Tazer/Kaner restaurant AU notfic
So first this happened, brought to my attention by bessyboo on Twitter.
Then this happened.
Tazer is a srs bzns chef who owns and (micro)manages his own restaurant. It's called Blackhawk, obvs, and it's this trendy upscale place where you eat practically in the dark--not actually pitch-black like that place in NYC, you can still get a vague sense of where your fork is, but it's impossible to examine the food too closely. This, Tazer explains in interviews, is so you can focus on what's important: taste.
The restaurant is fairly new, so Tazer's doing his best to court the critics and build a good reputation. So when Sharpy, his maitre d', comes into the back looking worried and says he's having a problem with someone who claims to be a critic, Tazer comes out to deal with it himself.
His first instinct is to kick the guy out. He's wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a baseball cap, for the love of fuck. You don't come to a restaurant like Blackhawk in a fucking baseball cap, this place is CLASSY. Tazer is like -____- can I help you -____- and the guy's all, "oh hey! yeah, I'm Patrick Kane with The Podium, and I'm here to scope out the goods :D"
Well. Tazer's trying to lure in the twentysomethings, and The Podium has a really wide hipster/yuppie readership. So it would probably be a bad idea to just boot out their food critic, if that's actually who this guy is.
Tazer says, "We have a dress code," and Kane's like, "but you can barely see your own plate, right, why would anyone at the next table be looking at me" and Tazer gives him the stinkeye and compromises by making him leave the baseball cap at coat check, then tells Sharpy to go ahead and seat him. Then Tazer heads straight back to his office and googles "patrick kane."
The top result is a review of a restaurant Tazer remembers hearing about a year or two ago. He clicks on it and reads the first paragraph. It's a complete evisceration of the place, full of profanity. It's pretty fucking unprofessional, in Tazer's opinion, but... he knows the restaurant in question went out of business a few months back. He's not taking any risks.
So he treats Kane like he would treat any other critic, which is the same as how he would treat any other customer, because Tazer believes in giving nothing but his A-game at all times. Halfway through the meal, Shawsy the waiter comes into the kitchen and says, "Dang, I guess that guy out there really is a food critic," and Tazer's like, "what, what did he say, did he say something about the food" and it turns out Kane took one bite of his curry and said, "Whoa, what the hell kind of basil IS this?"
The basil is a rare perennial cultivar from Africa--some restaurants would brag about that in the description of the dish, but Tazer likes to keep things simple and let the quality speak for itself, so there's no way Kane could know about the special basil unless he has insider information or actually knows his shit.
After Kane leaves, Tazer looks at his bill and discovers that he ordered all four cocktails off the weekly specials menu. Christ.
The review appears in the Podium the next week. It begins as follows:
I once received an e-mail forward from my Uncle Bobby that consisted of a list of "weird facts." The subject line insisted, after a series of "fwd:"s, that I would never believe these facts, and it proved to be correct. Who would believe that female pigs can orgasm for over half an hour? Bullshit. Nobody can orgasm for that long. Or so I thought, until I had a meal at Blackhawk that lasted just over fifty minutes and left me desperately hankering for a cigarette.
It continues in much the same vein. Tazer is almost done reading it when Sharpy wanders into his office, undone bow tie hanging from his neck, and says, "What are you so happy about?"
Tazer immediately wipes the grin off his face.
A week later, Kane shows up again, still dressed entirely inappropriately. Sharpy doesn't even ask this time, just seats him and tells the waiter to mention to Tazer that he's there. Tazer doesn't bother going out to see him--the review is already out there, he doesn't need anything else from Kane. But he does peek at the bill again, and notes that the man drank his way through the entire specials menu again.
He keeps showing up and trying all the new cocktails, always ordering something different to eat. One time he apparently misjudges the timing of the menu update and comes in when they haven't changed it to the new week's yet, and sends Shawsy back to ask if their mixologist can come up with something creative for him. Tazer remembers a detail of the review about Kane's affinity for strawberries and bats the bartender out of the way to whip up a strawberry basil mojito using the lime basil he just got in for next week's dessert menu. Kane actually orders two more of them instead of trying different things like he usually does, so he must like it.
In January, Kane calls the restaurant in the early afternoon, before they open for dinner, and asks if they're doing anything in particular for Valentine's Day. He's doing a feature on couple meals and would love to highlight them if they're going to be serving oysters or dying their drinks pink or something, he explains to Sharpy, who hands the phone to Tazer with a shit-eating grin and a whisper about some great ideas that Podium critic has for him. Tazer listens, then stonily informs Kane that aphrodisiacs are largely pseudoscience and that coloring their cocktails would be counterproductive to the taste-focused mission of the establishment.
"So you're not doing anything?" asks Kane. "No special menu? No, like, all-finger-food meals for the lovebirds to feed each other?"
"Business as usual," says Tazer. It's not like they need publicity. Kane's review was one of many raves they've gotten; he's pretty sure they're already booked solid for the 14th, no gimmicks necessary.
He reads the feature when it comes out. Kane's writing manages to poke fun at the holiday while still coming across as sincerely enthusiastic about some of the events restaurants are putting on. Tazer doesn't strictly approve of Kane's crass style, but he can't deny to himself that he kind of wants to know what Kane has to say about Blackhawk after coming here regularly for a while.
The first time Kane shows up after Valentine's Day, Tazer grabs Shawsy and tells him not to take Kane's order. Shawsy raises his eyebrows, and Tazer says, "Just give him booze and tell him to be patient. And take away his silverware."
Then he delegates all the normal meal prep, which is completely unprecedented. Everyone in the kitchen is wondering if he's okay, if he's sick and has to go home, if his mom died, but no, he just stakes out a corner and starts pulling out ingredients that have nothing to do with the current menu. He makes sage stuffed mushrooms with truffle oil, sourdough crostinis with white bean hummus and kalamata olives, fingerling baked potatoes dabbed with butter and sour cream blended with garlic and fresh oregano, a personal pizza with arugula and goat cheese, and white alpine strawberries with a chocolate-balsamic dipping sauce for dessert.
Shawsy looks like he's trying really hard to keep his mouth shut as he takes the dishes out one by one. Tazer delivers the dessert himself, sitting down across from Kane as he sets down the plate. "How's that for an all-finger-food meal?" he says, maybe a little smugly.
"You're fucking psychotic," says Kane. "I don't even want to know what a bottle of that truffle oil would go for on the black market. Did you seriously do all this because of some comment I made trying to get you on board for the V-Day feature?" He picks up a strawberry and examines it without biting in.
Tazer shrugs. "I like showing off."
"Yeah, I can tell," says Kane. "There's a flaw here, though. The point of the finger food idea was so that couples could feed each other. I had to eat all this on my own."
"You can't love anyone else before you learn to love yourself," says Tazer.
He manages to keep a straight face, but Kane cracks the fuck up, turning a few annoyed heads. He dips the strawberry in the sauce, takes a bite, and makes a noise that sounds like Tazer's neighbor at three in the morning. "Fuck," says Kane. "You read my review of this place, right? Hour-long orgasms, every goddamn time."
Tazer can't see his face in the barely-there light, which is probably a good thing. All he can see is a dark silhouette, picking up another strawberry, dipping it in the sauce, and holding it out.
"I tasted it already," says Tazer.
"No shit," says Kane. "Come on, you went to all this effort to make me a romantic dinner. Quit wasting the romance."
Tazer's jaw drops out of sheer surprise, and apparently he's sitting at a better angle to catch the light, or maybe Kane just has eagle eyes, because the strawberry slips into his mouth before he realizes it. He bites down, and his lips come to rest against Kane's fingers. Kane pulls the strawberry stem away, but lets one of his fingers linger for a moment on Tazer's bottom lip.
"You thought you had me fooled, huh?" says Kane. "Bitch, please. I can see the pain on your face when I waltz in here wearing jeans. There's no way you'd put up with that shit if you actually didn't like me."
"You're a critic," protests Tazer.
"And you're at 94% on Zagat. You don't need to butter up to The Podium." Kane offers him another strawberry.
"Yeah," says Tazer. "I guess you're right." He bites into the strawberry, then reaches over to grab one off the plate, dip it in the sauce, and hold it up. Kane wraps his fingers around Tazer's wrist to hold it steady, and doesn't let go.
"I think you should kick everyone out and do dirty things to me in the kitchen," Kane murmurs.
Tazer snorts. "That's both impractical and unsanitary," he says. "But I have an office."
As the door closes behind them, Shawsy rubs his thumb against his fingers until Sharpy gets out his wallet.
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/76209.html.
Then this happened.
Tazer is a srs bzns chef who owns and (micro)manages his own restaurant. It's called Blackhawk, obvs, and it's this trendy upscale place where you eat practically in the dark--not actually pitch-black like that place in NYC, you can still get a vague sense of where your fork is, but it's impossible to examine the food too closely. This, Tazer explains in interviews, is so you can focus on what's important: taste.
The restaurant is fairly new, so Tazer's doing his best to court the critics and build a good reputation. So when Sharpy, his maitre d', comes into the back looking worried and says he's having a problem with someone who claims to be a critic, Tazer comes out to deal with it himself.
His first instinct is to kick the guy out. He's wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a baseball cap, for the love of fuck. You don't come to a restaurant like Blackhawk in a fucking baseball cap, this place is CLASSY. Tazer is like -____- can I help you -____- and the guy's all, "oh hey! yeah, I'm Patrick Kane with The Podium, and I'm here to scope out the goods :D"
Well. Tazer's trying to lure in the twentysomethings, and The Podium has a really wide hipster/yuppie readership. So it would probably be a bad idea to just boot out their food critic, if that's actually who this guy is.
Tazer says, "We have a dress code," and Kane's like, "but you can barely see your own plate, right, why would anyone at the next table be looking at me" and Tazer gives him the stinkeye and compromises by making him leave the baseball cap at coat check, then tells Sharpy to go ahead and seat him. Then Tazer heads straight back to his office and googles "patrick kane."
The top result is a review of a restaurant Tazer remembers hearing about a year or two ago. He clicks on it and reads the first paragraph. It's a complete evisceration of the place, full of profanity. It's pretty fucking unprofessional, in Tazer's opinion, but... he knows the restaurant in question went out of business a few months back. He's not taking any risks.
So he treats Kane like he would treat any other critic, which is the same as how he would treat any other customer, because Tazer believes in giving nothing but his A-game at all times. Halfway through the meal, Shawsy the waiter comes into the kitchen and says, "Dang, I guess that guy out there really is a food critic," and Tazer's like, "what, what did he say, did he say something about the food" and it turns out Kane took one bite of his curry and said, "Whoa, what the hell kind of basil IS this?"
The basil is a rare perennial cultivar from Africa--some restaurants would brag about that in the description of the dish, but Tazer likes to keep things simple and let the quality speak for itself, so there's no way Kane could know about the special basil unless he has insider information or actually knows his shit.
After Kane leaves, Tazer looks at his bill and discovers that he ordered all four cocktails off the weekly specials menu. Christ.
The review appears in the Podium the next week. It begins as follows:
I once received an e-mail forward from my Uncle Bobby that consisted of a list of "weird facts." The subject line insisted, after a series of "fwd:"s, that I would never believe these facts, and it proved to be correct. Who would believe that female pigs can orgasm for over half an hour? Bullshit. Nobody can orgasm for that long. Or so I thought, until I had a meal at Blackhawk that lasted just over fifty minutes and left me desperately hankering for a cigarette.
It continues in much the same vein. Tazer is almost done reading it when Sharpy wanders into his office, undone bow tie hanging from his neck, and says, "What are you so happy about?"
Tazer immediately wipes the grin off his face.
A week later, Kane shows up again, still dressed entirely inappropriately. Sharpy doesn't even ask this time, just seats him and tells the waiter to mention to Tazer that he's there. Tazer doesn't bother going out to see him--the review is already out there, he doesn't need anything else from Kane. But he does peek at the bill again, and notes that the man drank his way through the entire specials menu again.
He keeps showing up and trying all the new cocktails, always ordering something different to eat. One time he apparently misjudges the timing of the menu update and comes in when they haven't changed it to the new week's yet, and sends Shawsy back to ask if their mixologist can come up with something creative for him. Tazer remembers a detail of the review about Kane's affinity for strawberries and bats the bartender out of the way to whip up a strawberry basil mojito using the lime basil he just got in for next week's dessert menu. Kane actually orders two more of them instead of trying different things like he usually does, so he must like it.
In January, Kane calls the restaurant in the early afternoon, before they open for dinner, and asks if they're doing anything in particular for Valentine's Day. He's doing a feature on couple meals and would love to highlight them if they're going to be serving oysters or dying their drinks pink or something, he explains to Sharpy, who hands the phone to Tazer with a shit-eating grin and a whisper about some great ideas that Podium critic has for him. Tazer listens, then stonily informs Kane that aphrodisiacs are largely pseudoscience and that coloring their cocktails would be counterproductive to the taste-focused mission of the establishment.
"So you're not doing anything?" asks Kane. "No special menu? No, like, all-finger-food meals for the lovebirds to feed each other?"
"Business as usual," says Tazer. It's not like they need publicity. Kane's review was one of many raves they've gotten; he's pretty sure they're already booked solid for the 14th, no gimmicks necessary.
He reads the feature when it comes out. Kane's writing manages to poke fun at the holiday while still coming across as sincerely enthusiastic about some of the events restaurants are putting on. Tazer doesn't strictly approve of Kane's crass style, but he can't deny to himself that he kind of wants to know what Kane has to say about Blackhawk after coming here regularly for a while.
The first time Kane shows up after Valentine's Day, Tazer grabs Shawsy and tells him not to take Kane's order. Shawsy raises his eyebrows, and Tazer says, "Just give him booze and tell him to be patient. And take away his silverware."
Then he delegates all the normal meal prep, which is completely unprecedented. Everyone in the kitchen is wondering if he's okay, if he's sick and has to go home, if his mom died, but no, he just stakes out a corner and starts pulling out ingredients that have nothing to do with the current menu. He makes sage stuffed mushrooms with truffle oil, sourdough crostinis with white bean hummus and kalamata olives, fingerling baked potatoes dabbed with butter and sour cream blended with garlic and fresh oregano, a personal pizza with arugula and goat cheese, and white alpine strawberries with a chocolate-balsamic dipping sauce for dessert.
Shawsy looks like he's trying really hard to keep his mouth shut as he takes the dishes out one by one. Tazer delivers the dessert himself, sitting down across from Kane as he sets down the plate. "How's that for an all-finger-food meal?" he says, maybe a little smugly.
"You're fucking psychotic," says Kane. "I don't even want to know what a bottle of that truffle oil would go for on the black market. Did you seriously do all this because of some comment I made trying to get you on board for the V-Day feature?" He picks up a strawberry and examines it without biting in.
Tazer shrugs. "I like showing off."
"Yeah, I can tell," says Kane. "There's a flaw here, though. The point of the finger food idea was so that couples could feed each other. I had to eat all this on my own."
"You can't love anyone else before you learn to love yourself," says Tazer.
He manages to keep a straight face, but Kane cracks the fuck up, turning a few annoyed heads. He dips the strawberry in the sauce, takes a bite, and makes a noise that sounds like Tazer's neighbor at three in the morning. "Fuck," says Kane. "You read my review of this place, right? Hour-long orgasms, every goddamn time."
Tazer can't see his face in the barely-there light, which is probably a good thing. All he can see is a dark silhouette, picking up another strawberry, dipping it in the sauce, and holding it out.
"I tasted it already," says Tazer.
"No shit," says Kane. "Come on, you went to all this effort to make me a romantic dinner. Quit wasting the romance."
Tazer's jaw drops out of sheer surprise, and apparently he's sitting at a better angle to catch the light, or maybe Kane just has eagle eyes, because the strawberry slips into his mouth before he realizes it. He bites down, and his lips come to rest against Kane's fingers. Kane pulls the strawberry stem away, but lets one of his fingers linger for a moment on Tazer's bottom lip.
"You thought you had me fooled, huh?" says Kane. "Bitch, please. I can see the pain on your face when I waltz in here wearing jeans. There's no way you'd put up with that shit if you actually didn't like me."
"You're a critic," protests Tazer.
"And you're at 94% on Zagat. You don't need to butter up to The Podium." Kane offers him another strawberry.
"Yeah," says Tazer. "I guess you're right." He bites into the strawberry, then reaches over to grab one off the plate, dip it in the sauce, and hold it up. Kane wraps his fingers around Tazer's wrist to hold it steady, and doesn't let go.
"I think you should kick everyone out and do dirty things to me in the kitchen," Kane murmurs.
Tazer snorts. "That's both impractical and unsanitary," he says. "But I have an office."
As the door closes behind them, Shawsy rubs his thumb against his fingers until Sharpy gets out his wallet.
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/76209.html.