Monday, May 12, 2003
Down, down danced the knife slyly into her left knuckle; forged tang, stainless steel, one-piece construction, and it hurt like hell delayed.
“Shit!” she gasped under her breath, dropping the knife and tossing back hair and exasperation with her good hand. “How did that happen?”
“You okay, boss?” asked Benoit, one of the assistant chefs.
“Yeah,” chimed in Sing, another chef, “I hate it when that happens.”
“Eh, it’s not too bad a cut,” replied Pip, peeking under the gauze and checking to see that she had staunched the wound. “It just hurts like you wouldn’t believe.”
What hurt even more, however, was the perceived bite of incompetence that came with the mishap. At this point in her culinary career, Pip wondered, these kinds of incidents should not happen. “Knife away, never knuckle-high,” went the old chef’s credo, which had apparently eluded her for a too-sharp moment.
The large double doors swung open and shut as servers drifted in and out, and snatches of noise from the main dining area leaked into the kitchen. Not too long ago, Pip would have sat on the other side of the double doors. All of it happened so relentlessly–college, a brash moment of inspiration, culinary school, “angel” money, real investors, the builders, the lights, and the latest culmination of her twenty-four years of life, Chez Shanghai, her pride and joy.
“Nothing but the A-1 best for my daughter,” her Korean father would fondly say at the dinner table.
“Don’t listen to him,” laughed her Caucasian mother once. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. Doesn’t he sound like a poster boy for steak sauce?”
This fusion of eastern and western heritage sparked the creation of her restaurant. Shortly after building it in her old college town, reviewers flocked in to dine and cook up scathing witticisms. But those scathing reviews never came and instead gave way to unadulterated praise. She had realized her passion for cooking and had done so with aplomb.
The throbbing in Pip’s hand subsided as soon as she applied ointment to it, and the reassuring weight of her engagement ring–a circular promise of what was to be–acted as an excellent salve as well. She turned her attention back to the dish at hand: Escar-2-Go™, braised snail in a light ginger-peanut sauce, sliced to convenient perfection for people who didn’t have time to eat.
She was in her element, and all around her chefs buzzed in quiet excitement. With its top-of-the-line equipment and its patented static hair attraction system, the kitchen allowed chefs to become artists unfettered. No chef’s hats, no hair nets–in fact, Pip even allowed casual dress, but most of the chefs insisted on wearing their uniforms for professionalism’s sake.
“Equity above all else,” read one of the founding philosophies of the restaurant, and so Pip collected a few plates, put them on a tray, and played server to the hungry patrons outside. She stepped through the double doors into the crowded dining area, realized that she could not part the sea of people, and dove headfirst into the noise.