The Perfect Dinner
This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, apart from mine. Apparently, I shall have to look after myself.
The woman sent back the best thing I had cooked all week.
She did it politely, which was worse. An abusive customer gives you something useful to work with. You can dismiss his judgement, object to his manners and spend the rest of the evening describing him to the kitchen staff. A polite woman who simply declines to eat your dinner leaves you alone with the dinner.
It sat beneath the lights, looking expensive.
I had arranged the yolk in a shallow nest of potato, added a spoonful of brown butter and placed three small leaves beside it. Three was restrained. Earlier in my career I would have built a fucking hedge.
The waitress, Anna, put the plate down carefully.
The woman had asked for a fried egg on toast.
I knew that. I had read the order myself.
I was the sous chef. It wasn't my restaurant, although I cared about it enough to become personally offended on its behalf. The executive chef, whom I'll call Martin, wasn't always there. Sometimes I was the person in charge.
At eight o'clock, I had been having an excellent evening. The dining room was full enough to justify my confidence without being full enough to inconvenience it. The fish was good. Nothing important had broken. A man at table four had asked to meet the chef, and I had pretended to find this mildly embarrassing.
By half past eight, I was discussing toast as though it were a threat to the business.
There was no fried egg on our dinner menu. There was an egg dish, but it involved several decisions of mine which I felt the customer ought to experience. She had asked Anna whether we could make something simpler. One egg, fried on both sides, with ordinary buttered toast. Tea, if we had it.
Of course we had tea. I kept six kinds, each accompanied by a description of where it had grown. She wanted the sort that came in a bag.
Anna had said yes before consulting me.
I explained that this was a restaurant, not a transport café. Anna looked towards the dining room, where people were paying us to bring them food, and then back at me. Anna had been at the restaurant for four years. Not working for me for four years, I should point out. I was the sous chef, not a condition of her employment. She knew the place. Her glance towards the dining room was sufficient.
There were perfectly sensible reasons for limiting substitutions. A kitchen cannot produce everything anyone happens to imagine. Timing matters. Ingredients matter. Other customers matter.
None of these reasons applied to an egg and two slices of bread.
I presented them anyway. They sounded considerably better than admitting I disliked being asked to do something that would not demonstrate how good I was.
Then I made the potato nest.
I went out to her table intending to be gracious.
I should have recognised the danger. Whenever I have to decide in advance to be gracious, somebody is about to have an unpleasant few minutes.
She was sitting beside the window, with a canvas bag under her chair and a coat folded over its back. Perhaps sixty. Perhaps older. I am a poor judge of age in people who have not spent their lives standing beside ovens.
There was a square of folded paper on the table. She put her hand over it when I approached, the way people do when they have finished reading something that is none of your business.
I introduced myself. She apologised for the trouble.
That annoyed me too. I had arrived prepared to defend the food, and she was making it difficult to establish an enemy.
I explained what I had made. The bread had been replaced with a crisp potato preparation. The egg was cooked gently. The butter added a nuttiness which, until that moment, I had regarded as a considerable achievement.
She listened. Then she asked whether I had any sliced bread.
I did. The staff ate it. They had not been required to sustain themselves entirely on my artistic development.
She would prefer that, she said. Toasted. The egg turned over and cooked through. No leaves.
I told her the yolk would set.
She said that was what she wanted.
For a moment I stood there with nothing left to explain. I could have gone back to the kitchen. Instead, I asked whether there was some reason she wanted it that way.
I heard myself ask it. Even then, I heard the demand underneath: justify your dinner to the man you are paying to cook it.
She took her hand off the paper.
Her father had made egg on toast on Sunday evenings. Her mother worked the late shift at a hotel, and he cooked while the woman and her brother finished whatever homework they had been avoiding.
He turned the eggs because he did not like them wobbling. He buttered the toast right to the edges. He cut each slice across, never diagonally, and put the egg on one half, leaving the other half free.
The free half was for marmalade afterwards.
I glanced at the folded paper. She opened it.
It was a list. Curtains. Bedding. Kitchen drawers. A name beside the washing machine. Another beside a small table. Some things crossed out, others circled.
She and her brother were emptying the house. Their father had died in the spring. The sale would be completed the following morning.
She had spent the afternoon sorting the kitchen. Her brother had gone home with the last boxes. She had stayed to clean the cupboards, although she thought the new owners intended to pull them out.
There had been half a jar of marmalade at the back of one.
She paused, folded the list and put it away.
The café near the house was closed. She had walked past our window and seen the word *egg* on the menu. She realised it was not quite the same thing. She had thought it might be possible.
That was all she offered. She did not cry. She did not give me a speech about her father. I had asked a stranger to account for an ordinary preference, and she had given me more of her evening than I had any right to expect.
I said I would make it.
Then, because my capacity to make things worse is not easily exhausted, I added that I would make it properly.
She looked up.
I corrected myself. As she wanted it.
Back in the kitchen, the first plate was still waiting.
I tasted the potato. It was excellent. The butter was excellent. There was nothing wrong with the food except that nobody had ordered it.
Anna asked what the woman wanted now.
The same thing, I said.
She took the plate away.
I could have given the order to someone else. One of the younger cooks had already put the sliced loaf beside the toaster. He had been listening to the dispute with the careful expression employees adopt when the person running the kitchen is behaving like an arse and there are several hours of service left.
I thanked him for the bread.
He looked more alarmed than he had during the argument.
I put a pan on the stove.
By then, other orders were moving. Fish went past me. A sauce needed checking. Somebody needed clean spoons. The kitchen had plenty to occupy it without turning one woman's supper into my private examination of character.
I cracked the egg into a small bowl and inspected it. I put bread in the toaster. Then I stood there waiting, with the odd sensation of being underqualified for something I could have done at twelve.
I wanted to rescue the situation magnificently. I could have sent out another course, waived the bill, produced some extraordinary little gift. There were several ways to make her remember me favourably.
I had to keep reminding myself that she had already told me what she wanted.
The toast popped up.
It was evenly golden. I buttered it while it was hot, taking the butter to the edges. Cut across, not diagonally. Half clear for the marmalade.
We had no marmalade.
Naturally, we had three things which were much more interesting.
There was a small shop two doors away. I went myself, still wearing my apron, and bought a jar of ordinary orange marmalade.
The man at the till asked whether we had run out.
I said yes. It was easier than explaining that we had never possessed any because I had been too sophisticated.
When I returned, the younger cook was beside my pan. He had moved it off the heat. The egg was waiting in its bowl.
He asked whether I wanted him to do it.
For a second I nearly said no in the voice I generally reserved for people interfering with something delicate. Then I saw his hand on the pan handle. He had saved me from returning to burnt fat while I was out buying a small accessory to my moral improvement.
I told him I had it, and thanked him again.
This time he merely nodded.
The egg went into the pan. I let the white set, turned it, and cooked the other side. There was no cleverness available in the gap between what she had requested and what I was doing. I found myself watching closely anyway.
The finished yolk had a small ridge where I had pressed it with the spatula. I nearly started another egg.
Then I put it on the toast.
Anna brought a pot of tea. I fetched a little dish for the marmalade and, after briefly considering a more attractive one, used the first.
I carried the plate as far as the kitchen door.
Through the glass, I could see the woman rubbing one hand with the other. A pale mark ran across her knuckles. Perhaps from cleaning. Perhaps it had always been there. I knew almost nothing about her, and had already made knowing something the condition of giving her dinner.
I handed the plate to Anna.
I wish I could say I immediately returned to work without needing to know what happened.
I watched from the door.
The woman looked at the plate, moved the marmalade a little closer and picked up her knife. She cut a piece of toast with egg on it. She ate it.
I waited for something more. An expression. A hand over her mouth. Some visible confirmation that the evening had acquired significance and I had contributed to it.
She took another mouthful.
Behind me, somebody asked about table six. I went back to work.
Later, Anna brought in the plate. There were a few crumbs and a little butter on it. The marmalade dish was empty.
The woman had asked for the bill. I told Anna to charge her for egg on toast and tea. We had to invent a price. I resisted the temptation to make it free. She had come in to buy dinner, and I had already made quite enough decisions on her behalf.
She left while I was checking the fish for another table. I caught sight of her through the door, lifting the canvas bag onto her shoulder. She said something to Anna, smiled briefly and went out.
There was no note for the chef.
I was disappointed. I had behaved reasonably for nearly twenty minutes and some recognition would have been welcome.
At the end of service, I sat on an upturned crate with the first plate balanced on my knees. The potato had gone soft. I ate it anyway. It had required effort, and I remained attached to my efforts even when they had become cold and unnecessary.
Anna was counting the receipts. The younger cook was wrapping the bread.
I considered asking what the woman had said before leaving. I could feel a story assembling itself, with me in a surprisingly flattering position towards the end.
I took another mouthful instead.
The cook asked whether the marmalade belonged in the staff cupboard.
I said it did.
He put it beside the tea bags, where anyone could reach it.