff look on his face, but his expression doesn’t flicker, and I know the only way out is the truth. There’s something about how he’s looking at me that makes it easy to forget he’s my boss, that I’m his employee. It’s easy to forget that he’s a household name who most people in the restaurant keep looking over at, and that I’m just a girl from Idaho with a failed restaurant behind her and not enough free time to figure out the next step forward. He looks at me, and I look at him, and we’re suddenly just a man and a woman, with all that entails. More intimate and trusting of each other than our brief introduction should make us, and somehow I feel like it’s the most natural thing in the world to speak my mind.
“Ok. Well…it’s not just your restaurant, I see it in a lot of places. Overcomplicating everything. Taking the simplest dishes and flavors, which are already great, and then dressing them up like they’re going to a prom. Using three different cooking processes on a cut of meat just because it looks good on a menu. Fifteen different herbs so that people can’t tell what they’re even tasting. Covering everything in sauces as if we’re ashamed of tasting something in its natural state. Using its French name, then sticking it on a menu with a five-times mark-up. Sometimes it almost seems as if the only way we can react to a culture of fast food is by going to the other extreme and making everything as difficult and as pretentious as possible.”
After a pause, one in which I can’t quite determine what Cole thinks of my emotional outburst, he says, “Is this the alcohol talking?”
“No. It’s all me,” I say, defiant with the sound of my own words.
“Even though you studied with Guillhaume?”
“Especially because I studied with Guillhaume.”
Cole’s blank face breaks into a laugh, and I watch him in confusion.
“You do realize that’s why your restaurant failed, right?”
Indignant, I say, “My restaurant failed because of its location.”
“No,” Cole says, with a cockiness that annoys me. Slowly, he leans forward. “You’re an idealist. You think too highly of the average diner—and that’s why it failed.”
I grit my teeth, genuinely weighing the option of telling Cole exactly what I think, and the alternative of keeping my job.
“You wanna hear a secret?” he says, taking my restraint as a sign to carry on. “I don’t tell this to many people. It took me too long to figure out for me to hand it out freely, but you…I think you should hear it.”
I fold my arms and ignore Cole’s eyes flickering down to my cleavage for a second.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“It’s three secrets, in fact. Three secrets that can make any dish taste infinitely better. Doesn’t matter what it is. Starter, main, hell, even a fucking sandwich.”
“I’m all ears.”