Burn the Menu

My name is Kelly Swan, I'm twenty-eight, and I woke up at five in the morning with my heart already going before my eyes were open. Not from an alarm. From the memory of Jules Byrd smirking at me across the pass.

The night before, old Chef Martell had stood at the pass after close and told the whole kitchen he was retiring. Thirty-one years at the Broken Antler Lodge, and he was done. The owner, Mr. Hobbs, came in from the office with his little reading glasses pushed up on his head and said the head chef job would go to whoever ran the best service this final weekend before we close for the season. Just like that. Forty-eight hours to prove something.

I had wanted that job for two years, and I have run more Saturday services without a single ticket coming back than I can count. But every promotion goes to Jules. Jules Byrd, twenty-nine, sous chef, three years of fancy school on someone's dime, knife roll that costs more than my car payment. And Jules looked straight at me when Hobbs said the word "service" and smirked. Not a grin. A smirk. Like she'd already won.

I lay in my bed in the staff housing with the radiator clanking and thought up about eleven perfect comebacks I would never actually say. Then I got up because a line cook doesn't get to lie in bed.

The morning prep was already humming by the time I walked in at five forty-five. Josie Kumar was at the far sink peeling sunchokes. She's twenty-five, wants a food truck someday, and is honestly the only person in that kitchen who says good morning like she means it.

"Good morning!" she said, cheerful as anything.

"Is it a good morning? Or is it a competition morning?"

"Can't it be both?" She grinned and went back to her peeling.

I tied my apron and got to work on my mise. Onions first. Then the butternut squash for the soup special. I was halfway through the squash when Jules came up the line with her coffee and stopped at my station.

"Your knife work is sloppy today," she said. Loud enough for the whole line to hear it. "Look at that brunoise. That's a small dice at best. Martell would've sent you home over that."

The whole line went quiet. You could hear the walk-in compressor humming. Josie stopped peeling.

I put my knife down and turned around. "First of all, it's for a staff soup, not the tasting menu. Second, you want to talk about standards? How about the demi-glace you reduced into glue last week? Chef had to throw out two quarts. Two quarts! That's veal bones and time you torched because you can't walk away from a pot."

"It was a glace by definition," Jules said, and her ears went red.

"A glace should coat a spoon! It should not hold the shape of the container. I had to chisel it out like a fossil."

"Better a fossil than a watery shortcut."

"Who's the one who's never sent back a plate, Jules? Who ran New Year's when Chef had the flu? Me. Every holiday service, me."

"Well, holidays are easy. Everybody orders the special."

"Oh, that is such garbage and you know it."

Daisy Jacobs came around the corner before I could really get rolling. She's thirty-one, front-of-house manager, been at the lodge six years, and she has the patience of a woman who has spent six years telling wealthy Texans that no, elk does not come medium rare-plus, whatever that means. She looked at both of us with her coffee in one hand and her booking sheet in the other.

"Wow," she said. "Great energy. Really sells the season."

"We're busy," Jules said.

"You're bickering. There's a difference. Can I see both of you in the dry storage for a minute? Josie, the line is fine, keep going."

Dry storage smells like flour and cardboard, and it's about the only private place in the building that isn't the staff bathroom. Daisy shut the door partway and turned around.

"Okay. Listen. I like both of you. I've liked both of you for years, and I've watched you two turn every shift into a knife fight since Jules got promoted to sous. But I need to say this plainly, because apparently nobody else will." She pointed at me, then at Jules. "If you two can't work the same pass this weekend without bickering like this, I will tell Hobbs to give the job to neither of you. I mean it. I will recommend he hire from outside. I will personally put it in writing."

That landed like a cast iron dropped on a toe. Jules looked at the shelf of number ten cans. I looked at my shoes.

"You'd do that?" I asked.

"Kelly, I've eaten at this lodge three hundred nights a year for six years. I know exactly what both of you can do. I also know Hobbs doesn't want a head chef the kitchen hates. A war zone kitchen loses cooks. Josie would quit inside a month, and she's the best prep hire we've had in years."

Jules crossed her arms. "So what, we just pretend to be friends for two days?"

"I'm not asking for friendship. I'm asking for a pass that runs clean. Chef on one side, one at the wheel. Split the weekend. One night each running it, and the other night as the second. And no commentary from either of you about anybody's knife work or anybody's glace."

"That's actually reasonable," Jules admitted, which shocked me, because admitting things is not usually her brand.

"It is reasonable," I said, mostly because I wanted to be the reasonable one on the record. "Fine. I'll take Friday, she takes Saturday."

"Why do you get Friday?" Jules asked immediately.

"Because I asked first."

"God. You know what, fine. Friday's yours. Saturday's mine. And Sunday, the closing brunch, we do it together or not at all."

"Deal," Daisy said before I could argue, which was smart of her, because I was absolutely going to argue. "And Kelly? Lose the smirk-griping. You've been telling the whole staff about her smirk since five a.m., Josie told me."

"Josie has a big mouth."

"Josie has a girlfriend in Missoula and no stake in this. You have a stake in this. Use it on the food."

She let us out of the storage room like a teacher releasing kids from recess. Jules and I walked back to the line in silence, shoulder to shoulder, which was maybe the most uncomfortable forty feet of my life.

***

The day actually went okay after that. I don't know if it was the threat of Daisy or just that we'd both been told the same thing out loud, but Jules and I worked around each other like two people who had agreed to a truce and were both scared to break it. She ran the stocks. I ran my station. When she needed the flat top I slid over without being asked. When I was drowning in tickets at eleven she plated garnish next to me and said exactly one word, "seventy-two," which meant seventy-two covers and I'd better hustle.

"You're welcome," she said anyway, when the rush broke.

"For four minutes of garnish? Bold of you."

"For four minutes of perfect garnish, yes."

Josie came by with the tasting spoons and a look on her face like she was watching a tennis match. "So who's cooking who dinner yet?" she asked, way too innocent.

"Nobody is cooking anybody anything," I said.

"Yeah, Josie, this is a job competition, not a date," Jules said, and I noticed she said it a little fast.

"Uh huh," Josie said, and walked off looking extremely pleased with herself.

I hate that she noticed it before I did. Because standing there at the pass with Jules next to me, smelling the sage and the brown butter, I had a thought I absolutely was not planning on. I shoved it down like a bad oyster and got back to work.

Forty-eight hours. I could win this thing and keep my hands to myself. Probably.

Friday was my night to run it, and I woke up that morning actually believing it would go smooth. Ha.

The booking was full. Fifty-four covers in the dining room, all of them paying lodge rates, all of them the kind of guests who ask where the elk was hunted and then order the chicken anyway. I had my menu set since Tuesday. I had my station mapped out on a legal pad. I had a plan.

What I did not have a plan for was ticket forty-one.

Here's how it died. Daisy's new hostess, some seasonal hire named Brooke, misfired a four-top into the kitchen as "no allergies, standard pace" when it was actually one gluten-free, one tree nut allergy, and a birthday. Standard pace, my butt. The birthday woman's husband had called ahead twice that week to confirm. Nobody told me. Nobody told Jules either, and she was on the second that night, which meant the mess was going to be mine either way.

The tickets stacked up normal through the first seating. Then the four-top's order hit the rail and I read it wrong, because the chit said what Brooke's computer printed, not what the table actually needed. I fired the almond-crusted salmon for the tree nut allergy woman, and I made the gluten-free guest's pan sauce with the regular stock, which has flour in it, because our house stock always has flour in it. Two mistakes on one plate, headed to one table, on my night.

Daisy caught it at the pass. Thank God for Daisy.

"Kelly. Table forty-one. The salmon, stop," she said, finger down on the ticket like she was pinning it to the counter. "Gluten free, tree nut, birthday. It's the Whitfields. The husband called twice."

I felt my whole face go hot. "That chit says standard."

"The chit is wrong. The table is right. Twelve minutes before it lands or the birthday's ruined."

Twelve minutes. A cooked salmon, a wrong sauce, and a dining room full of witnesses. I did the math and the math said impossible, and then Jules was already moving. She didn't say a word to me first, which I want noted. She just pulled the backup scallops out of the lowboy, the ones we were saving for Saturday's tasting, and set them on my station.

"Seared scallops, no flour, brown butter and lemon," she said. "It reads better than the salmon anyway and you know it. Go. I'll rebuild your plating for the rest of the top."

"You're giving me your Saturday scallops?"

"I'm giving you scallops. Argue on your own time." She was already wiping down her board. "Josie. Micro herbs, the good ones, the flat, not the curly, go."

And I went. I seared four scallops clean, built the sauce from scratch with the butter I had clarifying for the dessert course, and while the pan was doing its thing I heard the weirdest sound in that kitchen, which was Jules and me working the same station in rhythm. She plated. I sauced. She wiped the rim with a towel like she was born holding one. Josie ran it out. Total time from Daisy's finger on the ticket: nine minutes.

The Whitfields sent back an empty plate and a note that said best dish of the trip. Daisy taped it to the pass rail where I had to look at it all night.

That was the almost-team part. For about twenty minutes in the middle of service, Jules Byrd and I were one cook with four hands, and it was the best service of my year, and that thought scared me worse than the ticket did.

***

Service ended at 10:40. I remember because I checked the clock when the last top went out and thought, one more night of this weekend, I can sleep when I'm dead. Josie clocked out. Daisy stayed to close her books. I sent the crew home and went to find my knife roll, which I had, very professionally, left somewhere in the back.

That's how I found Jules in the walk-in cooler.

She was sitting on an upturned milk crate next to the dairy shelf, chef coat still on, hands hanging between her knees, staring at a case of eggs like it owed her money. The door had one of those closers that swings shut on its own, so I shouldered in and let it bang behind me.

"You hiding from somebody?" I asked. "Because if it's Daisy, she's got your number."

"Forty-one should have sunk you," she said, no hello, no nothing. "A misfire like that on your night to run it? That's the kind of thing that ends people."

"But it didn't."

"No. Because I saved it." She stood up off the crate. "Do you get how that works, Kelly? You win because I caught your mistake. And if I win tomorrow, it's because you kept your hands off my station all day. Which you will, because you always do. Hobbs's whole stupid coin flip comes down to who's luckier with the misfires."

"The scallops were yours. The sauce was mine. That's called a kitchen, Jules."

"It's called a lottery." Her voice cracked off the steel shelves. "Do you know how long I've been pointed at this job? Culinary school, three years, then two more here under Martell, watching him hand you station after station because you're fast and loud and you talk to the guests?"

"Hand me stations? I've been on the line since I was twenty-two. Same as you, same line, same dishwasher smells."

"That's not the same and you know it."

"Oh, I know it? Then tell me the difference."

"The difference is I've given this place everything I have and it still isn't enough," she said, and her voice shook on it.

And then she crossed the cooler in two steps and stopped about a foot away from me, close enough that I could see her breath fogging, and she said, "Can I kiss you? Because if I don't do something with my hands right now I'm going to throw this egg crate through a wall."

I did not say the smart thing. The smart thing was no, we're competing, this is a workplace, my knife roll is somewhere in this building. What I said was, "Yes. Obviously