Chef's Kiss: A Novel - Softcover

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Chapter 1

Chapter 1
Eight unbaked loaves of sourdough sat on the test kitchen counter, and Simone was working on the ninth.

She had come into work before the sun was up just for this: the culmination of many weeks spent perfecting her no-knead recipe. Each batch of dough had a slightly different ratio of bread flour to whole wheat, or salt to water. The doughs had risen overnight, and now they were nearly ready for the decisive bake. Simone could feel her excitement building, and in the quiet of the test kitchen, which was empty at this early hour, she allowed herself a pleased hum. She gave the ninth and final batch of sourdough its third fold-and-turn, then placed it gently in a parchment-lined bowl, where it joined the lineup. She frowned, giving the bowl a slight nudge.

There. Now all nine bowls were perfectly aligned in a neat row of stainless steel to match the rest of the sterile industrial kitchen. She jotted down a quick note to herself so she could keep them all straight—they were arranged from most bread flour to least starting on her left—and tucked the note in her apron pocket. Soon she would find out which recipe was the best of the lot. They just needed one last short rise before they went into the oven.

A glance out the window told her the sun was rising, too. Simone took a moment to sip her coffee and watch the peaceful scene unfold outside. From the top floor of the West Village office building, she could see the tiny triangular park across the street, the burbling fountain in its center lined with sleepy pigeons.

She took another drink of coffee. It was good—dark and strong. No one else on staff had the patience and know-how to coax the test kitchen’s overly complicated espresso machine into producing it. Sometimes, she mused, hard work did pay off.

Though she was young—twenty-eight years old—Simone Larkspur had been aggressive in her career as a pastry chef, working long hours in restaurants of incrementally better quality and doggedly writing freelance articles for food and wine publications until she attained her dream job: recipe developer and writer for The Discerning Chef.

Most people had never heard of The Discerning Chef. It was a hybrid publishing company that put out a series of cookbooks and an eponymous magazine “since 1952,” as their logo proudly proclaimed. Their material was aimed, supposedly, at chefs—whether professional or amateur, The Discerning Chef could never seem to decide. Simone had been working there for nearly three years, and she took such pride in her job that she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Simone was considering whether she had time to cook herself some breakfast when she heard the test kitchen’s swinging door creak open. She turned, wondering who else would be there so early, and found it was Delilah, the assistant to the editor in chief.

“She wants to see you,” Delilah said in a tone that managed to be both firm and sympathetic. Her crisp shift dress and box braids were as precise as her gesture in the direction of the executive office. “You can go straight in.”

“Me? But—” Simone gazed at her row of sourdough loaves. They needed to be scored and baked in about fifteen minutes. “Can I just—?”

“She’s waiting,” Delilah said, effectively destroying Simone’s hopes of finishing up her task before facing her boss’s boss. Delilah must have noticed the despair on Simone’s face, because she added, “Everyone in Editorial is taking a turn. You just happened to be the first one here this morning—and, well, every morning. No need to worry.”

In Simone’s experience, when someone said you shouldn’t worry, you should very much worry, and in fact, should clear your schedule to do nothing but. Still, if the big boss called, she couldn’t dither. She squared her shoulders, stood at her full height (which, honestly, was not very tall), and marched to the executive office.

She tapped at the cloudy glass door and cracked it open, popping her head in to find the woman herself at her desk: Pim Gladly, editor in chief of The Discerning Chef for over thirty-five years, a giant in the culinary world. She was an occasional judge on one of those cooking shows that tortures its poor contestants with impossible, nightmarish tasks. She’d made several hardened chefs cry on camera. She was actually a popular meme, used primarily for reactions that required unimpressed judgment, though she refused to learn what a meme was.

Her eyes found Simone from behind an overly large pair of eyeglasses framed in red ovals. “Ah. Simone.” Her gaze flicked down to her desk, where she seemed to consult a slip of paper. “Have a seat.” She waved her hand toward one of the leather chairs opposite.

Simone perched on the chair and faced Pim with what she hoped was an earnest, serious look on her face and not anxiety-riddled terror.

“What did you want to speak to me about, ma’am?” she asked.

Simone had only spoken to her editor in chief a handful of times, so tacking on the “ma’am” seemed prudent. Ms. Gladly tended to stay above the day-to-day workings of The Discerning Chef’s operations, taking a more macro-level view of the business. This meant that, for the most part, Pim Gladly only came into the office two or three days a week, with the rest of her time occupied by her house in the Hamptons, her various boards of directors, her judging panels, and her seven purebred, wire-haired dachshunds.

She gazed at Simone across the expanse of her cluttered desk and said, “We’re not making any money.”

Simone blinked. “Oh.” She waited for Ms. Gladly to continue, and when she didn’t, she ventured to say, “Well, TDC has always served a niche market, and as long as we continue to provide that market with quality work—”

Gladly shook her severe pageboy-styled head. She continued, her voice lilting between a mid-Atlantic accent and a quasi-British one. “No, Simone. Actually, if we continue on as we have, we will shut down by next year. No one is buying our books. No one is subscribing to our magazine. No one cares about The Discerning Chef these days, not when they have cable television and the internet. We are a dinosaur,” she said, lifting a paperweight from her desk and holding it aloft, “and if we do not act quickly, we are not going to be able to dodge the meteor.”

She brought the glass lump of the paperweight back down with a heavy thud, making everything on her desk—and Simone—jump.

Simone stared at her. Her dream job was disintegrating like so much grated Parmesan in a hot risotto. Though her stomach hurt at the prospect, her head was already calculating who would be most likely to hire her after The Discerning Chef folded. Gourmet? TasteBuzz? That guy from culinary school who always seemed to be opening a new bistro every six months? She could make some calls. She disliked the idea of going back to work in a restaurant kitchen, where the pay was low and the nights were long, but it would cover the rent until she found something more stable.

But then the portion of her brain not occupied in revising her resumé came up with a pressing question. She decided to ask it aloud. “Why are you telling me this,...