Page 11 of Aftertaste
MISE EN PLACES
THE DINING ROOM at Saveur Fare dazzles diners for ten immaculate hours a day, six days a week.
The front-of-house is legendary for making guests feel like they never want to leave. Before service, the waitstaff are painstakingly briefed on that night’s reservations, so that each of them can anticipate, like a modern-day haruspex in slinky black silk, their diners’ aversions and allergies and gastronomic inclinations without ever having to be told. During service, they charm and delight. They tell stories; they are quick with jokes. Most of the staff are recruited from the New York theater scene, but even the ones who are not give Tony-worthy performances night after night.
Saveur Fare employs three sommeliers, two of them Masters, which means you can blindfold them, give them a sip of wine, and receive an identification of the varietal, the vintage, the region and vineyard, no matter how obscure—we’re talking the difference between grapes grown on opposite sides of the same Burgundian hill here—just based on the characteristic qualities of that single taste. There’s also an award-winning mixologist available for bespoke cocktail pairings. You know, if wine isn’t your thing.
And that’s just the beverage program.
The main event—the food—is a Chef’s Tasting of twelve elaborate, palm-sized courses. The menu changes weekly to take greatest advantage of seasonal and micro-seasonal delicacies, and ingredients come from all over the world: sea urchin overnighted from Osaka, their spiny shells safeguarding briny, golden goo; black and white truffles from Provence and Piedmont, the smell of the cases like hay and Heaven; impossibly fine beads of beluga and sterlet, popping their tins like breathing the Caspian Sea. A partner farm in the Hudson Valley supplies local meat and produce; bread and pasta are made twice daily, in-house. The patisserie is on premises, with tarts and cakes and jams and petits fours changing daily to incorporate local delicacies—sour cherries from upstate New York; quince from a rare fruit-bearing tree in eastern Pennsylvania; winter cranberries hauled in, dripping wet, from New Jersey.
In the kitchen, a precise choreography is performed to support the curated dining experience that commands Michelin’s highest honor—three stars, four years running. Recently, management etched this award onto the enormous front window as a dare to the chef, the sous-chef, the line cooks, the whole brigade de cuisine , a bastardly way of reminding them that the loss of so much as a star would ruin them—not to mention require the replacement of the entire vitrine.
But they’re not worried. What they do is pristine.
Their executive chef, Michel Beauchêne, works them like demigods, producing magic and miracles from the swipe of their fingers across a finishing plate with a towel, or the flick of their wrists as they sear and sauté. The portions are small, each ratio of salt and fat and acid, heat and sugar, umami and bite, perfected in miniature. There’s no room for excess or miscalculation. And it’s all done at speed; hundreds of plates served every night, rapid-fire. Consequently, the men and women in this kitchen—from the tippity top to the runners and bussers—are exceptional.
What they make is fleeting—edible raptures that last only as long as it takes to consume them. But the recollection, the conversations about these morsels, the sweet nostalgia of the best things their clientele have ever eaten— those last forever.
Frankie told Kostya all this between huge bites of a street cart bagel and sips of burnt coffee as they made their way to the restaurant. There was a gleam in his eye, and he spoke with the kind of awestruck reverence normally reserved for places of God.
It was 6:00 AM (decidedly ungodly).
A Monday (Satan’s day, if ever there was one).
The sun was shining (and hot as Hell).
And the more Frankie talked, the more Kostya wanted to crawl into a hole and forget the whole thing.
There was an opening at Saveur Fare for a dishwasher, and Frankie, who’d been a line cook beneath Michel Beauchêne right out of culinary, had put in a good word (and several lies) to get Kostya an interview. He’d done it partially out of self-interest—if Kostya didn’t find work soon, they’d be short their next rent check—but also as a form of apology. The night they’d messed around at Wolfpup, trying to re-create Kostya’s dad’s liver, had been an unmitigated fuckfest—and all Frankie’s idea.
He could still see the hope draining from Kostya’s face each time he plated a new variation and handed him a fork—this one sautéed, this one flash-fried, this one with a squeeze of lemon, this one with preserved lemon reduction, this one with Kosher salt, this one with flaky Maldon. Kostya had been so certain each time that they’d gotten it, and each time the disappointment had shone in his eyes when it was just another bite of liver, entirely off from what it was supposed to be. By the time they called it, Frankie felt like he’d just kicked the emotional shit out of him. And then he’d heard through the grapevine that his old mentor was hiring.
“You know that I don’t know all that much about food, right?” Kostya protested.
Frankie waved him off, sending coffee crashing over the edge of his paper cup.
“No one’s gonna give a shit if the escuelerie can’t boil water. You got one job in there—spotless plates.”
“It just seems… intense. Like, really high stakes.”
“It is intense. It’s at the best of the best! That’s why the pay’s so good.” He took a long sip of his coffee. “I’d give my left nut to cook in that kitchen.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Man, Rio’s been a fucking prince to me. What kinda piece of shit would I be to jump kitchens?”
Hilario Torres—Rio—was the executive chef at Wolfpup, and Frankie was his sous. Their relationship, Frankie liked to say, was like having a wife he’d never get to fuck or fuck over. Frankie was Rio’s ultimate partner, his trustee, his gofer, his confidant. If Rio needed something—any time, day or night—an ingredient they’d run out of on Frankie’s day off, a replacement part for the walk-in, a resolution to the beef between the grill guy and the bartender, Frankie found a way to work it out.
It got attention; chefs all over town tried constantly to woo him away. But Frankie was loyal, a real ride-or-die. Rio had mentored him, had helped him figure out what he wanted to say with food. They’d opened Wolfpup together and, so far, it was a smashing success.
“When I go, it’ll be for my own place. Besides,” Frankie added, “my act’s not clean enough for these guys. I like the hustle. The ball-busting. That half-life we got going on at Wolfpup, just shit talking and bullshitting and dicking around. We charge forty bucks an entrée, and we’re just a bunch of fuckers hanging out debating who’s got the biggest man nuts.” He took another bite of his bagel. “And it’s me, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
“I was not wondering, but thanks for that prize mental image.”
“You ever see a durian, man? Just like that but smooth . I do that landscaping perfect —”
“Fuck, I am never going to be able to unsee that!”
“But got your mind off the interview, right?”
AT SAVEUR FARE, Frankie wished Kostya good luck, told him to call him after, and left him waiting in Michel’s office while he went to say hey to some people he knew in the kitchen.
Kostya stared at the framed memorabilia on the wall—culinary school accolades, awards so prestigious even he had heard of them, clippings from big-name papers and magazines. Maybe, he thought, he could learn enough here to try his dad’s dish again. Maybe he could get good enough that he could make any dish he tasted. And wasn’t that what he was after? Control over his taste buds and his destiny?
He closed his eyes and told himself that he could do this.
The interview went horribly.
WHEN KOSTYA PICTURED Michel Beauchêne, he’d imagined a refined French gentleman in his early sixties, hair going slightly grey, belly round with years of buttering, a soft accent on the tongue, and kind, fatherly eyes that would see into Konstantin’s soul and take pity on him.
The real Michel Beauchêne was not old, or fat, or even particularly French. He was young (an executive chef at just forty-two) and built lean and strong (body by Jivamukti) with cold, calculating eyes and a flat, New York edge to his voice. His parents were French expats, and he’d grown up in Manhattan, attended prep school in the city, and then slummed around Paris for a few years, living off his parents’ dime and apprenticing in some formidable kitchens—this from his well-rehearsed opening spiel.
He wasn’t interested in Kostya’s familial connections to cuisine—Vanya’s Victuals was nowhere near the stratosphere of Saveur Fare suppliers—and Beauchêne was decidedly unimpressed by Kostya’s experience dishwashing at The Library of Spirits. (“But that’s a bar, isn’t it? So did you actually wash any dishes , like from food service?… I see.”)
After about ten minutes of excruciating Q he could slither back out to the curb where he belonged. But then Michel threw him this curveball:
“Okay, I’m going to need you to spell this one out for me.” He leaned back in his chair. “Normally, the people that walk through that door and sit in that chair do so with a sense of wide-eyed wonder about what goes on here. They come in with a list of references this long , with notches in their culinary belts you wouldn’t believe. And then there’s you.
“ You had a single dishwashing job at a bar—glassware only—and things went so swimmingly there that apparently I cannot call over for a reference. You have no experience in a professional kitchen.” He gazed dubiously at Kostya’s folded, unblemished hands. “And if I asked you to cook something for me right now, something you and Frank have been, uh, practicing , I’d get, what, a grilled cheese? Why are you even interested in working here? I’m dying to know. I really am. Is it the money? Because trust me, with the hours you’d be putting in, it would be less than minimum wage. The reason people come into my kitchen is because they want to be the best at something; they’ll kill themselves to get there. And, forgive me for being blunt, but I don’t really get that vibe from you, Mr. Duhovny. I mean, do you even like food?”
Kostya just blinked at him, which only seemed to prove his point.
“Seriously. What’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten? And for the love of all that is good and holy do not tell me salad and breadsticks from the Olive Garden.”
Kostya chewed his lip.
Should he tell him about the best things he’d ever eaten, the detail of their component parts? Or was that cheating? The best things, after all, weren’t things that he had technically eaten . He’d only tasted them secondhand; they weren’t animal or vegetable or mineral, but memory—comestible desires, the fantasy food porn of anonymous ghosts. To describe those to the chef would be a kind of lie.
The other option—the honest option—was to just let it go, to slink back and confirm this Wüsthof toolbag’s cutting observations about his intentions, his experience, and his palate.
“What’s the matter?” Beauchêne prompted. “Can’t decide between a Big Mac and a Whopper?”
Something inside Kostya, deep in his gut, lunged. He could take the digs about being unqualified and a liar and even a bad cook—all those things were true—but he couldn’t let this guy insult his taste buds. His tongue was special. It was maybe the only special thing about him.
“Nevermind. I can see that we’re not going to—”
“Duck.” Kostya spat it at him like another four-letter word. “Duck ragout. It had this thick sauce, cinnamon cognac. A demi-glace, I think.”
Kostya closed his eyes, remembering where the aftertaste had happened, trying to reincarnate it. He’d been on the sidewalk outside his mother’s apartment two New Years’ ago, pacing around and nursing tea that had gone cold, delaying the inevitable argument about how he was living his life when it had hit him.
“The onions were sliced so thin they fell apart to almost nothing in the stew. And these dried fruits that reconstituted in the duck fat—peaches and apricots and plums and cherries—they exploded between my teeth like tapioca pearls.”
Kostya’s eyes were still closed, but the stony silence from Beauchêne invited him to keep going.
“And a couple years ago, there was this coconut curry and Kaffir lime fried chicken.”
That one happened to him at a Gristedes. He’d been in the refrigerated section, his fingers closing around the handle of a gallon of milk.
“The skin was so crispy, paper-thin, covered in these tiny, burnt coconut shavings and desiccated slivers of zest, and underneath, the chicken was so moist. The juices dribbled down my chin.”
He’d invented that last part for effect, and it seemed to be working. Kostya could feel the air change around him, sizzling. He thought he heard the chef swallow.
“I have to say, I wasn’t expecting—”
“I once had young goat,” Kostya cut him off, his eyes squeezing tight in focus. “The whole thing was fire-roasted, charred, the meat brined and rubbed with garlic, thyme, rosemary. Hand-crushed juniper.”
This one had choked him awake one morning in bed a few months prior; he’d drooled so much he nearly drowned in his own spit.
“It fell apart in my mouth. Every bite, I got a little of the ash from the fire pit, the grit of the sand, the scent of pine from the dried needles on the lumber burned to cook the thing.”
“Who are you?” the chef wondered aloud.
“But the best thing”—Kostya smiled triumphantly, the memory reigniting across his taste buds—“has gotta be the fish head.”
Four summers ago, he’d been driving through Chinatown in Vanya’s delivery truck, stopped at a light and staring into a storefront with a Lucky Cat on the counter and a flock of dead chickens dangling in the window. A teenage girl walked out of the store, twisting the white cord of her headphones through her fingers, and as he watched her unlock her bike, the taste had come exploding into his mouth.
“It was dorade. Just the head. Grilled over charcoal. The skin was so charred that it curled away from the flesh. It was insanely sweet inside. Delicate. Like shaved butter. It was finished with this flaked salt that just balanced every bite: the bitter skin, the sweet fish, the acid from a roasted lemon, and the brightness of this very herby chimichurri. The taste of the eye, all the jelly behind it, was just, mmm, ” he moaned, remembering, “like thick, gelatinous soup. Like half-melted aspic.”
The chef didn’t say anything more. He just clicked his pen a few times, then opened and closed a desk drawer. Cautiously, Konstantin opened his eyes.
Michel Beauchêne met his gaze. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” he repeated. “We’ll give this a shot. Against my better judgment. You start tomorrow.”
ON THE STREET outside Saveur Fare, Kostya felt lighter than he had in weeks.
His bank account had been wearing dangerously thin, and though he’d picked up a few extra shifts on Vanya’s truck, he couldn’t take on any more hours without the risk of it getting back to his mother. And that phone call— Why you not tell me about job? You get fired and I must hear this from Vanya? I your mother! I always want help, and you never tell me nothing! You should do more with life! Be doctor! Be lawyer! Building super, at least!— was a conversation so foul he’d rather eat dirt. But now he’d never have to have it. He’d preempt it with news of a new job—a respectable one! with health care!—which might even buy him a few weeks without his mother’s daily calls to make sure he was still alive, the obsessive check-ins her way of overcompensating for the months she’d spent bereft in bed.
Kostya bought cheap coffee from a cart and made his way east. It was a pitch-perfect summer day, the sky cloudless blue, and still early enough that the haze of humidity hadn’t descended to drown them all in their own body odor.
He texted Frankie the good news, then crossed Central Park West and walked a few blocks south to the nearest park entrance—72nd Street, near Strawberry Fields—where he wandered until he found an empty bench and melted into a lazy pose.
Frankie texted him back with three trophy emojis and three bottles of beer and a wolf and a puppy and a drunk face and a question mark, and Kostya was in the middle of responding that, yes, he would like to get drunk tonight at Wolfpup to celebrate, when he saw the little boy and his dad.
The kid was catalogue cute—blond and curly, dimpled, old enough to have control of his limbs but only just—and he ran down the path with his arms flailing, squealing delightedly as his dad—soft body, Yankees cap, embarrassing cargo shorts, and the kindest laugh Kostya had ever heard—ran after him.
“Sashen’ka, wait for me! Sasha! You’re going the wrong way!”
Kostya watched as the dad caught up to his tiny son, swept him into his arms, and threw him in the air. The rush of breeze and height and speed cast a delighted look on the boy’s face, and his dad mirrored it, caught him, set him gently down, and took his hand.
Kostya’s heart was pounding. He could almost feel the fissure within him squirming, straining the seams, hairline cracks forming from the pressure behind his eyes, and he braced himself for the aftertaste that he was sure would pass across his tongue at any moment—the same one that had set his whole life askew. But it didn’t come.
He tasted the sour remains of his coffee, but that was all. The liver dish—the liver he’d failed to re-create even with Frankie’s help, the liver that could have given him just a few minutes of that kind of weightless joy, like a kid being tossed into the air, knowing that someone would be there to catch him—that liver was conspicuously absent.
Kostya felt afresh the disappointment of that night in Wolfpup. In the gleaming, stainless kitchen, surrounded by Frankie’s gear, he’d tasted failure again and again. The problem, of course, was simple. Without being able to taste the dish himself, Frankie was shooting blind; if he hit upon it, it would have been more miracle than skill, no matter how good a chef he was. When he said as much, Kostya just shrugged one dejected shoulder and muttered that it probably wasn’t meant to be, to which Frankie had replied the way his Irish grandmother would have, and told him that in this life, and probably the next, a man makes his own luck.
“If you knew how to cook instead of going through me, you could probably nail those flavors. You’d know how it was made, not just what was in it.” Frankie had wiped his hands matter-of-factly on his apron, as if washing them of the whole conversation. “You want that ghost? Get your ass in a kitchen.”
Kostya deleted his text reply and wrote instead: Not tonight, honey.
Frankie shot back: You washing your hair?
Gonna see if I can watch dinner service. Lot to learn.
Frankie sent through a laughing emoji, tears in its eyes. Then:
Oh, you got it BAD. Welcome to the jungle. Don get burnt.