Prime by Poppy Z. Brite

Author:Poppy Z. Brite [Brite, Poppy Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-54272-4
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2005-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

After changing into his whites, Rickey got the Mustang out of the parking garage and drove to the restaurant. He was already starting to know his way around Dallas; with all the visible landmarks on the horizon, it was easy to stay oriented.

He planned to ease the kitchen into his new menu, doing a few dishes at a time and seeing how customers liked them. He’d discussed his first one with Coop last night: an appetizer presentation of beef Wellington, the classic dish of beef, mushrooms, and foie gras in puff pastry. It was a perfect example of cross-utilization, the economical use of ingredients in more than one dish. Right now there was a thick-cut filet on the menu. The kitchen cut its own meat, and at the end of every whole filet was a piece called the head that usually went to waste. Beef Wellington would use up the heads and any other beef scraps, yet diners would perceive it as fancy. Coop had smiled ruefully at it, and it was the kind of dish G-man would call fossil food, but Rickey suspected his love for old-fashioned cuisine would serve him well in this gig.

“Hey, did you see this?” said Sugar, the sous chef, waving a newspaper in Rickey’s face as soon as he walked into the kitchen. Rickey took the paper and saw that it was a quarter-page ad featuring his photograph from Gourmet. His glamour shot, G-man called it. The text beneath the picture read CHEF JOHN RICKEY OF LIQUOR, NEW ORLEANS—GUEST CHEF/MENU CONSULTANT AT FIRESTONE’S! Then it listed his various awards and other hype—there was that damn Bon Appétit quote about his impeccable grounding in local and global culinary tradition—and gave the dates. Coop’s name appeared nowhere in the ad.

“Jeez,” Rickey said. Though of course he’d known Firestone planned to advertise his stint, actually seeing his name in another restaurant’s ad felt weird and wrong. He’d behaved himself with Coop last night, but now he felt as if he was being unfaithful to Liquor.

“Cute, huh?” said Sugar.

“Yeah.” Rickey brushed past her and went looking for Coop, who was back in the walk-in. “You ready to do this?” Rickey asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Coop grinned. “Actually, I’m looking forward to it.”

There was a nice dark demiglace already prepped, and the beef Wellingtons came out better than Rickey had hoped. Since the ad had mentioned New Orleans, people would be expecting Creole food. Rickey called Coop’s seafood supplier to see if he could get a late delivery of Gulf shrimp. If he could, he’d make shrimp remoulade; it was one of the few useful things he’d learned at Reilly’s, and he could just about make it in his sleep. The shrimp were available, though the price raised Rickey’s hair. He reminded himself that he was hundreds of miles inland from the Gulf now. As he hung up the phone, Sugar said, “Hey, we have lots of frozen shrimp. You could’ve used those.”

“You can’t use frozen shrimp for remoulade.

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