Tearing my eyes from an image that still made me uncomfortable, I marched over to the coolers that lined one corner of the small, narrow space and checked the thermostat. Despite my unconventional design, they were keeping the temperature evenly. Thank God.
I hadn’t brought food to store on the truck yet. To be honest, I still hadn’t finalized my opening night menu. I was months out of practice and terrified to make final decisions, petrified I would get it wrong or make the wrong thing or mess up. All my best recipes ping-ponged through my head along with the possibilities and potential failures. How to pick one out of all of them? How to know which one people were most likely to take a chance on? I was too overwhelmed to decide.
And on top of that, I needed to take the kitchen for a test run, to see what was possible in this confined space. I also had to decide what I would have to make beforehand at the commissary kitchen—the industrial kitchen I rented that was health code safe and rich with storage space.
My goal had been gourmet cuisine with street food flare. I’d even imagined my first food blogger or magazine write up to include exactly that phrasing. Now I was contemplating serving frozen french fries and hot dogs—I knew I couldn’t screw those up. Plus, they were tried and true crowd favorites.
If my efforts to revolutionize this section of downtown with fancy truck food failed, I always had the classics to fall back on.
But I wouldn’t.
Fisting my hands into determined balls of confident strength, I steeled my resolve for the umpteenth time. I had already failed as badly as possible. I had already crashed and burned.
Foodie wasn’t going to be a leap toward greatness, but it would be a step out of hell. It would be a lunge in the direction of salvation and the redemption for my first love—food.
Good food.
The best food.
I opened my eyes, not realizing I had closed them, and my gaze immediately fell on a white-washed square structure across the street. Most of the buildings lining the cobblestone plaza were tall, red brick and accented with iron. Lilou stood like a lone beacon of farmhouse fresh in a sea of early nineteenth century architecture.
The acclaimed restaurant was delicate and gentle while the other buildings in the plaza shouted loud, strong and imposing. Soft when everything surrounding it was hard and unyielding. Cultured when strobe lights poured from basement windows and heavy bass bounced around the plaza once darkness fell.
Lilou was the culmination of all my past dreams and forgotten ambitions. The kitchen was the best in the city. The reservation list was scheduled a month out. The wait staff was rumored to have to go through restaurant boot camp before they were even considered for employment. The owner, Ezra Baptiste, was a shrewd restaurateur famous for three successful restaurants all allegedly named after past girlfriends.
And the current chef? A legend in the industry. At thirty-two, he’d already earned a Michelin Star and the respect of every major restaurant critic, food blogger and worthy food and wine magazine across the country. He’d made executive chef of his first kitchen by twenty-five. By twenty-eight he’d been given the James Beard award for Outstanding Chef. By thirty-one he’d grabbed Lilou an Outstanding Restaurant award. Rumored to be a total ass and dictator in the kitchen, Killian Quinn’s dishes were inspired and fresh, perfect to the point of obsession, but most of all, his refined recipes and plate presentation were copycatted all over the country.
Or so I’d read in the latest issue of Food and Wine, and the hundreds of articles I’d perused online during my research once my brother offered his parking lot for Foodie—directly across the street from Lilou.
I’d watched Quinn’s rise to stardom closely during my culinary school days, fascinated by his luck and success. But over the last couple of years my interest in his career had faded along with the other important things in my life. Only when Vann mentioned my potential “competition” across the plaza did I remember Lilou and where it was located, forcing me to also remember the powerhouse chef that I would possibly share customers with.
I found myself gazing across the parking lot, admiring the simple design of Lilou; the subtle, simple banner that declared its famous name and the uncomplicated design aesthetic so different from my flashy, trendy truck across the street.
“He’s not my competition,” I mumbled to myself, swearing it like an oath.
And he wasn’t. Our clientele wouldn’t be the same. Or if they were, we’d be serving them at different times. He would get them for dinner service and I would lure them in later, after they’d been drinking and dancing all night.
I didn’t want his customer’s extravagant tips; I wanted their business when they left the nightclubs and made bad, late night decisions. Decisions that more than likely included searching for a late night, greasy fourth meal.
Killian Quinn offered them a once in a lifetime dining experience. I offered comfort food that would cure hangovers.
Lilou might be the precise image of everything I’d given up, of the dreams I’d pissed away and the life I could have had… but a restaurant like that wasn’t my competition.
So why did I feel so intimidated standing in its shadow?
Chapter Two
I wasn’t supposed to open until this weekend. Molly and I had been furiously working to get the Foodie signage and kitchen ready since I’d returned home with only a tiny bit of savings left to my name, the promise of an early inheritance and this crazy, absolutely insane idea.
Thank God, Molly had missed me during my European escape. She put up with my obsessive planning and preparations just to spend time with me. I couldn’t have gotten this far without her, but she couldn’t hold my hand forever. Especially when go time was here.
Molly could paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel blind, one hand tied behind her back on banana leaves but she couldn’t make toast without setting the fire alarms off.
And maybe I was exaggerating her talent a teensy bit, but only because seventeen years of friendship and undying loyalty swayed me.
Vann’s head popped through the open door, his face scrunched up with concern. “Were you serious about no food?”
I tore my eyes off Lilou and gave him an apologetic shrug. “Thursday,” I promised him. “I’ll be firing all engines for an entire day’s worth of food testing. You can be my guinea pig.”
“Fine,” he huffed. “But I expect breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“You’re a workaholic,” I accused him. “That store is going to ruin your life.”
He gasped and shook his head back and forth in wide-eyed disbelief. “That store is my life.” He looked around pointedly at the shiny inside of my desperate business venture. “Besides, you’re one to talk.”
“Hey, I’m not a workaholic yet! Give me at least three more days before you start flinging accusations.”
His mouth twitched with a smile he wouldn’t let loose. “Fine, you can be my apprentice for the afternoon. I’ll show you how all the best workaholics take lunch breaks.”
“Really?”