Hatched (13 page)

Nicky the sous chef stood nearby, at the post-prep station, where sauces were strained, fish cut into filets, and meats tenderized. He was using the
au jus
, the pride of the restaurant, in order to elaborate several different gravies that would be remembered by the clients when they thought of how the food tasted at the Fabergé Restaurant. Fabergé Restaurant’s
au jus
was a combination of all of the leftover meats and vegetables and some of the fish carcasses. It was a kind of edible compost, simmered night and day at a low temperature induced by a flickering, blue gas flame. Every evening, when John distributed the mandatory nighttime cognac to those who had been cooking that night, he would wax poetic about the
au jus
. And every night at least half a bottle of that same cognac would find its way into the
au jus
, to “assure its preservation” until the next shift, which turned out to be brunch, on weekends, or lunch every day of the week except Monday.

Cognac doesn’t preserve anything, of course, and since the
au jus
was always at a near-boiling temperature, it didn’t need preservation anyway. But since the cognac, like everything else in Fabergé Restaurant, was of such high quality, it did help the flavor of the
au jus
, and therefore of all the sauces. And the fact that so much of it was poured each night into the
au jus
provided a neat alibi for missing bottles of not only cognac, but also port and sherry, which John would sometimes substitute or complement, depending upon the temperature outside.

“Cognac for cold weather,” he’d say, “and a cold. Port for sunshine, and to ward off clouds.”

At the prep station, Nate was chopping his way through a large crate of green beans, an annoying task, particularly since John insisted that each bean be peeled, by hand, of the little “zipper” that ran down the midriff section. Each prep chef who had ever worked at Fabergé Restaurant had tried alternative methods to reduce the tedium of this chore, and nobody, to date, had found the method. Nate tried unzipping them all at once after lining them up in rows around three feet long and then splitting them open, surgeon-style, with a large chef’s knife. But when John had seen the effect—beans that had been unzipped on the wrong side, or stabbed too deeply, or only partially unzipped—he raised hell.

Nate had replied that circumcision comes with a cost. John didn’t think that funny, and ever since that day, he had been even more particular about the eventual look of each bean, and this in spite of the fact that they were only prepared as a kind of base for the “Green Bean and Egg” dish. A Turkish-inspired delicacy, this was a popular lunchtime fare, mostly for ladies. It came packed with a little zing, created when green beans are lightly sautéed with white onions, white pepper, salt, and then anointed with two partridge eggs, topped off with red pepper flakes. It was a very attractive concoction that, like most other dishes at Fabergé Restaurant, succeeded in hiding the brute labor that underwrote the recipe, beginning with the unzipping of the beans, but continuing all the way to the manual grinding of the red pepper flakes.

Nate was obsessed in all of his actions by all issues relating to this labor, and the people, notably himself, who undertook it. This led him to philosophize, alone late at night and with Jessica, and to reduce his effort/reward quotient, which he did by finding every possible way to reduce his workload, or raise his salary. Salary raises were few and far between, because Fabergé Restaurant had been, since its very inception, a ship that tended more towards bottom-feeding, like the lobsters it served, than sailing. And so Nate tried a more subtle approach to the prep work, suggesting that beans, which are actually fruits and not vegetables, didn’t belong with the main meal, and, even more dramatically, aren’t eggs.

John feigned to not understand what Nate was talking about most of the time, or else he really didn’t care, which was more likely. John worked at Fabergé Restaurant as one responds to some faith-based higher calling, with absolute devotion. Nate never had any such calling, except perhaps his materialist worldview, but he played along with John, and at least tried to respect the eggy impulse that underwrote the enterprise. To that end, he made a game out of finding definitions of plants that call into question their suitability for an egg restaurant. In this one, he learned that beans are in fact fruits, and not vegetables, because they form from the fertilized flower and contain the seeds of the plant, just like pumpkins, squash, cucumber, tomatoes, corn, peas, and sweet peppers. Ironically, this dubious set of fun facts had contributed to beans becoming a staple at Fabergé Restaurant, because John decided from that point onwards that fertilized eggs fit that definition, which mystified everyone in the kitchen except, apparently, the clientele.

The real reason for the prominence of green vegetables, and an array of un-eggy dishes, was that Tina had read a review in the
New York Times
of a restaurant called “Meet at Meats” that wasn’t classified as a ‘healthy choice’ because it offered no green vegetables with its gourmet fare. The owner, a former football star who had made hamburger meat of his own left knee during a practice session in the preseason, was aiming to attract the type of people who could afford to attend events like the NFL playoffs, or the US Open. And he imagined that they, like he, would consider that vegetables are for sissies.

Meet at Meats had lasted through one US Open and half a football season, and then went into bankruptcy. This was in part because very few women felt comfortable there, but even more importantly, it turns out that real men want to eat vegetables and salad. Whatever the case, vegetables or no vegetables, Tina, forever protective of the precious Fabergé Restaurant, didn’t want John to take the same chance with eggs. So beans, along with fruits that most people consider vegetables, were made to be the exception of choice to the egg fare, and a new Tina-inspired side of the menu was developed, originally for female clients. It quickly lost its gender-orientation, and the eggs were integrated into a choice amount of non-egg, or egg-related, fare.

On the opposite side of the prep counter was another wooden-covered steel counter that was used for preparing garnishes. Since it was on the service side of the kitchen, servers could be called upon during a rush to slice lemons, peel and cut oranges, or even chop parsley, so as to relieve the burden from the prep chefs. Once upon a time there had been twice as many sous chefs, chefs, and prep chefs in the kitchen, but now they were down to the bare bones, literally, as John’s benevolent bookkeeper Doris whittled the staff down to meet the payroll each month.

Johnny was now manning that station, since he’d already tenderized the veal, a task that, on account of the noise it created, was performed in the parking lot at around 3:00 p.m. each day, on a table that John would sterilize daily for the purpose, using his own special combination of salt and lemons. It was because of Johnny—a tall, curly haired engineering student who was completing his degree program online—that everyone had started calling John, the owner, by a new name: John-the-Owner. The idea developed further, so that Nicky, Jessica, Johnny, and perhaps someday Russ, would sometimes be anointed with surnames in accord with their functions. Even Tina was sometimes summoned with Tina-the-Maître d’, but she didn’t like it, and people shied away from things Tina resisted. So there was Tina-the-Maitre d’, Tina-the-Chinadoll, and, well, Tina. Just Tina.

As times grew more troubled in the restaurant, and as John’s mental health declined, Johnny-the-Broil-Guy took over many of the tasks previously undertaken by John, while John resorted more frequently to washing dishes. This was partly because it was so difficult to keep decent dishwashers, and partly because the noise of the vents and the machines in the dishwashing area was so loud that the dishwasher could sing or whistle with virtual impunity. This used to be valuable, when John would hire out-of-work musicians to do the dishes; but it was now crucial, because John had taken to whistling, and sometimes even singing in a kind of whining desperation during the supper shift. As a result, it was valuable to differentiate Johnny-the-Broil-Guy from John-the-Owner as a way of reminding oneself that the latter was indeed the owner of the place, despite all appearances to the contrary.

“We always start the same way here,” Jessica was telling Russ. “Fabergé Restaurant is an egg restaurant, and every dish begins,” she reached over to a tray of chicken eggs, one of three dozen or so egg trays behind her in a specially cooled tray, “with an egg.”

Russ stood purposely close to her, and tried to inch himself forward so that she’d feel him close, and perhaps reciprocate his mounting desire. She seemed oblivious.

“You . . .” Russ had lurched forward somewhat, and had clearly pressed himself up against her, crotch-first. She turned and glared at him and, right on cue, a large hand pressed onto Russ’s shoulder from behind. John had been watching the whole proceeding, and now intervened.

“People need to learn how to cook eggs,” he began. Jessica backed away, looking relieved. “Right, Jessica?”

Jessica, repressing a scowl in the direction of this new guy, couldn’t agree more. She also knew that John wouldn’t accept her being threatened, in any way, ever. He never had, and he would never let the dust, sand, or ash of this often-filthy world sully Jessica, the mother of nature, the powerful, corpulent, sweet, soft, all-knowing caretaker of the earth’s bounty. Jessica knew John-the-Owner’s fidelity towards her as a certainty, like gravity, or the glare of sunshine. Jessica smiled, gently, in John’s direction, knowing that he had her back.

“There’s only one way to cook an egg, Russ,” said John, rather close, in his own way, to the new employee. “One way. Do you understand?”

No answer was required, and for his own sake, Russ would not offer one.

“You don’t cook it, Russ. You understand? You don’t force it, Russ. You just bring it along. If you force it, then it’s only fit to be worn.” He pointed downwards, towards Russ’s Converse running shoes. “Those shoes, Russ, know what they’re made of?” John grinned sardonically and looked over at Jessica, who had heard this one, well, probably a thousand times. And then he stared menacingly towards Russ, with his piercing, steel eyes. “Somebody overcooked the eggs, Russ, and now you are wearing them.”

Russ looked uncomfortable, and as John moved even closer, his discomfort turned to terror. Here he was, in the center of a yolk, cast away from the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of his native Manhattan and plunged into this terrifying universe of solid shells and bizarrely animated interiors. It was as though he was hovering, suspended in Fabergé Restaurant’s midriff, wedged in the Yolk, between Jessica on one side, John close by on the other. The stove’s blue flame flickered before him, crotch level, and behind him the array of chilled eggs was arranged into a nearly perfect line. Russ looked ready to flee, to burst out of this place, and may have done so had John not looked so poised to pursue him even deeper into the Yolk, downwards, a Vergil to his Dante plunged down into Inferno.

If the eggs that surrounded Russ could have used nascent eyes to see, they would probably be collectively bemused, even if individually frightened. And if they looked with fresh eyes upon this entire scene, they might wonder, as Jessica sometimes did, if John’s intention was to teach Russ how to fry an egg, or to command him to perform some dark task with a gas stove that could lead to fundamental changes in the very makeup of the Yolk, the Fabergé egg, and the world that surrounds it.

“In fact, Russ, you don’t actually
cook
an egg,” he seemed to be warming to the oration, but also lightening up, “unless you want to use it as a weapon, or decoration for an Easter fest.” His mouth mounted, almost into a grin. “You have to warm the egg up, Russ, by gently bringing it to the temperature of the butter until it coagulates, just enough to lose its gooiness.” Then, suddenly, sardonically, and with all the practicality of a motorcycle mechanic, John tilted his head backwards and declared, to Russ and the entire kitchen, “If it starts looking like Saran Wrap on its edges, start over.” He turned to Jessica to make sure she was listening to the speech he had given every one of his employees five thousand times.

“You don’t make Saran Wrap, Russ. If you want Saran Wrap, Russ, we have it over there, near the server station. You make eggs. Somebody else makes Saran Wrap. And it’s not you, okay, Russ?”

Russ nodded. He would have agreed to have his own head served up as tonight’s special if it would bring the current demonstration to an end.

John expertly chose an egg, cracked it such that the fissure divided the shell into a perfect half, and then, by expanding the fingers in his hand, revealed the waiting innards to the pan, which gently swallowed it and then suspended it on the warm, little sea of fresh butter. He reached to his left and with one scoop grabbed the salt and the white pepper shaker, adding each to the yellow mound, creating a design that resembled an astrological sign, as he was wont to say and Jessica and Nate had many times recalled together, in fear and admiration. “Taurus,” he said out of the side of his mouth, in Jessica’s direction.

Russ looked perplexed and looked up to seek reassurance from Jessica, but she was wiping down the stainless area where the gravies are prepared. Russ turned back to John. He was feeling guilty and a bit sick with fear and embarrassment. John was able to instill both by simply standing nearby, but it was infinitely worse when he was teaching anything. Somehow John’s decades of experience in the kitchen culminated with each order, with each observation, with each look of cunning and deception. The egg, warmed, looked glossy, beautifully decorated in Taurus the Bull garb of rusty fur and a heavy head of darkening pepper.

With a perfectly timed flip, the protrusion of its yolk was gone, and it was smooth, flat, over-easy. And then, not a moment later, it was perfectly situated in the very center of a warmed plate that John had snatched from below the stove. He moved it in the direction of Russ and then pivoted and placed it behind him on the counter that housed all of the eggs that would be served up that evening. He showed the impeccable pan to Russ, as if to underline the fact that it looked as new after the task.