Topped Chef A Key West Food Critic Mystery (2 page)

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Recipes

Excerpt from the next Key West Food Critic Mystery

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am so grateful to the folks who bought character names for
Topped Chef
in the name of charity. They are such good sports as they have
no idea
what I’ll come up with when they write their checks! Peter Shapiro bought an auction item to benefit the Waterfront Theater in Key West, and requested that I put Randy Thompson in the book. I added Peter himself just for fun. Thank you to Randy for allowing the use of his name and for sharing his stories. Toby (Davidson) Scott bought an auction item to benefit our dearly beloved E.C. Scranton Memorial Library in Madison, Connecticut. Thank you, Toby! Though the names are real, inspired by real people, the characters are purely fiction.

Thanks to Adam Boyd for allowing his name to be used; to Tim and Stacie Boyd for their recipe; to Leigh Pujado for details on the gym, which I should already have known intimately—and for her cameo appearance. Thanks to Ron Augustine for his insights on tarot and Key West and to Jane for connecting us; thanks to my wonderful Key West friends Steve, Eric, Cory, Cathy, and Jim, for sharing stories and lives. Pat Cronin provided details about how paramedics would react in a crisis. Huge thanks to Rose Anati for helping me understand the ins and outs of reality television. I would have been lost without her, though of course all mistakes are mine!

I’m utterly grateful to the usual suspects—Hallie Ephron, Susan Hubbard, Chris Falcone, Angelo Pompano, Susan Cerulean, and John Brady, who never let me down when it comes to brainstorming, feedback, and support. My blog mates and dear friends at Jungle Red Writers, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and Killer Characters fill my inbox every day with laughter and support. Thanks to all my writing friends in the mystery and cozy community who share tips and encouragement.

And thank you to my fabulous agent, Paige Wheeler, and her gang at Folio Literary, and to Sandy Harding, my amazing editor, who makes every page better, and the supporting cast at NAL. I appreciate you every one, including Kayleigh, Elizabeth, the illustrators who produce my fabulous covers!

But most of all, thanks to readers, booksellers, and librarians for reading the Food Critic mysteries and spreading the word! I hope you’ll enjoy this vicarious visit to Key West—all the good parts in the book (including restaurants) are real. The rest of it, I made up.

TOPPED CHEF
KEY WEST

The Staff

Peter Shapiro, executive producer|director

Deena Smith, assistant to the executive producer

The Judges

Sam Rizzoli

Toby Davidson

Chef Adam Boyd

Hayley Snow

The Chef Contestants

Henrietta Stentzel

Randy Thompson

Buddy Higgs

The Homeless Guys

Turtle

Tony

The Cops

Detective Nathan Bransford

Officer Steve Torrence

Staff at
Key Zest

Wally Beile

Danielle Kamen

Hayley Snow

Friends at Tarpon Pier

Miss Gloria Peterson

Connie Arp

Ray, Connie’s fiancé

Janet Snow, Hayley’s mom

Sam Cooper, Janet’s boyfriend

Then she also read Sirine’s coffee grounds and said she could see the signs written in the black coffee traces along the milky porcelain: sharp knife, quick hands, white apron, and the sadness of a chef. “Chefs know—nothing lasts,” she told Sirine. “In the mouth, then gone.”

—Diana Abu-Jaber,
Crescent

1

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh.“What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?’” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.

— A. A. Milne,
Winnie-the-Pooh

Evinrude woke me from a sound sleep, first with his rumbling purr and then with a gentle but persistent tapping of paw to cheek. I blinked my eyes open—the bedside clock read six fifteen. I hissed softly at his gray-striped face. “I love you dearly, but you’re a monster,” I told him as I rolled out of bed. “Spoiled rotten cat flesh.”

Tail hoisted high, he trotted out of the room ahead of me, meowing loudly. Miss Gloria’s lithe black cat, Sparky,
intercepted him before he reached the food bowls lined up in the corner of the tiny galley of our houseboat. He sprang onto Evinrude’s back and wrestled him to the floor. While they boxed and nipped at each other, I poured a ration of kibbles into each bowl, refreshed their water, and then staggered onto the deck to check out the morning.

The plum-colored night sky was shifting to pink to make room for the day, which looked as though it might turn out “glorious and whimsical,” as the
Key West Citizen
had promised. A quartet of wind chimes tinkled lightly from the boats down the finger. Had there been a stiff wind or the first spitting drops of a cold rain, I’d have gone directly back to bed. But on a morning like this, there was no excuse to avoid the dreaded exercise I’d prescribed for myself.

Twice in the past ten days, I’d lured myself out of bed to go jogging before work, with the promise of a thick, sweet café con leche from the Cuban Coffee Queen as a reward on the way home. In addition to adding heft to my resume, my position as food critic for
Key Zest
had added a bit to my waistline over the past months; I was anxious to reverse the trend. And besides that, the Key West Food and Wine Festival loomed this week—it promised a series of tasting sessions that could ruin the most stalwart dieter. Which I was definitely not.

And most pressing of all, my first real date with detective Nate Bransford had been rescheduled for this evening. (You can’t count a threesome including your mother as a romantic encounter.) So it wasn’t hard to convince myself that today should be the third session—not
that jogging two miles would magically transform my figure from jiggles to muscles, but I had to start somewhere. And maybe it would help work out the predate jitters, too.

I hurried back inside, replaced my pajamas with baggy running shorts, red sneakers, and a T-shirt that read “Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off.” I’d bought the shirt for Christmas for my stepmother—who, while a brilliant chemist, was famous in our family for cremating roasts and burning even soup from a can—but lost my nerve before sending it. Why jostle a relationship that had recently settled into a pleasant détente?

I tucked my phone into my pocket and dashed off a note to my roommate, Miss Gloria, who lets me live onboard her houseboat in exchange for errands like grocery shopping (which I adore anyway), and sending occasional reports on her mental and physical condition to her son in Michigan. I stand between her and a slot in an old-age home—and I take my responsibility seriously. The Queen’s Guard of Tarpon Pier.

I wrote:
Jogging—ugh! Call me if you want a coffee.

Then I hopped off our deck, tottered along the dock, and started grinding up the Palm Avenue hill over the Garrison Bight, which is Key West speak for harbor, toward the Old Town section of Key West. There aren’t many changes in elevation in this town, so I was just as happy to get this challenge over with early on. I puffed past the U.S. Naval Air Station’s multistory building—
Fly Navy
—and then by the pale pink and green cement block apartments for enlisted folks and their families. I finally chugged around the curve onto Eaton Street, my
lungs burning and my thighs cramping into complaining masses. I picked up my pace, pushing harder because I smelled bacon: The Cole’s Peace Bakery called to me like a Siren to Ulysses. Stopping for an unscheduled bacon and cheese toast on crispy Cuban bread would devastate my fledging resolutions.

As I hooked right on Grinnell, heading toward the boardwalk that wound along the historic seaport area, I tried to distract myself by thinking about my tasks for the day. There’d be e-mail to answer, as the biweekly issue of
Key Zest
, our fledgling Key West style magazine, hit in-boxes today. And I was in charge of responding to the usual flurry of complaints and compliments. For the first time in my short career, I’d had to swallow hard and write a negative review. This was bound to come sooner or later. Key West is a foodie paradise, but like Anywhere, USA, there are lousy meals to be had, too. As a careful follower of the major newspaper restaurant critics, I’d read plenty of stories about critics suffering through horrendous dinners. Or worse yet, bouts of food poisoning. I’d actually memorized one of the
New York Times
critic Sam Sifton’s sharper quotes: “And lobes of dismal-flavored sea urchin served over thick lardo and heavy toast were just dreadful: the eighth band after Nirvana to write loud-soft-loud music and call it new.”

But hearing about rotten reviews and writing them were two different animals. I wasn’t convinced that I would ever develop a killer instinct—famous critics seemed to enjoy ripping apart a horrible dinner. Me? I could only imagine the chef sweating in the kitchen, slaving over the stove, plating the meal, praying that
his special
whatever
hit the mark. It broke my heart to think about dissing some poor chump’s food.

My second meal at Just Off Duval a couple nights earlier had started off well. True to its name, the restaurant was located a half block from Duval Street, far enough from the bustle of the town’s main party artery to mask the grit and noise. My friend Eric and I had ordered glasses of wine and settled into the pleasant outdoor patio edged with feathery palm plants to enjoy our dinners. The night was cool enough for a sweater, and the scent of roasting meat had my stomach doing anticipatory back-flips. A half loaf of stale Italian bread and a pool of olive oil that tasted almost rancid were the first signs the experience would be a downer. I jotted a few notes into my smartphone, agreeing with Eric: Any restaurant should be allowed a tiny misstep.

But then my chef’s special salad was delivered: a small pile of lettuce dog-paddling in thick blue cheese dressing that screamed “emulsifier” and wore powerful overtones of the plastic bottle it must have been squeezed from. On top of that were chunks of pale pink mealy tomatoes. Though the mashed potatoes that accompanied the main courses were creamy and rich, my thirty-eight-dollar fish smelled fishy and Eric’s forty-two-dollar steak was stringy. We didn’t have the nerve to order dessert. I hadn’t actually gotten ill, but my stomach had roiled for half the night in spite of the half roll of antacids I’d eaten. According to a text the next morning from Eric, who generally had an iron constitution, his gut still didn’t feel quite right as he and his partner drove to Miami for some much-needed R & R.

I had tried to wriggle out of writing it up. But there wasn’t time to substitute something else. And my boss, Wally, had specifically told me this restaurant should be included in the next issue of our magazine. But hadn’t I heard former
New York Times
food critic Ruth Reichl warning prospective food critics and writers that the more expensive the restaurant, the more damage a lousy review could do? And mine was definitely lousy. It started like this:

All kitchens have an off night. Unfortunately, my three visits at Just Off Duval coincided with three bad nights. JOD, a newish restaurant on a cul-de-sac a half block off Upper Duval Street, has been the site of four failed restaurants over the past six years. Whether this is due to bad cooking juju or simply uneven and overreaching preparation, I fear that Just Off Duval will be joining their ranks….

I shook the words out of my mind and staggered past the
Yankee Freedom
ship, which ferries tourists to the Dry Tortugas for snorkeling expeditions most mornings. Then I paused on the boardwalk along the harbor to catch my breath. Several large sailboats left over from the races the previous week still clanked in their slips, alongside catamarans loaded with kayaks and sport fishing powerboats. The pink streaks in the sky had expanded like silken threads of cotton candy, lending enough light that I could make out the details of the early-morning activity. Nearby, a thin man in faded jeans with long hair and a bushy beard that reached to the middle of his chest sprayed the deck of
one of the Sebago party boats with a high-pressure hose. The hair around his lips was stained yellow, as if he’d smoked a lifetime’s worth of cigarettes, and faded to white at the tip of his beard. His name—Derek—was embroidered on his shirt.

As I leaned against a wooden railing to stretch my calves, a bare-chested, red-haired man skidded around the corner, wearing a long black cloak and a small American flag draped from his belt like a loincloth. He leaped onto the boat, pulled a knife out of his waistband, and, taking a fighter’s crouch, brandished it at the man with the hose.

Even under the pirate’s tricornered hat, I recognized him—Turtle, a chronically homeless man whose behavior fluctuated with the status of his mental illness. A couple of months ago, I would have backed away as fast as I could. But now I understood more. Since it was the end of the month, he’d probably run out of meds. And if the cops came, he’d end up in jail. Where he’d only get worse.