Mason
The kitchen is roughly five million degrees, as usual, and I’m sweating like a pig—but the last of the dinners has finally gone out, and I’m well and truly done with this day.
I pull off my apron and chuck it in the laundry bin. “Okay, Bryan, she’s all yours.”
“You’re out?” Bryan, leaning over a large tray of miniature caviar tartlets, wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist, then continues adding tiny dollops of crème fraîche to each little bite-sized morsel.
“Yeah, if you don’t mind handling the munchies?” Our last prix fixe seating is over, and all that’s left is to keep a bunch of canapés and finger foods—and booze—circulating among the people who plan to ring in the new year here at Gastrique. “I’m fucking wiped, man.”
“Of course, Chef.” He salutes me with two fingers and goes back to his job.
That’s Bryan: steady, reliable, never stops working if there’s work to be done. He’s been with me for years now, starting as a prep cook and progressing all the way to basically being my stand-in when I’m not here. He doesn’t know it yet, but in a couple of days I’ll be promoting him to Executive Chef.
No one knows it yet, but I’m burned out. I’m fed up. I’m just about ready to chuck the whole enterprise, if it means I can get more than 4 hours’ sleep a night—if it means I can get back to basics, and focus on the things I want to do, instead of the things everyone else thinks I should do.
I took on too much, too fast. I thought I was ready to be a bigshot, but I wasn’t quite as ready as I thought, and I ended up being a lot more of a bigshot than I expected. Two restaurants and another on the way, a TV show, hawking fucking sauté pans…
I’m an iPhone game, for Christ’s sake. What even is that? Last month, I spent more time sorting through audition videos for Knives Out than I did cooking in my own damn restaurant.
So. New year, new me. On Wednesday, I’ll make the announcement—a live video, of course, because that’s how these things are done now. I’m quitting Knives Out. I’m refocusing on Gastrique. If people want to use my face to sell stockpots, they can go right ahead, but I’m done participating in it. Just send me a check. I’ll be in the kitchen.
And I know it’s right, because from the moment I decided this is what I’m going to do, I’ve felt energized, more alive than I have in years. When I was in school, when I was apprenticing in kitchens all over the world, what did I want more than anything? To sell goddamn knives on QVC?
No.
I wanted to own my own place. I wanted to have a restaurant that was a reflection of me—of my style, of my influences, of what I believed about food. I was passionate about that.
I am not passionate about being a fucking iPhone game.
“You okay?” Bryan asks.
“Yeah, I’m good.” Just standing here like an idiot thinking maudlin thoughts about how famous I am. “Spaced out for a minute.”
“Get going before I find something for you to do,” he says, grinning. One of the waiters darts in and snags the tray of tartlets, and Bryan pulls down a new tray and heads off to the walk-in, presumably for more tart shells.
I take the opportunity to stop woolgathering and beat feet out of there, heading to my locker to grab my coat. As I pull it on, I fish my phone out of the pocket. No phones in the kitchen—that’s the rule I made, and I abide by it myself. Cooking at the level we’re doing it requires total focus; there’s no time for sexting with your girlfriend—not that I have one—or playing Smash Candy or whatever it’s called.
I’ve got one text, from a couple hours ago; it’s Ainsley.
Ainsley Dumont is a fashion reporter for the Daily Press, and a long-time friend. We dated, for about ten seconds, before realizing that whatever that thing is that makes a good couple, we didn’t have it, and resolving to be friends instead. She’s engaged to a mega-rich real estate guy, and apparently thinks everyone should be as crazy in love as she is, because she’s constantly trying to fix me up. I’ve told her to quit it—that not all of us are cut out for a permanent thing—but hope springs eternal, I guess, because she definitely has not quit it. She’s always introducing me to women she thinks I’ll like, and invariably I don’t.
But surely she’s not gonna start back in on this shit on New Year’s Eve?
I’m on your roof! Come say hi—might have found you a new neighbor in 2A!
I put the phone away and slip out the side door, taking the long way around the building to avoid walking past the front windows.
I only live a few blocks from the restaurant—part of the reason why I chose the space I did to start Gastrique—so even though it’s viciously cold, I just pull up my collar and make the walk, hands in my coat pockets.
It would be warm on the roof, but I’m just not feeling it. Everyone in the building got an invite, and if there’s anyone I don’t want to spend this evening with, it’s everyone in the building. I mean, seriously?
And they say whoever you’re with on New Year’s Even is who you’ll be with all year, right? Does that include everyone in my building?
No thanks. I’ll just hunker down in my place and keep to myself. Sounds like a pretty perfect evening, actually.