Death Row Restaurant by Daniel Gonzalez

Author:Daniel Gonzalez [Gonzalez, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CLASH Books

A few weeks later, Yiannis asked to speak with Dave after class. At the time, Dave was struggling to finish his coq au vin. The sauce had come out too thin and Dave was worried that reducing the sauce would overcook the chicken. He considered removing the chicken, straining the sauce and then reducing it separately. In the end, he rejected this. Not only would it look bad, but it might create a dichotomy in the dish. The sauce he strained and reduced might taste different from the sauce the chicken had already absorbed. Dave had no doubt that Yiannis would immediately detect a taste in the chicken that was unrepresented anywhere else in the dish. It was more honest, Dave felt, to maintain the integrity of the dish, even if one element of it ended up overdone. As expected, Dave’s coq au vin ended up with a delectable, silky sauce paired with tasty but somewhat stringy chicken. And Dave was certain that Yiannis was going to blast him for such an uneven dish.

This was what Dave was thinking as he crept into Yiannis’ office.

Yiannis’ ‘office’ was basically a converted dishwashing area of The Henderson Culinary Institute. They had ripped out the sinks and appliances but had left behind the plumbing rough-ins, the tiled backsplashes and the rest of the functional decor of the dishwashing area. As Dave took his seat, he couldn’t help but imagine that at any minute a crew of dishwashers might charge in and start re-assembling their washing stations. A damp smell permeated the room, as if it had been filled with steam in the recent past. Centered along the main wall was Yiannis’ desk, a peeling, wooden affair crookedly situated above a giant floor drain. When Yiannis sat at his desk, a backwash hose dangled just behind his head. Occasionally, Yiannis moved his head in such a way that the hose appeared to be a noose and Yiannis a condemned man slouched on the platform of a gallows. The floor of the entire room, as in a shower stall, had been scrimmed and pitched towards the floor drain under Yiannis’ desk. Thus, when Dave sat down in the lone chair it felt more or less like he was about to be flushed down a toilet. The idea of being flushed made Dave think of Kate, of their final moments together on that flight from Chicago to Wichita. Dave wondered what Kate was doing, if she had started a relationship with that man in first class. If she was traveling. If she was at all happy.

“Have a seat, Dave,” Yiannis said, even though Dave was already sitting.

Having tasted his coq au vin sauce (which contained two full bottles of wine) a thousand times in the last hour and having also had several glasses of wine to calm his nerves over his uneven dish, Dave realized he was a little drunk. Yiannis’ desk wobbled from time to time due to the pitch of the floor, and it was making Dave nauseous.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.