Violet turns. Montgomery leads me away, still going on about the pie, but my mind isn’t on pastry at all.
It’s on Violet, and the twenty grand, and Violet. It’s on how if Violet wins it, I may as well move out of Sprucevale again because I’ll never hear the end of it.
Right now, I know two things.
One, that money is mine.
And two, Violet is going down.Chapter SevenEliI open the hood of the smoker and a plume of smoke erupts out and floats upward, smelling of pure heaven and burning my eyes. I wave it away and stick a thermometer into one thigh.
One-sixty. About another hour at least before I can pull the duck out and let it cool.
I glance over my shoulder and back into the big, bustling industrial kitchen from where I’m standing on the grilling patio, a concrete slab that holds five different grills, a tandoori oven, and a giant smoker that’s nearly the size of my first car. I’m sure if a guest ever requests such a thing, we’d dig a pit and roast a whole pig for a luau.
Actually, that sounds kind of fun. I’ve never roasted a pig in a pit before.
Automatically, I start going through my mental checklist. The duck will be done in about an hour. I’ve got one sous chef baking the hand-turned sesame crackers and the other making almost a thousand wild mushroom ravioli by hand. There are six different sauces reducing on the stove, and and in another room, the pastry chef, Janice is baking hundreds of macarons.
It’s Thursday afternoon, and things are looking good. Not only is everything going perfectly for my first Bramblebush wedding as Executive Chef, I’ve barely seen Violet since the meeting on Tuesday.
Which is ideal. If we have to work at the same place, at least it’s big enough that we don’t really have to see each other. At this rate, we’ll both survive the summer.
I turn to head back inside, but before I make it, the door opens and Violet comes marching out.
“Welcome to the patio,” I say, one hundred percent cheerful and professional. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” she says carefully, looking at the collection of grills and smokers and outdoor ovens. “But Kevin said there was a problem with the menu that I needed to come talk to you about?”
I take the hand towel that I always have hanging over my shoulder and wipe my hands with it out of habit.
“Right. The mac and cheese balls,” I say.
“What’s the problem?” she asks. “Did your order not have the ingredients in there? I know Louis, the old chef, was having some issues when deliveries didn’t have the right —”
“I’m not making them,” I cut her off.
She pauses. Something glints in her gray-blue eyes.
“No?” she finally says.
She doesn’t change position, but her entire body tenses and I feel the fight coming on the way you can feel a thunderstorm.
“No,” I say, crossing my arms in front of myself. “They’re a travesty of an appetizer and this kitchen won’t be making them anymore.”
Violet gives me a long, up-and-down look like she’s assessing me for something and finding me unfit.
“They’re on the menu,” she finally says, her voice full of forced patience. “The bride and groom ordered them months ago. They specifically asked to have the mac and cheese ball appetizers, because I guess the groom’s brother went to a wedding here a few years ago and they were so amazing —”
“Well, the groom’s brother is wrong because they weren’t amazing, mac and cheese balls are never amazing, and I’m not in the business of making non-amazing food.”
She snorts.
“You’re a wedding caterer,” she says. “Where do you think you are, some Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris? Make the mac and cheese balls.”
Anger bubbles up inside me, fast and hot because Violet is exactly the same as always: infuriating.
“Bangkok,” I say.
“What?”
“The Michelin-starred restaurant was in Bangkok.”
Violet raises one eyebrow, but I can tell she’s surprised.
“Kham Na. I was a sous chef. We were one of three restaurants in the city to get a star,” I tell her.
Violet looks at me, her face unreadable.
I want her to be impressed. Despite everything, I do. As much as I want not to care what Violet thinks about anything, as much as I want to never give the girl’s opinion another thought, I also want her to be impressed.
“And how, exactly, does that prevent you from making the appetizer that’s on the menu which was finalized several months ago and which someone has paid four hundred thousand dollars for?” she asks.
“If someone paid that much for mac and cheese balls they really overpaid.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You sure this place isn’t laundering money? If I saw appetizers with that price tag, that’s the first thing I’d think.”
Violet doesn’t say anything.
“It’s impossible to make good mac and cheese balls,” I finally say. “If you can get the cheese thick enough that it’ll stick the macaroni together properly, it dries out in the deep fryer. In order to make the macaroni pliable enough to form a ball in the first place, you have to overcook it, and then when you fry them they get even more overcooked and the result is a sticky, gloppy, textureless mess that tastes okay but that everyone only wants for the novelty of having macaroni and cheese in ball form, because for some reason Americans have a raging hard-on for all their childhood favorites. Next you’ll be asking me to make chicken nuggets and tater tots fancy.”