Plus, at ACI I was in the exact environment I was supposed to be in. I was with people like me. We got excited when a new box of foie gras arrived, we salivated when truffles were in season, and we got downright horny when we learned how to caramelize chicken skin for a garnish.
And speaking of horny . . . Let’s speak of horny. I enjoyed the horny times. Culinary school was a fondue pot of sexual tension, and we were all dying to get speared and forked. Along with the confidence that came from learning to cook well, I gained confidence in my body. I might still be elbows and knees, but I finally gained some cleavage and a sweet ass, thanks to the freshman fifteen.
The frizzy brown hair became sleek and bouncy after being introduced to some smoothing treatments. The California lifestyle gave me a nice tan year-round, and the freckles that I’d tried to fade with lemon juice when I was a kid became a nice frame for my eyes.
I had friends, and some of the friends were boys. And boys were fun. After seeing my mother moon over every guy with a passing resemblance to Tom Selleck (no idea), I did the opposite. I flirted and flounced and enjoyed the shit out of my newfound empowerment to become physically, but never emotionally, entangled with whichever guy I set my fancy on.
Because Roxie Callahan wasn’t going to go down the same path as her mother, bouncing from relationship to relationship with a kid in one hand and a Harlequin romance novel in the other, saddled with a usually in-the-red diner and waiting for the next man to sweep her off her Birkenstocked feet. Uh-uh. I had a career to craft.
Which I did. When my instructors gave me feedback, I thrived. I saw what they saw—the little tweaks here and there to make the difference between executing and mastering a technique. To understand how a splash of champagne vinegar at exactly the right time could elevate a recipe, but if added only a moment later it would muddy and cloud an otherwise acceptable dish. That was pure perfection. I spent hours in those beautiful stainless steel kitchens, blending ingredients, playing with flavors, savoring the process: all the things you don’t actually get to do when you’re working in a restaurant kitchen.
Though I knew what a diner’s daily grind was like, I believed that once you raised food to an art form, the artist had time to work. But not so. Being an executive chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant—the goal of every culinary student—was not all it was cracked up to be. It was staffing, and payroll, and management, and critics, and reviews, and front of the house, and back of the house—and yeah, occasionally you got to get lost in your kitchen and cook. So I found myself adrift: in love with the process of creating food, but convinced deep down that the restaurant life—that hectic schedule, cooking under constant pressure, never having any freedom—was not for me.
But I sucked it up, enjoyed the opportunity to cook beautiful food while it lasted, and graduated with honors. And offers. Offers to apprentice and work in some of the finest and most innovative restaurant kitchens in the country, even abroad.
But I knew I wouldn’t be happy. It wasn’t glamor and fame I wanted, it was the opportunity to create. I hated the stress of the day-to-day operations of a professional kitchen, so with some guidance from a professor, I chose the quieter life of a private chef.