Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [126]
It wasn’t that he was shocked by the skeletons in his crew’s closets. He knew who they were, and liked and respected them all. It was the ugliness of having those private sorrows and failures and foibles thrust into the spotlight to be salivated over by the grasping public.
What lifted his spirits was the avalanche of business all the extra publicity had generated.
Adam hadn’t known what to expect, that first day. He and Grant had spent the hours before service calling the line cooks and telling them to come in, cleaning up the traces from the stampede of police and ambulance people. Then they’d split up, Adam to comb through the walk-in cooler for ideas for specials, and Grant to stand by the full reservation book, wringing his hands and waiting to see if any of the people who’d booked tables would show up.
They did. And so did about three hundred more would-be customers. As busy as they’d been since opening, it was nothing compared to how slammed the restaurant was now. And they weren’t all novelty diners, either—more than half of them went home and called Grant the next day to make return reservations. Every so often, Adam would check in with front of house and hear Grant gleefully informing some hopeful that they were currently booked solid for the next three months.
As messed up as things had been in the kitchen, the cooks hadn’t let it affect the quality of the food they were sending out. The customers never knew the difference; it was only Adam and his crew who pined for the way things used to be.
After the past week, they’d lost the fun.
Adam bumped the kitchen door open with his shoulder, hands full of pen and memo pad, trying to compose something appealing and elegant to describe the riff on succotash he was doing for that night’s special. Sort of a summer pot pie, with sweet corn and buttery lima beans in a flaky, golden crust.
What exact words would make it sound good to customers? Adam sighed. He sucked at writing menus, always had.
Miranda had been great at it. Not surprisingly, she’d made quite a study of menu wording, the ways the choice of adjectives and which ingredients were included in the description colored the reader’s understanding of what was on offer. By switching a couple of words and adding a vivid adjective or two, she’d turned a boring-sounding dish into something everyone wanted to try. Adam swore she could make a vegan order the rib eye, the imagery she evoked was so tantalizing.
Once Adam had discovered this miraculous ability, he’d put her to work on the special addition to the menu every night.
Not thinking about her, he reminded himself. I wrote a thousand menus before Miranda Wake, and I’ll write a thousand more without her.
Not a particularly cheerful thought.
He tossed the empty pad on the counter and looked up in time to see Frankie clattering into the kitchen, laughing uproariously, one arm slung around Jess’s neck.
Adam narrowed his eyes against the almost overwhelming rush of relief.
“Is he high on painkillers?” he demanded, pointing at Frankie with the pen he was still holding.
“High on life, mate,” Frankie crowed. “Fucking hell, but it’s good to be back in the kitchen.”
“I haven’t let him touch a knife in six days,” Jess explained, watching fondly as Frankie jitterbugged his way to the magnetic strips running along the walls above the counters. Each strip held at least five knives, all-purpose chef’s knives of different lengths and weights, carving knives with their long blades and rounded tips, and short, broad cleavers for hacking through bone.
Frankie went straight for his favorite nine-inch stainless steel, lightweight and agile, sharp enough to tackle almost any cutting job. Not sharp enough for Frankie, evidently, since he rummaged through a utility drawer until he came up with a whetstone and began