Fripouille

Fripouille is the restaurant on everyone's bucket list. Reservations are booked months in advance. There are rumors of Michelin's interest; speculation about a lone diner who repeatedly jots things down in his notebook and takes too many pictures. Even a single star would be enough to catapult Chef André's dreams of a second location into reality, and don't I want him to be happy?

I try not to think about how good a starred kitchen would look on my resume because it would mean admitting that my time here is short. What do I do if not this? I have three roommates in a five-hundred-square-foot apartment, about to have a fourth, and I can't afford to live on my own. Definitely not on unemployment. And what about my identity? Seventy hours a week makes it hard to decide where Fripouille begins, and I end.

Chef André enters the kitchen and barks, "Service!"

Staff scurries into single-file formation, vying for the attention it takes to make sous chef or, in any of our wildest dreams, the elusive chef de cuisine. None of us will be Chef André, but maybe that's not an entirely bad thing.

The kitchen staff resembles a runway model line-up presenting themselves for inspection. Pristine starched jackets, not a hair out of place, their hands are clasped behind perfect posture, and then there's me. Doughy and exhausted. I've stopped taking the subway, walking the thirty city blocks between our crowded apartment and work in the hopes of slimming back down, but I didn't quit sugar when I had the chance, and now it's too late. Nothing fits properly, and there's a stain on my right breast that I couldn't hide if I had to.

Chef André meets everyone’s gaze except for mine as he recites the daily specials—Venison with sunchoke-studded morel mushrooms, diver scallops with a citrus beurre blanc. We have a lone diner, again, tonight. We must be at one hundred percent. No mistakes, he says, but mine cannot be taken back.

We answer in unison, "Yes, Chef!"

I await my prep assignment with the enthusiasm of a woman facing a firing squad, refusing to reminisce about my brief time on pastry. My dream station: basil tuille, salted honey puffed pastry, vanilla and mascarpone spheres—all that sugar.

As terrible for me as it is, I crave it now more than ever.

Chef André has relegated me to picking and tweezing herbs, carving tourné vegetables, and descaling fish, a torture that only ended when the repeated trips to the bathroom impacted productivity. I lost three pounds during those two weeks if I'm looking for a silver lining, but it's hard to be an optimist in the face of budding opposition.

Before my task is even assigned, the kitchen door swings open, and through it glides a pair of reed-thin women who could easily be mistaken for sisters, or even identical twins: Chef André's wife, Juliette, stunning, as always, in a fitted black dress for her role as front of the house manager, presents a new commis chef—a fresh-faced step up from an intern.

I see myself in her eager expression and flawless bone structure, because I was her before accepting my role at the pastry station, which is and has always been my end goal. No one warned me of the price or how hollow the promises were that came along with it.

Chef André plunks New Girl in line next to me. She elbows me aside, either asserting her dominance or accidentally because of all the space I'm taking up, and I just know he sees her talent. I can tell by the way he looks at her. Past me. I might as well be invisible, which is probably why I'm assigned to vegetable puree—ten hours of simmering carrots in carrot broth and blending them to silken perfection. It's the tenth circle of culinary hell, and Mikaela is sentenced alongside me, because if there are two replaceable women in this kitchen, it's me and my chatterbox sidekick who avoids pastry like a woman with zero aspirations.

We move to our station when the team is dismissed, and I begin scrubbing and peeling. It should be a silent task, but we're not five minutes in when Mikaela's eyes go wide with the anticipation of capital NEWS. A life-altering, career-ending announcement she expects from me because no one goes up two jacket sizes in four months without one serious junk food addiction.

I regret confiding in her.

The kitchen buzzes with more important tasks: herb emulsions, garnish foraging, and the coveted preparation of ice cream bases performed by none other than New Girl. She's confident, competent, and I can see how perfect her mix is from here. Chef must, too, because he gives her The Nod.

Mikaela either notices his reaction or my face turning the shade of a Bull's Blood beet, and asks, "So, how's the diet going?"

Her eyes skim my figure.

It feels like a rhetorical question.

"No sugar," I say.

No matter how bad I want it.​

"Not one snack?" she says.

Not a question, an accusation.

I shrug. I'm a terrible liar, which is how I know this entire thing will blow up in my face the second Juliette works up the nerve to confront me—or the will to care what kind of diet several of us are on right under her nose.

"A bite, maybe," I admit. "In the walk-in."

Cornered but eager.

I will make pâtissier—THE pastry chef.

"You nearly passed out on fish last week," she says. "People are talking."

"I know, okay?"

I see the way they look at me, with pity, like I should have known better. Taken precautions. This could have happened to any of us, really.

We haven't had a full-time pastry chef since Juliette.

New Girl dips a tasting spoon in her pandan curd and offers Chef a taste. The corner of his mouth curls up when he tastes it. Even now, his smile makes my knees weak. She's prettier than me. Better at custard than I am.

A metal strainer crashes to the floor at my feet, everything in the blast radius spattered orange.

Chef's gaze shifts. "Reset your station," he orders, as if I were just anyone else.

"Yes, Chef." The response nearly dies in my throat, caught on a swallowed sob.

​Gazes shift.

Hushed whispers follow.

I don't need to hear them to know what's being said.

"You're going to have to say something," Mikaela offers. "You are, you know...aren't you?"

I knew this was coming.

I expected Chef or Juliette to be the first to acknowledge it, but Mikaela's observation swells between us.

"Yes," I hiss. "Fine. There's a bun in the oven."

Confirmed at least two weeks ago by twin pink lines on the budget home test I took between blanching and shocking peas for service.

Mikaela's expressions span the gamut between sympathy and worry. What will I do? What will he?

"Chef is staunchly no-carb," she says, as if I didn't already know. "You can't make buns!"

Can.

Am.

Whether or not I intended to.​

I try to put it into terms even Mikaela can agree with, but they come out like I'm trying to convince myself.

"Haven't you ever craved something you know you shouldn't have?" I ask. "What's one little pavlova after a shift? Some panna cotta in the cooler? A coconut and mandarin soufflé one late Saturday night? I am pastry chef material, and we both know it."

"Juliette will fire you," Mikaela says, "or worse."

Like the pastry chef hopeful before me, and the one before that—neither of whom was even making bread.

Fripouille will get a sister restaurant. Chef André will win awards, and all I'll be is the girl who wanted a job so badly she'd do anything to get it. Someone no one will hire if I tell the truth, which leaves me wondering how bad a deal it would be to take a run at front of the house. We can say it was love. I can become Juliette, and who doesn't root for a happily ever after with a baby?

"We have a VIP Guest at Table 12," announces Chef André, nervous in a way I've never seen him.

Tonight is make or break.

"Maybe his palate has changed?" I say, eyeing a discarded spoon of crème mousseline.

"You don't speak French, do you?" Mikaela asks.

We all speak enough to get by in the kitchen.

"A little," I say. "Why?"

"Because Fripouille means scoundrel. There's a reason I never worked pastry."