“Alright lads, I’m going to take a smoke break before the rush comes in,” the head chef yelled to his crew.
“Oi chef, I don’t know if you want to, it’s pissin’ out there,” someone yelled to him from the line.
Chef Adrian Bond, and yes, he did always get the piss taken out of him for the name, grinned at his grill bitch. He shrugged as he walked towards the back door. “It’s always pissin’ here. It wouldn’t be London if it wasn’t.”
He got a couple of chuckles from the line as he walked past the counter on the other side of the line. The kitchen was laid out smartly in a simple design. In the middle was a square shape with the different stations and a counter across from their various cooking or working areas that held their lowboys and reach-ins, the places that held their prep. There was also their own personal counter space to work.
If you were standing at the counter in the kitchen's front, the pass, on the left side, was the various hot stations. Fish, sauce, grill, saute, etc.. on the right side were the various cold sections and prep areas. He was a huge fan of G?rde manger so he found some of the best cold kitchen chefs in the city to work for him. He had even poached someone from a Michelin starred restaurant in France.
He stepped past a small wing area that held a small room for the baker and dessert chefs and checked in with the pair.
“Oui, everything is going well, chef. We have enough of everything for service tonight,” Brian told him the patissier told him.
Adrian smiled and nodded his head. “Good, thank you Brian,” and then went out the back door right next to where they worked.
Adrian knew Brian since culinary school and while Adrian may be the owner and executive chef, Brian was practically a partner. He had put as much blood, sweat and tears into making the restaurant, AB, on Basil Street the minor success that it was. Brian was so integral to the restaurant that even though the name was officially Adrian’s initials, the pair knew the ‘B’ really stood for Brian.
The pair were an odd couple, almost as bad as Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon. Adrian was tall and lithe and precise to a fault. Brian, a little short and a little chubby and judging from the amount of flour and chocolate everywhere in the restaurant's bakery that Adrian saw, was a bit messy. It was good they never actually lived together.
Before Adrian even opened the sliding back door to go outside, he saw the rain pounding down from the sky in the streetlights. The sun had already set, and the night was eerie dark. He stood there at the door, holding it open with a cigarette in his hand, and watched and grunted. A bright lightning streak flashed across the sky and he stepped out.
There was a small metallic covering that covered the doorway and just outside. It was an old shed they had converted to a smoke area and ghetto foyer for their back door. The chef stood on the edge of the shed and smoked his cigarette while he looked out at their little garden in the backyard. They grew as much as they could in their little backyard. Some vegetables and micro greens. Adrian sighed when he thought about how flooded the raised beds they grew in were going to be.
“Or maybe it’s good? The fuck do I know?” he said to himself. He worked with the local school and had a program going with them to bring in students to take care of the garden under the supervision of a teacher.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
It was a good little program. He got free labor and very locally sourced ingredients to work with. He had the same kind of thing going with the culinary program where he’d get two students every semester to come and stage. Working with most of the kids that came in was something he enjoyed. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, not yet the spiteful people who operated on nicotine and caffeine that this industry spit out.
Another flash of light made him look back at the sky as he took another puff. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at it and waited for another one. There was something weird about that flash. Instead of just a bright how white streak, there was some red in it? He blinked and watched the sky. Maybe he had too much espresso.
He didn’t have to wait too long before another streak flashed across the sky. Blue lightning with a redness that swirled around the bolt. The cigarette hung from his lips when he saw it, and he blinked several times.
“CHEF!”
He blinked and turned and the cigarette fell from his mouth onto the wet ground. “What?”
It was one student, Richard. Normally, they only worked during the day, but it was a Friday night and Richard was especially excited and wanted to work extra. Adrian gave him some extra prep work to do and had him working with the cold chefs. He was tall, very tall, taller than Adrian, who stood at 6’2”. This boy was going to have a bad back in no time. He had bright green eyes that went along with his bright fiery curly red hair and the thick mustache the senior in high school could grow.
“Are you alright chef? I’ve been standing here trying to get your attention for a few minutes,” he explained.
Adrian frowned, but nodded his head.
“Yeah, come here and look at this lightning with me,” he said and turned back around to look at the sky.
“The lightning? I just wanted to give you your knife back. Chef John said it was too big for me to use with what he wants me to do,” Richard explained.
Adrian smirked and nodded his head. “Yeah, I can see that. He probably has you doing fine, intricate work.”
John was over G?rde manger and was responsible for doing the elaborate pates and cold dishes where presentation mattered more than even the entrée. Adrian had given Richard his own personal chef’s knife to use when the boy asked about it. It wasn’t anything special; it was just an Asian styled chef’s knife. Sometimes called a vegetable cleaver, sometimes called a Chinese chef’s knife. The blade looked more like a cleaver than a traditional chef’s knife. It was straight, unlike the meat cleavers that had a slight curve to it and it also lacked the hole near the top that was common.
“Oui chef, he is,” Richard said.
Adrian heard the tall boy step behind him and he turned only for a moment to take the knife back. “You’ve earned a break. I need someone else to see this and tell me if I’ve gone crazy.”
It only took a minute of watching till another of those weird streaks lit up the sky. Richard inhaled deeply at the colors. “That is a bit odd, isn’t it?”
“You saw the red too?” Adrian asked.
“Hard not to Chef,” he confirmed.
Adrian nodded and looked down at the knife in his hand for the first time since he took it. It was cleaned and looked like the boy hadn’t damaged it at all.
“RICHARD, BACK IN HERE!” A shout came from inside.
Adrian smirked. “You better go back in. John sounds like he needs your extra hands. Tell him you were with me and I held you up.”
Richard smirked and nodded his head, thankfully. “Oui chef, thank you,” he said before he scurried back through the sliding door and inside.
John could be a hard taskmaster, Adrian knew. He was probably working the kid hard. Adrian shrugged at the thought. It was good to work the interns hard. Had to get them ready for when they were really in the shit and had to unbury themselves from the weeds.
He looked up one last time to see another streak of the lightning. This one made him yell out a curse as it came right towards him. He knew standing under the metal shed was a bad idea.
Patreon
Discord and start a conversation.
What kind of person do you think Adrian will be in a world like Taria?
