“Cool. It might be good to do a couple of seasonal items, depending on what’s available.”
“My thought exactly.”
Brad went back to the kitchen a few minutes later, a new wave of excitement rolling through him. Lauren really was giving him almost complete creative control. It was something he’d wanted nearly his entire career. As fun as making other people’s food was, he loved creating new recipes. His brain constantly hummed with ideas. What if he put this thing with that thing? How would that cake taste if he added cardamom? What fruits would taste best together in a tart?
His last job had been at a chocolate-themed restaurant, where even the entrées had chocolate in them, and he’d been responsible for the dessert menu. But the executive chef there was a control freak. He’d let Brad design a couple of desserts but had offered opinions freely, constantly asked Brad to tweak the menu, and insisted a number of items Brad was not that excited about were served every night.
Brad thought about his conversation with Aaron as he took the sandwich rolls out of the oven. Yeah, he was about to make treats for cats. But it was the most exciting, creative work he’d ever done, and Lauren was letting him run with the planned menu. In a lot of ways, this was the best job he’d had. And he’d only been at it a few hours.
***
The new restaurant was called Pepper. Lindsay couldn’t figure out what that had to do with anything, beyond that the decor felt like the inside of a pepper shaker. Everything was shades of black and gray with occasional pops of color. The chairs in the main dining room were upholstered in the color of pink peppercorns, for example. Vintage salt and pepper shakers were positioned on shelves around the space, and most of the art on the walls was still-life paintings that featured salt and/or pepper shakers and mills prominently.
“This is already trying very hard,” said Lindsay’s friend Paige right after they were seated.
Lindsay had invited Lauren, Paige, and Evan for a night without their significant others. She’d been hoping for a night of good food, but she felt the odds of that were declining the longer they sat in the restaurant. The waitstaff still had that new-restaurant smell on them, and service was a little slow and confused. A waiter brought them all menus after they’d been sitting for about five minutes—the leather cover had an imprint of a pepper grinder on it, of course—and Lindsay looked it over.
She didn’t know what pepper had to do with soul food, but the menu was heavy on soul-food staples: fried chicken, collard greens, okra, mac and cheese. Except everything was pretentious. Chicken breaded in the chef’s unique twelve-spice blend, for example, or the “five-cheese cavatappi,” which sure sounded like mac and cheese to Lindsay. She didn’t mind a twist on an old staple, but taking food that should be a little rough around the edges and served in restaurants with plastic tablecloths was probably not the way to go.
The best soul food Lindsay had ever had come from a place in Brooklyn run by a family from Georgia that served heaping portions on paper plates. The food was tasty, affordable, and made by a pair of sisters who clearly loved what they did. Best fried chicken in Brooklyn, as far as Lindsay was concerned.Thatwas soul food. This was…something else.
Her friends looked equally baffled.
“Okay, here’s how I want to do this,” said Lindsay. “Everyone order something different so we can each try everything.”
“I want to try the chicken and waffles,” said Evan. “But I have some concerns.”
They had all agreed what they’d order by the time the waitress came back. They all ordered cocktails, too. Lindsay had ordered something called Peachtree Punch that tasted suspiciously like vodka and Kool-Aid. Who the heck had designed this restaurant? It was somehow cheap and pretentious at the same time.
“So how is everyone?” Paige asked when they’d settled into their cocktails. “Did you all behave while Josh and I were on vacation?”
“Lauren didn’t,” said Evan.
Lauren slapped Evan’s arm.
“What happened?” asked Paige.
“She hired Brad,” said Lindsay.
Paige laughed. “Oh, I already knew that. She texted me when it happened.”
“And I’ll have you know, I did agonize over this hiring decision,” said Lauren. “Diane took the final decision out of my hands, but Brad really was the best candidate. And I’m happy to have the extra help at the café, especially while Paige was out of town. Well, running the café at all was hard with Paige out of town. Last week was rough. But now Caleb is home with the baby and I am having a night out with my friends and I am going to enjoy it, dammit, because I deserve it.” She took a sip of her cocktail. “Hoo, boy. That’s a lot of rum.”
“The bartender has a strong pour,” said Evan. “And Joey Maguire isn’t even here, is he?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” said Lindsay. She’d spotted his name in very tiny print on the menu, like even he was already on the way to disowning this place. Likely Maguire was just an investor and didn’t have much say in the menu.
When their food arrived twenty minutes later, it at least looked good. Everyone started digging in, but by the looks on her friends’ faces, everyone was noticing the same things she was.
“I don’t think any of the twelve spices was salt,” Evan said as he held a fried chicken leg. “Or an actual spice.”
Lindsay ate a forkful of the five-cheese cavatappi. In theory, it was hard to go wrong with cheese and pasta, and yet it was dry and kind of flavorless. Was one of the cheeses the cardboard box this came out of?
Everyone around the table agreed. For a restaurant called Pepper, all the food was pretty bland.
“I mean, it’s not the worst meal I’ve ever had,” said Lauren, reaching for the salt shaker on the table.
“Oh, I know mine!” said Evan. “My friend Lester threw a dinner party one year where he let his boyfriend do all the cooking, and everything came out charred. That was an experience.”
