All Four Stars (18 page)

JUST DESSERTS

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW APPEARED ON
the front page of the
New York Standard
's Dining section that Wednesday.

JUST DESSERTS

by G. GATSBY

Do you want to go to Classy Cakes, Midtown Manhattan's new all-dessert bistro? You'd better start planning your visit early. First of all, there is a week-long wait for reservations—and good luck getting a table without one.

If you do get in, congratulations! Now it's time to start saving your pennies, because cake prices start at $12.50 a slice.

Once you're through the door, the waiters and waitresses, dressed in yellow and black, buzz busily around the dining room. But the real problem is the hostess, who reigns over the restaurant like a mean queen bee. So it's a good thing that the desserts are delicious—so delicious that the moment the first bite touches your taste buds, you'll forget all about the trouble, and the expense, and the rudeness.

Chef Allison Sconestein-Alforno has created a dessert for every kind of appetite. If you like pecan pie, then you'll love her tree-nut tart, which adds fancy nut varieties like black walnuts, Marcona almonds, and DuChilly hazelnuts to the mix. But if you're in the mood for something creamier, you can choose from among the lemon-lavender, mocha-mint, and berry-basil custards, where fresh herbs add the perfect kick to the classic custard flavors.

For a dessert that's as filling as a whole meal, you can try the belly-swelling ginger-sultana bread pudding or the mouth-gluingly gooey sticky date pudding. Kids will beg their parents for the homemade ice creams in cookie flavors, like cinnamon graham and banana biscuit, which can be served on their own or sundae-style (ask for an extra squirt of the maple whipped cream!). And if things get too sweet for you, you can always order a cheese plate—its many colors make it almost as pretty as it is stinky.

But the restaurant is called Classy Cakes, so you probably want to hear about those $12.50 cake slices. Layered high on their plates, they're as tall and teetering as a lady in high-heeled shoes, but feel as moist in your mouth as the Amazon rain forest on a rainy day. Their flavors will send your taste buds on a trip around the world: the Moroccan cake features pistachio and cardamom, the Chinese cake has green tea and sesame seeds, and the Belgian cake has chocolate and . . . well, more chocolate.

The creative cakes will probably be many diners' favorite desserts, but for me, the most impressive item on the menu was one of the most traditional: the crème brûlée. It's hard to explain what, exactly, made this dessert so special, so I'll just say that Ms. Sconestein-Alforno—or one of her sous-chefs—is much more skilled with a blowtorch than this reviewer will ever be.

(a delectable dining experience)

• • •

Mr. Eng had the Dining section spread open on the counter when Gladys walked in that morning. She'd biked over on her way to school—
just to get a croissant,
she told herself. But really, she was dying to get a look at the paper.

“Good morning, Mr. Eng,” she said.

“Good morning, Gladys,” he said with a smile. “Hey, the herb in that berry-basil custard—was it Thai basil or sweet basil?”

“I'm pretty sure it was sweet—” Gladys started without thinking. Then she felt herself turning very red.

Mr. Eng chuckled and slapped the newspaper. “I knew it!” he cried—and then, more quietly, said, “Don't worry, your secret's safe with me.” He promised to save her five copies of the paper, which she could come pick up after school.

Aside from Mr. Eng, only two other adults in East Dumpsford read the review. One was Sandy's mom, who flipped through the paper as she took a break from coding a new website at home.
Ooh, desserts!
she thought when she saw the headline. Then, like most readers, she jumped right into the article. If she glanced at the byline at all, she probably thought it said “G. Gadfly”—short for “Gilbert Gadfly,” the paper's regular critic—rather than “G. Gatsby.” In fact, thousands of readers in the tristate area made this mistake, and then raved that this was the best review Gilbert Gadfly had written in a long time.

The last reader also didn't notice the byline when she sat down at a table in the teachers' lounge with her mug of green tea. But once she started reading—and enjoying the writer's creative metaphors—she couldn't keep the smile off her face. There was only one person Violetta Quincy knew who wrote about food with such passion, and when she finished the article and finally looked closely at the byline, her suspicions were confirmed.

It looked like her student hadn't lost the
New York Standard
essay contest after all.

• • •

That evening, Gladys and Sandy sat on the floor in the Rabbit Room, reading through Gladys's review for the third time. They had already raided both of their houses for an envelope and stamps so Gladys could mail a copy to Paris. Aunt Lydia, she was sure, would not only keep her secret, but would be very proud. Another three copies were stashed carefully away under the pajamas in Gladys's dresser drawer at home, but she couldn't bring herself to hide the last one away—not yet.

“You did it!” Sandy said.

“
We
did it,” Gladys corrected him. “I couldn't have done it without you.”

“Sure you could've.”

“Nope. Could not.”

Edward Hopper leaped over Sandy's outstretched leg like he was doing rabbit hurdles, and Dennis Hopper reached his twitching nose up to the corner of the newspaper Gladys was holding. Remembering how attached the fat rabbit had been to the last Dining section he came in contact with, Gladys snatched it away from him.

“So,” Sandy said, “what's your next assignment?”

“What do you mean?” Gladys asked.

“For the
Standard,
” Sandy said. “Haven't they given you another review to do yet?”

“Yet?” Gladys cried, folding up her paper. “I just finished this one!”

“Yeah,” said Sandy, “but you're their new star critic! They've got to give you more reviews!”

Gladys didn't even want to think about how she might sneak back into the city for another assignment.

“I may need to take a vacation from reviewing,” Gladys said. “You know, concentrate on not failing the sixth grade.”

“Yeah, well,” Sandy huffed, “we'll see what Fiona says.”

• • •

Two days later, this e-mail came through from Fiona.

Dear Gladys,

Thank you again for your great work on the Classy Cakes review. I think that your writing is a breath of fresh air for the
New York Standard,
and I hope that you'll continue to write for us.

Our regular critic, Mr. Gadfly, has recovered and is back at work, so I don't have any freelance assignments at the moment—but I'm sure that I will this summer, when several new restaurants are slated to open. Meanwhile, have a great spring!

Best,

Fiona Inglethorpe

Spring had, indeed, arrived in New York.

In Manhattan, Fiona wandered through the greenmarket, buying up armloads of deep pink rhubarb stalks to bake into pies and pale pink cherry blossoms to decorate her table.

At East Dumpsford Elementary, kids hung their coats on the fence while they ran around at recess, and the intrepid Owen Green—“crazy Owen Green,” scoffed Parm—showed up at school in shorts.

Gladys, meanwhile, finally found time to shop at Mr. Eng's that Saturday, and even convinced her parents to forego their weekly trip to the Super Dump-Mart and come along. At first her mom was intimidated by the fridge full of high-fat cheeses, and her dad eyed the price list at the butcher counter warily. But Mr. Eng won them both over with free samples of his latest delivery: the first local asparagus of the season, which he had roasted simply with olive oil and salt.

“It's delicious!” Gladys's mom cried, helping herself to a third stalk.

Gladys's dad agreed. “I didn't know vegetables could taste this good.”

They ended up buying four bunches, and even let Gladys pick out a bottle of fancy olive oil to cook them in at home.

When they got back to the house, Gladys and her dad unloaded the groceries while her mom opened the front door and took in the mail. She was at the dining room table, opening envelopes, when they came in with the bags. “Junk,” she said, tossing one letter aside and ripping into another. “Junk . . . bill . . . junk . . .” But then she stopped, squinting hard at the paper she had just pulled out of the last envelope.

“George,” she said finally, “come look at this.”

Gladys's dad set his bag down and went to look at the paper in his wife's hand. He stared at it for a moment, then picked up the envelope, then looked back at the paper. Finally he looked up at Gladys.

“Gladdy,” he said, “why has the
New York Standard
sent you a check for a thousand dollars?”

Fuuudge,
thought Gladys. Her goose was cooked now.

THIS BOOK TOOK ALMOST A DECADE TO “COOK,” AND
would probably still be simmering on a back burner if it wasn't for the following people:

Ammi-Joan Paquette, my brilliant agent and fellow foodie, who believed in this story and matched it with the perfect editor;

Shauna Rossano, who is that editor, and whose insight has made this book so much richer than I ever imagined possible;

Kelly Murphy, whose scrumptious cover art has brought Gladys's world to life;

Everyone else at Penguin Young Readers Group who has helped bring
All Four Stars
out into the world;

Katharine Davis Reich, Jessica Wells-Hasan, Evelyn Chen, Miriam Schiffer, and Allison Brennan—the Breadbasket Writers' Group—who nourished this book from its first paragraph (and its author with love and peanut butter pies);

Eugene Myers, who cheerfully shared everything he knew about breaking into children's publishing, and Julie Sloane for putting us in touch;

Authoress, proprietor of the Miss Snark's First Victim blog, and Jodi Meadows, who plucked the first page of this story from the slush and got it in front of my agent;

Malini Mukhopadhyay, who taught me so much about Indian cooking and culture (and who was the first person, way back in college, to insist that I check out that new
Harry Potter
series);

The Dartmouth College Department of English and Creative Writing—and particularly Ernest Hebert and Cleopatra Mathis—who fostered my love of literature and gave me the confidence to try creating some of my own;

My many friends and fellow writers who read drafts of this manuscript and provided feedback and encouragement at crucial points: Hoi Ning Ngai, Christine Percheski, Nomi Stone, Catherine Bridle, Merrie Morris, Katie Wade, Lauren Sabel, Cindy Strandvold, Ann Bedichek, Jessica Lawson, Krista Van Dolzer, Joy McCullough-Carranza, Lisa Ann O'Kane, Sarah Hilbert and Mónica Bustamante Wagner;

My EMLA family (the “Gango”), and especially my fellow bloggers at EMU's Debuts, who with their collective awesomeness have convinced me that kids' authors really are the best people in the world;

My writing students—Emily, Lucia, and Evelyn Paul, and Aksel, Max, and Oskar Moe—who clamored to read this book as soon as they found out I'd written it and quickly became Gladys's best “real-world” friends;

The Cahills and Campbells—Mollie, Sarah, Jim, Heidi, and Matt—who have welcomed me into their clan with endless love, support, and square donuts;

My aunt, Judy Gruber, who took me on adventures into Manhattan as a toddler and, many years later, stayed up all night reading the first full draft of this book;

My parents, Barbara and Fred Dairman, who taught me the subtleties of microwave cooking and have been cheering me on in my writing pursuits for decades now;

My sister, Brooke Robyn Dairman, who inspires me to continue pursuing my creative dreams by never giving up on hers;

And finally, Andy Cahill, who in a thousand different ways every day makes my existence a happy one.