He listens intently, and I realize as I'm telling him how little I've actually spoken about my restaurant to anybody who wasn't there. All the while he asks attentive questions about my business plan (I didn't exactly have one) and day-to-day operations, nodding as he absorbs the information but never venturing an opinion, until I finish and find I've just recounted my spectacular failure to one of the most successful chefs in the country.
///
When I'm done he leans back and looks at me in a way he hasn't done yet, as if from some deeper part of him, his narrowed eyes glistening with some new perspective.
After a pause that's almost awkward, even after the second cider, he says cryptically, "I knew there was something about you."
Cole picks up a cannoli, looks at it for a second, then holds it out in front of my face. "This is great. Try it."
It's an intimate gesture, feeding me like this, and yet somehow it feels natural to lean forward, toward those calloused hands, and take a bite from the creamy treat, our eyes never leaving each other. I swallow it and smile, deciding to change the subject before the heat inside of me makes me say something embarrassing.
"What do you mean, ‘something' about me?"
"Something different. Something unfulfilled. Hungry. I noticed it when you walked out the other night." He stops to spin his glass, frowning at it. "I'm curious though. What do you mean when you say you wanted to cook ‘real' food?"
"Real food … you know, stuff that isn't so overelaborate. Pretentious food."
Cole turns his frown from his glass to me.
"Food like mine, you mean?" he says, a little challenge in his tone.
I hesitate for a second too long before saying, "What? No. No … I mean, Knife is basically a steakhouse at the end of the day, right? Forget I said anything."
"Come on, say it."
I look at him for a moment, my pulse racing under his gaze, like I just took a wrong turn somewhere and found myself trapped. Suddenly I remember that he's my boss, that I've only worked at his restaurant for a week, and that I was already inches away from being fired.
"Go on," he urges again. "We're both adults. I can take criticism. I'm curious to hear what you actually think."
I laugh a little nervously, hoping it'll break the stiff look on his face, but his expression doesn't flicker, and I know the only way out is the truth. There's something about how he's looking at me that makes it easy to forget he's my boss, that I'm his employee. It's easy to forget that he's a household name who most people in the restaurant keep looking over at, and that I'm just a girl from Idaho with a failed restaurant behind her and not enough free time to figure out the next step forward. He looks at me, and I look at him, and we're suddenly just a man and a woman, with all that entails. More intimate and trusting of each other than our brief introduction should make us, and somehow I feel like it's the most natural thing in the world to speak my mind.
"Ok. Well … it's not just your restaurant, I see it in a lot of places. Overcomplicating everything. Taking the simplest dishes and flavors, which are already great, and then dressing them up like they're going to a prom. Using three different cooking processes on a cut of meat just because it looks good on a menu. Fifteen different herbs so that people can't tell what they're even tasting. Covering everything in sauces as if we're ashamed of tasting something in its natural state. Using its French name, then sticking it on a menu with a five-times mark-up. Sometimes it almost seems as if the only way we can react to a culture of fast food is by going to the other extreme and making everything as difficult and as pretentious as possible."
After a pause, one in which I can't quite determine what Cole thinks of my emotional outburst, he says, "Is this the alcohol talking?"
"No. It's all me," I say, defiant with the sound of my own words.
"Even though you studied with Guillhaume?"
"Especially because I studied with Guillhaume."
Cole's blank face breaks into a laugh, and I watch him in confusion.
"You do realize that's why your restaurant failed, right?"
Indignant, I say, "My restaurant failed because of its location."
"No," Cole says, with a cockiness that annoys me. Slowly, he leans forward. "You're an idealist. You think too highly of the average diner-and that's why it failed."
I grit my teeth, genuinely weighing the option of telling Cole exactly what I think, and the alternative of keeping my job.