Page 60 of Best Laid Plans
Becca had walked around to the headboard of one of the beds, extending her hands to catch a pillow, which Elle dutifully threw at her. Maybe a little harder than necessary. “I’ll tell you all about what’s going on withClamif you tell me about the Rock Harbor dating scene and your part in it.”
Becca caught it with an “oomph”before quickly fixing the corners–Elle had done that one–and laying it perfectly on top of the covers. “That’ll be a quick one.”
Elle smiled. “We’ll see about that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
CAM
Cam was adjusting to working in the Pierce’s Lobster Co. kitchen with other people around. It was Thursday, and after a full day yesterday managing the crowd that was–thankfully–still enthusiastic after the chowder fest, he was settling back into a rhythm.
The kitchen was smaller than any he’d ever worked in professionally, but Mr. Pierce had always taken thought and care making the space as efficient as possible. With a pair of tongs that had a home on a hook bracketed to the back wall, Cam grabbed a bright red lobster, cooked to perfection, and placed it to the side of the still-boiling pot of water to cool.
“Boiled lobster ready in three,” Cam said toward the walk-in refrigerator, where Luke, the part-dishwasher, part-prep assistant had disappeared into for another box of clams.
Luke appeared in the doorway, carrying the box he’d gone to retrieve along with a tray of scallops. “Yes, chef.”
By all accounts, they were a skeleton crew, but when he’d come in for his first day managing the kitchen while Mr. Pierce took another week to recuperate, Luke had shown up about thirty minutes before opening. Sasha, who was working thecounter, had shown up only minutes after that. They were both hard workers, which he appreciated, even if they were a little green when it came to actual kitchen experience.
So far, Luke was doing an adequate job. They’d worked around one another yesterday–Cam figuring out his rhythm again. It was like riding a bicycle, though, as muscle memory had taken over. Especially at Pierce’s, where he’d already spent thousands of hours before.
Today, he was fully focused. He pulled up the clam strips and french fries that were cooking in the bubbling fryer vats, tipping them upward to get any excess oil cleared. Then, he threw them into the holding station and liberally sprinkled salt.
He turned around, barely blinking when he saw two additional orders in the ticket holder. Pierce’s still took orders by hand, and he had to give Sasha credit for her excellent penmanship. He couldn’t say the same for Mrs. Pierce, though that was a thought he’d take to his grave.
On autopilot, he quickly scanned the items. A lobster tail, of which he still had a dozen or so pre-prepped in the fridge. Onion rings and french fries. Another order of clam strips. He could do this in his sleep. ‘Mini lobster roll? Special sauce?’ was written in bold and underlined, which is when he noticed that Sasha was staring at him.
“They specifically requested that I ask,” she said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes even if the customer couldn’t see her. They’d been getting a lot of requests for menu items from chowder fest over the last two days.
“Unfortunately not. Normal menu, as usual,” he said gruffly past Sasha and directly to the customer, a middle aged guy with salt-and-pepper hair who absolutely looked like the kind of person who was used to getting what he wanted.
All he got was a dour look in response and what he thought were the words “false advertising” coming from the man,though it was too loud in the kitchen to fully hear him. Not that he really cared what he had to say anyway.
Cam was proud as hell of the menu that he’d created for the chowder fest, but this wasn’t his restaurant. He’d never go off-script on a normal day without Mr. Pierce’s permission, which he hadn’t asked for–nor had he been given. So today, it was the standard fare, which was still the best seafood in New England as far as Cam was concerned.
Mr. Pierce made his own breading for all the fried seafood, a special blend for which Cam still didn’t quite know the recipe. He’d tried for years, dabbing bits of the breading on his tongue to try and work out the flavors. Still, he knew that he was missingsomethingwhenever he tried to recreate it on his own.
And the seafood itself was so laughably sea to table that one good storm could probably push a lobster right up on their doorstep. The market at the water’s edge delivered every morning, and Cam made a mental note to bump up the order volume for the rest of the week. If the last two days were any indication, he was not prepared for the weekend.
The lunch rush moved quickly over the next two hours, with a steady stream of orders finally tapering off around three p.m., signaling the lull between the lunch and dinner rushes when Cam would need to prep again.
Cam signaled to Luke, who was dutifully butterflying more lobster tails, a task he’d been assigned thirty minutes ago. “Cover for Sasha so she can take a break, then you can go.”
Restaurants, like all businesses, had labor laws, but a lot of chefs and managers felt like they were flexible instead of requirements. Cam was not of the same mindset. The bullshit idea that someone needed to be pushed, broken down, or bullied into submission had never sat right with him. He’d grown up in a kitchen with Jim Pierce, whose cooking and management style was antithetical to every single kitchen he’d worked in since then.
The kitchen wasn’t war, regardless of what pretentious chefs wanted people to think. It was serving food to locals and tourists who’d gotten comfortable in the twenty-first century with never waiting more than ten minutes for anything in their lives.
When Cam had been watching Elle play tennis which… he still couldn’t think about too deeply without heat flooding his body, he’d heard her say, “play goes at the server’s pace.”
In this kitchen, he was the server. It was his pace to set, and his expectation of what was appropriate. Chefs who pretended that making the day-to-day bearable for the staff was out of their control were either lazy, entitled, or incompetent.
Truly, everyone needed to chill the fuck out and smell the roses, as far as he was concerned.
“Order up,” Cam said into the window separating the kitchen and the dining room.
Luke turned quickly to grab the tray before calling out the order number and setting it on the counter.
The solace in being so busy was that he thought about Elle less frequently. Which was still a problem, at least as far as he was concerned. Cooking had always been all-consuming, but no matter what he did, he still couldn’t wipe her completely from his thoughts. Even when he was locked in and pushing out orders like his life depended on it.
