Fic for tia-junan (6/9)
+part five
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"So?" Meisa says when she opens the door for Kame and turns, leaving him to close and chain the door before he follows her into the sunny corner flat she shares with her husband.
Kame only grunts in response as he follows her toward the kitchen.
"Come on, Kame," she says, "use your words."
Kame grimaces at her before shooing her out of the kitchen. "Go," he says, giving her a little push toward the table. "Sit, relax."
Meisa's severe face cracks a grin. "Ooooh, bossy."
Kame lifts one eyebrow from where he's briskly washing his hands in the deep old-fashioned enameled sink.
"Don't give me that look," she says, narrowing her eyes. She pushes a wing of dark hair away from her face.
"So what should I be doing here?" Kame says. "I'm starving."
While Meisa directs from her seat at the table where she's simultaneously flipping through stacks of paperwork and clacking away at the spreadsheet on her laptop, Kame busies himself with preparing their lunch: mixed greens with wedges of hard-boiled eggs and artichokes and shaved curls of parmigiano reggiano, accompanied by a loaf of good bread, and a whole salami that smells good enough to make Kame's mouth water from half a meter away.
When Meisa makes to get up, Kame gestures for her to stay put. He finds the bamboo placemats and spreads them on either side of the other end of the table, laying out square plates with their prettily-composed salads, the wooden board with the bread and salami, a pair of glasses, silverware and napkins.
"To drink?" Kame asks from the open refrigerator.
"I'll have iced tea - it's in the green pitcher. There's beer, if you want."
But Kame brings only iced tea to the table, and sits down opposite her as she shifts over to the place setting he's laid out.
Meisa beams. "This is nice. I should have you over to make lunch for me more often."
Kame lifts his glass to clink hers. "Maybe you should." He smiles easily, listening as Meisa points out that her husband actually made the bread before the conversation shifts to business for a while.
"So your face has seen better days," Meisa says eventually. "Yamapi told me what happened. And he told me to remind you that you're an idiot."
Kame can't help cracking a smile as he shakes his head. "He's right," Kame says before stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth.
"So are you going to tell me, or do I have to drag it out of you?"
"We talked," Kame says.
Meisa nods. "Good." She waits, but when he doesn't continue, she prompts: "And?"
Kame shifts before he pulls a face. "It was a long time coming," he says. "We had ten years to stew over everything that happened." He pauses before he corrects himself: "I had ten years to stew. And...I was unfair."
Meisa reaches out to touch Kame's hand. "Hey," she says, catching his eyes. "You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to."
Kame shakes his head. "No. It's - it's fine. I - I suppose it's better if I talk about this stuff instead of, you know..." He trails off.
Meisa smiles gently. "Okay."
So Kame tells her everything, not easily, and sometimes with burning cheeks, but he tells her. Just to get it off his chest, and if he's honest with himself, he feels relieved when he's done. A little lighter.
"Well, it all sounds promising," Meisa says, a far away, thoughtful look in her eye. "When will you meet Rowan?"
Kame shrugs. "We're still trying to figure that out." Jin has been emailing Kame and Rowan with possible dates, but none have worked out yet.
"I'm dying to know what Rowan's cooking up," Meisa says. "Har har."
Kame shakes his head. "Very funny." But he agrees with her, somewhat sheepishly. "Me, too. I've been trying not to get too excited about some unidentified project, but-" He leans over to slice off a few hunks of salami, peeling the membrane off before popping the savory, fat-studded coin of air-dried pork into his mouth. "Wow, this is good, where's it from?"
Meisa describes the shop in Brooklyn she found with her husband recently. "Well, I expect a full report when you get the low-down from Rowan."
Kame smiles. "Of course. You'll be the first to know. So when are you joining us for drinks? Ayase was saying she missed you last week."
"One of these nights," Meisa says vaguely. "René gets home from his studio and he wants to make plans for the baby and go shopping. Did I tell you he's decided to make the cradle?"
Kame grins. "You're surprised? That sounds like the René I know. Any cradle made by him will probably turn out to be a gallery piece."
Meisa grabs the salami from his hands. "Hey, leave some for me," she says, taking up her knife. "And it's exactly like René. But we stay up late and then I get lazy. By midnight I don't feel like going out anymore." She makes a face. "I know. I'm turning into one of those people."
"No, you aren't," Kame says before he gives her a close look. "You're doing all right?"
Meisa nods vigorously, one side of her face chipmunk-cheeked from the large hunk of salami she's just popped in her mouth. "Oh, my god, this is so good," she mumbles with her mouth full. "I am definitely going back there."
"Just so long as you promise not to move to Brooklyn," Kame says darkly.
Meisa laughs. "No chance of that."
"Good," Kame says.
--
It's one in the morning in mid-June when Kame and Yamapi make it to Bar Pintxos. They're both still in their suits, but Kame loosens his silk tie as they make their way toward the back.
"Boss!" Haruka exclaims when she catches sight of Kame. She's tilting backward in her chair, precariously balanced on two legs against the brick wall behind her; her chair slams down before she springs up to greet him. Offering her face so he can kiss both cheeks, she then takes him by the chin tilting his head one way and the other, studying him critically in the poor light of the lounge. She's giving him shit, as per the usual: his face and bruised ego healed weeks ago.
"You look respectable again," she pronounces with a decisive nod. She offers Yamapi a half-drunk salute and twirls before she flits back to her seat.
"Why," Yamapi asks the ceiling, "are you so weird?" He lowers his eyes from the ceiling to Haruka whose cheeks puff out in a gleeful smile.
Kame makes the rounds to greet Runa, Meisa, and René. René hooks a couple chairs from nearby and drags them over. Kame drapes his suit jacket over the back of one and sprawls into it.
"What are we drinking?" Kame asks as he slouches into his chair and closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. It's good to sit; he's been standing for the last few hours at a cocktail party fundraiser for City Harvest he couldn't really skip out on. He's glad his face is back to normal, or at least as normal as it's ever been, so he could leave off the explanations.
"Sangría," René says, pouring from a cream ceramic pitcher into a short glass. Meisa's husband, a French-speaking Métis from Ontario, is an artist and graphic designer; he's responsible for the stylized table-and-olive-cluster that forms the Kayakuya logo as well as their stationery, menu designs and various other graphics used throughout the restaurants. René is also seriously good looking with burnished brown skin, dark, shining waves of shoulder-length hair and dark-fringed brown eyes. It's difficult for Kame to avoid imagining how gorgeous Meisa and René's offspring will be with their combined genes.
"Mmmm," Kame hums, smiling as he sips his fruited sangría. He leans across René and touches Meisa's hand where it rests over the gentle swell of her belly. "You made it," he says.
Meisa returns Kame's smile, glancing at René. "I finally convinced this one to leave off nursery planning for an evening so we could see you guys."
"But, sweetie, isn't it past your bedtime?" Yamapi says with smirk.
"Fuck you," she fires back. "I'm pregnant, you ass. I'm not an invalid."
"And how is little Newt," Yamapi asks with a mischievous tilt to his lips.
"Newt is just fine," Meisa replies, narrowing her eyes a bit at René who's responsible for the Aliens-inspired nickname. "Twenty weeks, now."
"And you, René? How are you holding up?" Yamapi says, blinking in exaggerated sympathy at René who smiles widely, looking sideways at his wife and stroking a finger through her hair.
"Hel-lo," Meisa says, waving her hand. "René has nothing to cope with. No-thing. I'm the one who has to buy new clothes and can't drink the sangría."
"Poor baby," Yamapi says, shaking his head in mock-sorrow.
"Again I say, fuck you, Yamashita."
He tsks and tilts his head sideways. "Such a lady."
"Just you wait, Uncle Yamapi. Your time will come."
"That's right," Haruka pipes up, "you're first on the babysitter rotation schedule we're putting together."
"Traitor!"
"You know you love me," Haruka beams.
"So we've been hassling the happy couple," René says, leaning back in his chair, stretching out his long legs, and clasping his hands behind his head, "because they're dragging their feet."
"We are not," Runa mutters. She's not much taller than Haruka, but she's more solidly built, with blended features from her Japanese-Danish father and her green-eyed Afro-Puerto Rican mother. She also has bright red streaks in her medium brown hair, a lovely leaf-patterned shoulder piece tattooed under the right strap of her tank top and tiny hollow blue stars circling her left wrist.
"It's been four months," Meisa says, "and you still haven't set a date. That's what I call dragging your feet."
"Nah," Runa says, "give us a year, and then we'll be dragging our feet."
"You have to help us out," Haruka pleads, turning the full firepower of her wide brown eyes onto Kame. "You know how hard scheduling this is going to be. We really want all of you to be there and I'm not sure how-"
"We'll figure it out," Kame says decisively. "We will. Do you have a month in mind?"
Haruka trades a sidelong glance with Runa. Runa turns to Kame and says "Maybe next July. I talked to Pablo-" She means her boss, the executive chef at Eleven Madison Park. "-and he reckons he can give me a couple weeks off then."
"You mean July 2022, right? Next July," Kame clarifies.
Runa nods. "Yeah. No way do I have time for a vacation this summer."
Yamapi meets Haruka's hopeful eyes. "What, are you asking us for permission?"
"Well," she hedges. "Sort of?"
"Madre de Dios," Kame says briefly, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. "You don't need our permission."
Yamapi says: "Of course she does. Permission denied. See? Problem solved. You'll just have to elope. I hear we have a lovely courthouse."
"Fuck you, Yamashita," Runa says laconically.
"He's joking," Haruka says.
"I know," Runa grins with a lot of teeth. "So am I."
"What can we do about the restaurant?" Haruka asks.
"Hire temps?" Kame says, half-joking before he shrugs. "I don't know. July might work. We'll talk to Nina and Tegoshi about scheduling and see how we can manage coverage. Where are you thinking about having the wedding?"
"Buenos Aires," Haruka says at the same time as Runa says "Sydney."
Kame's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. "Uh-"
Meisa's cackles helplessly. "Oh, Kame, if only you could see your face..."
"Kidding," Haruka grins. "Although-" She exchanges another long glance with Runa. "-we'd love to do a month in New Zealand for our honeymoon."
"Or Poland with a detour to the Norwegian fjords," Runa says.
"Or Alaska and Hawaii," Haruka continues in a musing tone.
Runa heaves a sigh and murmurs, "Yellow Mountain. Macchu Picchu." She takes up her glass and clinks Haruka's. They both take a drink.
"A month," Kame repeats faintly. Yamapi says: "Absolutely not."
"What," Haruka laughs. "We can dream, right?" She shrugs with a sunny smile.
"Of course you can," Meisa says indulgently. "You two deserve to have a nice honeymoon-"
"Honeymoons are so overrated," Yamapi says.
"-of no more than two weeks," Kame finishes, shaking his head sadly.
Haruka heaves a deep sigh. "Oh, all right."
"Seriously," Runa says, "we're thinking of doing it somewhere upstate."
"You'd better get cracking," Meisa says sternly. "Or there won't be anywhere left to book for next July."
"I know," Haruka wails, covering her face with her hands.
"Just hire a planner and let them handle the logistics, right?" Kame says. "No point twisting yourselves in knots if you don't have to."
"A planner for what?"
Everyone looks up to see Imai Tsubasa standing over them. "Hey," Kame exclaims, jumping up. Tsubasa does the rounds of greetings before he pulls up a chair beside Kame.
"Nice shirt," Kame says, clearing his throat darkly.
Tsubasa looks down at the Barcelona jersey he's sporting over his long cargo shorts with an expression of exaggerated innocence. "Jealous, Kame? There's always next year."
Kame, a fan of Real Madrid, chooses not to stoop to exchanging petty insults over Tsubasa's misguided love for the wrong Spanish team. "Will Takki stop by?" he asks instead.
Tsubasa shakes his head ruefully. "He's still messing around with meat glue, I don't know. It's hard to pry him out of the kitchen lately."
"Things are going well, though."
Tsubasa nods, light catching on one of his rings as he brings the glass to his mouth. "Pretty well." He frowns slightly before taking a sip. When he lowers the glass he says, "but not a whiff of the Times reviewer, and it's been more than four months. I'm not sure what that means."
"Maybe she's going all Ruth Reichl on you," Kame smiles, referring to the former Times reviewer famous for employing elaborate disguises to remain anonymous at restaurants.
Tsubasa looks doubtful.
"Try not worry about it," Kame says, although he knows it won't convince his friend. No review from the New York Times is never a good thing, especially not for such a high-end high profile endeavor as Takizawa. "It was eight months before Zenzero got reviewed. It'll happen."
Despite his skeptical expression, Tsubasa nods. Then he says, "By the way, have you heard of this newish underground supper club? I think it's called Inbocalupo, something like that."
But for the name, it wouldn't have registered: supper clubs are a dime a dozen in the city. However, hearing Tsubasa say the name, Kame feels that peculiar sensation again, like warm water rinsing over him. He swallows thickly. "In bocca al lupo?" he says, giving it the correct Italian pronunciation.
Tsubasa shrugs. "I guess - I wasn't paying close attention."
"And it's a supper club?" Off Tsubasa's nod, Kame shakes his head. "No-o, it doesn't ring a bell." Kame frowns. He hasn't been super-diligent on staying updated lately; he tries, but he doesn't always make it through Nina's daily curation of food and industry-related media, which is never a good thing. "Is it - what have you heard?"
"People are talking about it, that's all."
"Online?"
"Yep. And there's a website." Tsubasa pulls out his phone and taps at it for a moment before putting it away. "There," he says, "I've sent it to you. I was just curious, that's all. Good buzz."
Kame, with a strange nagging sense in the back of his head, resolves to check it out when he gets home, but, by the time he heads home around three, he's completely forgotten.
--
It isn't until the following day that Kame opens Tsubasa's email and finds the link to a website. When it opens, it's a black screen with the stylized design of a wolf in three-quarters profile with an open mouth. He clicks on the logo and again, more black screen with a brief, somewhat vague description:
"This is not a restaurant, it's a dinner party.
We stand at the crossroads of food, music and art.
An exploration in social dynamics.
Friends, old and new.
Impermanent, always transforming.
No menus. No dress code. No pretense."
There's the sign-up for a mailing list and a few guidelines. And a photo gallery of beautifully-staged dishes. To Kame's eye, the avante-garde plating style feels familiar.
Kame hesitates for only a moment before he sends Jin a message.
-Can I talk to you
-sure.
And then his phone is ringing, a video call, but at the last second, Kame opts for voice only.
"Hi," Jin says. "I can't see you."
"Um," Kame says articulately, but Jin helpfully continues.
"Is your connection bad? Hey where are you?"
"At home," Kame manages.
There's a pause. "Do you want to meet?"
Kame chews his lower lip. "I'm not sure I have the time," he says.
"So what's up?" Jin asks after another pause.
"So a friend of mine told me last night about this supper club." Kame glances at the website on his screen and reads off the name, inboccalupo, in pale lowercase font, where it appears stark against the black background. It's a mash-up of a common phrase Kame learned when he lived in Italy: while it literally means "in the mouth of the wolf," it's only ever used to wish someone "good luck."
Which, Kame thinks, is apt for a supper club with no menu, requiring a leap of faith. Once, when they were younger, he and Jin had toyed with the very same idea.
Jin's silence is profound.
"Is it you?" Kame asks at last, when he hears nothing for a long, interminable moment.
They've never spoken much about what kind of work Jin's actually doing in New York, but Kame's gotten the impression that, aside from whatever he's doing with Rowan Petersen, Jin's been supporting himself with patchwork gigs: catering shifts, personal chef services, temping in restaurant kitchens. At least, Jin never seems to have copious free time of the unemployed.
But whatever this is, it just highlights for Kame how little he actually knows, of what Jin's up to now - or what happened during the past they don't share. They still haven't talked about the last ten years; it's become verboten somehow, as if it's something they're both afraid to touch.
At last Kame hears a somewhat embarrassed laugh. He almost wishes he had allowed the video call.
"I was going to tell you," he hears Jin admit. "I wasn't trying to hide it from you."
For some reason, that almost makes Kame feel worse.
"Okay," he says.
"Look," Jin says, "why don't you come? We have a dinner on Saturday. Josh is about to make the announcement."
"Jin-"
"Don't say no," Jin says. "Just come and I'll explain everything, ok?"
Kame considers that.
"Unless," Jin continues, less certainly, "you're busy. But-" His voice brightens. "If you're busy on Saturday, I'll get you in the next time you're free, I promise."
Kame's already checking his calendar. "I'm free," he says, "Saturday."
"The only thing-" Jin falters.
"What."
"I'd love for you to get the full experience, you know? But maybe - maybe you'd like to, I don't know, hang out? Earlier, I mean. So we can talk."
Kame rubs his forehead. "That's fine, Jin," he says.
"Great!" Jin exclaims so enthusiastically that Kame can't help but smile, remembering, with a pang, Jin's tendency to bounce, puppy-like, when he got excited about something. "It's a date."
Kame clears his throat and relaxes a little. "Well, it's certainly something," he says wryly.
Jin laughs. "See you Saturday," he says and Kame doesn't think he's imagining the warmth in Jin's voice.
"Wait," Kame hears, just before he's about to end the call.
"Bring something you'd like to drink," Jin says, "it's BYOB."
-
Kame agrees to meet Jin at the Union Square Greenmarket Saturday morning before it opens for last minute shopping. Jin is waiting with a steaming cardboard cup of hot coffee when Kame arrives, which despite the warmth of the May morning, Kame accepts gratefully, cupping both his hands around it and sipping delicately. It's excellent. Jin always had a knack for finding good coffee.
It's early so they're both quiet in the beginning. Jin browses with a kind of fierce concentration, one hand dragging his little trolley stuffed with cloth shopping bags. He's wearing a pair of sunglasses against the morning sun; they both are, but more often than not, the shades end up on top of Jin's head because, as Kame knows from his own experience, it's impossible to properly judge the color of fresh fruits and vegetables with tinted lenses distorting their true appearance. Kame reflects that if Jin was trying to break the ice and put him at ease, he couldn't have chosen a more perfect activity. Kame loves this part of his job, and he's always loved it. It's always worth the sacrifice of sleep to make one's way through the stalls overflowing with every shade of green and the colors of summer vegetables, to touch everything, breathe in the good vegetal perfumes, and taste the wares from the hands of the farmers themselves. Kame is friendly with a bunch of farmers at this particular market so he takes the opportunity to steer Jin to the men and women with whom he personally has relationships. He doesn't think Jin been in New York long enough to develop the familiarity Kame's spent the last decade solidifying.
When they're done, there are pencil-thin bunches of asparagus, beet greens, tender lettuces, three different kinds of radish, parsnips and scallions tucked into the trolley. Jin has some kind of complicated spreadsheet on his pad that he consults, explaining in an aside to Kame that the whole gameplan is in the pad's brain; he'd be fucked without it. Kame's only relieved to see that Jin's achieved some kind of formal organization from the freewheeling it's all in my head technique he used to employ when he was younger.
"Glad to see you aren't writing on your hand anymore," Kame says, smiling to remove any possible sting.
Jin lifts his hands with a grin. "Look, ma," he says.
"What now?"
"Now we prep," Jin answers. "I know it's early, but are you hungry?"
Off Kame's nod, Jin says, "Ok. We'll have something when we get home."
Two subway rides, a bit of walking, and some forty minutes later, they arrive at Jin's flat, which turns out to be a loft-like space in a building with a decidedly unimpressive exterior. But after an elevator ride to the fourth floor, the door opens on a dim space that brightens instantly when Jin bashes his elbow against a set of toggle switches. Kame follows Jin into an open space with exposed brick exterior walls, white interior walls with wood accents and black-framed black-and-white photographs, pale hardwood floors and wood-beam pillars near the open kitchen. The furnishings are minimal, neatly arranged: a long black wooden table with eight comfy-looking upholstered chairs arranged on either side. A stereo system, a fancy medium-sized flat-panel tv. A single leather L-shaped sectional couch with a small leather trunk coffee table divides the living and dining areas.
And lining one wall of the narrowish space are bookshelves, black metal, loaded with books.
"It's a sublet," Jin says to Kame's lifted eyebrows. "-and I have two roommates. The broom closets pretending to be bedrooms are there," he gestures, "and the bathroom is there."
"Oh," Kame says. It's probably snug for three people, but Kame thinks his entire (admittedly super-tiny) flat could fit into the place twice. "The books?" Kame asks, drifting toward them.
"Mostly mine," Jin says. "I got rid of a lot stuff when I left California, you know? But not the cookbooks. I've been collecting those for years - couldn't leave them behind."
The open kitchen is the flat's dominant feature with the range installed in an island in the center of the space under a massive ventilation hood. There are long deep counters running in an L shape along two walls plus two sinks, all kinds of cabinets, not to mention a dishwasher, a pair of refrigerators and a freezer unit.
"This is crazy," Kame says. When he looks over at Jin, Jin's flushed from more than the brisk walk in the mid-morning heat. "Did you win the lottery? How in the hell did you find this place?"
"It looks more impressive than it is-"
"Looks?" Kame says, lifting his eyebrows.
"Whatever. Josh found it last year through someone he knows - wasn't even advertised, or I'm sure it would have vanished immediately. I don't know all the details, but it was some chef who got divorced and took a job cooking for some outfit in the Yukon or something like that. Didn't want to give up the property, I guess, and when Josh explained what I was doing, he was - apparently - happier to rent it to someone in the trade. And before you get too impressed, most of my dishes and glassware are from Ikea." Jin stops. "You would not believe our electric bill."
Kame throws Jin a disbelieving look. "Oh, yes, I would." Even with the most energy efficient models, refrigerators and freezers are notorious power sucks.
"Yeah, we unplugged the second refrigerator for a while because it wasn't getting enough use to justify the cost of keeping it on. Now that I'm so busy, we had to turn it back on."
After Kame helps Jin unload everything, Jin busies himself with fixing something to eat. "Kame, have something. Put the lettuce down. I didn't ask you to join me to put you to work."
Jin pours dark green olive oil onto a plate and slices a crusty loaf of bread on a wooden board. From the refrigerator he retrieves several jars and flat containers which he juggles on his way back to the island where he arranges marinated white anchovies on a dish flanked by tongues of roasted red pepper in olive oil and sliced garlic, and another heap of pickled cauliflower, carrot and artichokes. The vinegar scent tickles Kame's nose. And there are olives, a multi-hued collection spilled into a glazed earthenware bowl.
"And cheese," Jin murmurs, unwrapping what Kame immediately recognizes as a dry, aged wedge of Spanish Manchego, one of Kame's favorite cheeses. Kame can smell its salty, sheep's-milk tang from more than a meter away. Finally, Jin snaps open a container of rosy membrillo, a thick, sweet Spanish paste made from quince, and slides the container, along with a knife, next to Kame's hand.
Kame looks up at Jin with a surprised smile.
"My favorite," he says, with a strange upwelling in his chest. "You remembered?"
Jin throws Kame a glance that seems almost shy before he looks down again, dragging a hunk of bread through the plate of olive oil sprinkled with coarse salt.
"Of course," he says around his mouthful of bread. "How could I forget? You always insisted on keeping a block of membrillo in the refrigerator and if we ever ran out before you'd bought more, you'd go out to get more even if it was pouring rain. Of course I remember."
Kame chuckles, as he cuts a slice of the quince paste and layers it on top of a chunk of cheese. "God," he mumbles, when he finishes his mouthful, "tastes like home."
Jin's watching him with an odd, pinched expression when Kame looks up at him. "What?" Kame asks, "did I get it on my face?" Kame reaches with his tongue for the far corner of his mouth, which fortunately no longer hurts. "This is my favorite kind of lunch," Kame continues as he draws the back of his hand across his mouth, "just like old times." It hurts less to remember.
Jin only hums a neutral response, manages a small smile, and he looks away.
--
It isn't until later, after they've cleared the debris of their light meal, that Jin begins to explain as he sets to work prepping the produce he'd bought in the morning. Kame hates to stand around doing nothing so he convinces Jin to let him help. After sufficient wheedling, Jin relents and lets him start washing the bags of butter lettuce.
He starts with Chengdu. "Six months there, at a school learning Szechuan cooking, which was hard as fuck considering they taught in dialect. I had an American classmate and also one from Uruguay who helped me out in English and Spanish." Kame hears Jin chuckle. "I still think I was crazy to do it, but-" Kame glances over his shoulder to see Jin shrug.
"Did you learn any dialect?"
"Sure," Jin says. "Some. I can say a few things and I can understand a little more. When you don't have a choice, you pick things up pretty fast, you know? After that, I traveled around Asia and India for more or less six years, off and on," Jin continues, "but I actually lived, you know, where I had an actual address? In Hong Kong, Japan, and you know I was in Vietnam. I guess I'd had enough of everything we grew up with, especially classical western cuisine. I needed to start over, even if it meant being an apprentice again wherever anyone would have me." Jin shrugs lightly as he finishes running his knife through the mountain of asparagus where he's discarding the dry ends and giving the slender stalks a rough chop before tossing them into a wide skillet of translucent onions sauteing in olive oil. There's already a kettle of water beginning to whistle which he turns off before stirring the asparagus and onions.
"What's that for?" Kame asks, looking over his shoulder again. He watches Jin pour some boiling water into the asparagus-onion mixture and sets a timer. He then moves toward the freezer with a bowl which he partially fills with ice.
Jin's lips twist mischievously. "You'll see."
Kame makes a face. "Right," he says, "Fine. Be that way. I see how it is."
"Come on, man. You're gonna be my guest tonight. I can't give away all my secrets. It would totally ruin the effect."
"So no one knows what you're serving before they arrive?"
Jin shakes his head. "Nope. That's part of the fun - for me and hopefully for them, too. I guess it must be, considering we have a few thousand people on our mailing list and we only do sixteen seats or less for each dinner."
"Wait. Did you said a few thousand?"
"Yeah. Some of them came with us when I announced we'd be shifting the supper club to New York City - some of the people on the original mailing list weren't even from the West Coast. We'd have people fly or drive from all over the country if they got an invitation."
Kame's trying to process all of that. "But I thought you said your friend sent the invitations out two days ago."
"Yeah, but not all our dinners are last minute. Some of them are announced a month ahead of time or two weeks, one week. It isn't supposed to be predictable. And if you don't get in this time, you go back into the pool for the next time."
"How do you decide who to invite? Is it just luck of the draw?" Kame asks, leaning back against the counter with the washed lettuce spread out on sheet pans behind him. Jin points out a cabinet in which Kame finds a few salad spinners of varying sizes with fabric piled on top. Kame immediately understands.
"Yes and no," Jin replies, pouring the bright green asparagus and onion mixture into a colander set in the large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. "So the way it works is, we announce a dinner to the mailing list. Anyone interested in that date replies and then from the people who are interested, Josh usually chooses people who haven't been able to get in before and he makes sure there's always at least one person who has done it before. In total there are eight invitations sent out and everyone gets a plus one. That's it."
"So this is what you did in San Francisco?" Kame asks as he piles some of the lettuce into one of the cotton bags and starts shaking it over the sink.
"Uh, yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to leave that part out. Yeah. I've been doing this supper club for three years now."
"Why?" Kame asks without thinking as he loads up the damp cotton bag with a new batch of clean, wet lettuce, trying to shake as much excess water off.
"What do you mean?" Jin looks up from where he's stirring the cooling mass of asparagus bits and chopped onion. He lifts the colander and using a spatula, scrapes the mixture into the commercial-sized blender standing ready.
Kame considers before he rephrases. "I mean, what inspired you to do something like this? Was the supper club your business plan, or did you have something else in mind?"
Kame hears Jin chuckle. "No way, man. I didn't have a business plan when I came back to the States. I just wanted to do something interesting, figure out what my style was, what kind of flavors I wanted to cook. Since I'd left the straight career path to be an apprentice and travel, I had a weird resume."
"But you know, a lot of chefs really look for your background," Kame points out, getting into a rhythm with the lettuce drying. "You have exactly the kind of experience someone like me would hire in a second - you were a stagiare in Europe, so you have a classical Western foundation but you had the balls to say "fuck everything" and just go off to travel and study something different. That would seriously make me think 'this person really cares about food.' I don't want to hire one of these kids who thinks that cooking in one of my restaurants is just a job. I want to hire someone who really loves what they do, who's always thinking ahead, and trying to grow and improve. Those are the cooks who make me really fucking happy."
Silence follows Kame's passionate declaration and his cheeks flush as he realizes he's just gone off without thinking - and who he's been spouting off to. He turns to find Jin staring at him with a curious expression, caught between shock and pleasure and something else he can't identify.
Kame ducks his face into his shoulder to wipe non-existent water from his cheek.
"I'll keep that in mind," Jin says lightly with a tiny smile before hitting the button on the blender which effectively kills conversation for a few minutes. He briefly stops it a few times to scrape around inside the blender with a spatula, to test the texture of the bright green puree until he's satisfied. He turns it off, removes the jar of the blender and scrapes the entire smooth mass into a two quart with a snap-lid which he shoves into the refrigerator. Kame glances over and through the open door, sees a refrigerator full of neatly stacked rectangular containers with freezer-tape marker-scrawled labels.
"Nice organization," Kame says. Jin closes the fridge door and smiles.
"That's the only way this works," he replies.
"So this is your job now," Kame says, looking around.
"One of them," Jin says, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back against the refrigerator. "I mostly do private dinners and events. But this is what I love. I can cook whatever I want and people keep coming."
"It's all word-of-mouth?"
Jin nods. "When we originally started this in San Francisco, there were seven of us, mostly professional cooks. So in the beginning, I didn't design all the menus - we'd take turns as if we were all the Dread Pirate Roberts."
"Did you have a collective name?" Kame asks, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half-grin.
"Dread Pirate Dinner."
Kame levels a narrow look at Jin. "No, really."
"Yes," Jin laughs, "really. We had a whole pirate theme." Jin shrugs helplessly. "Our guests seemed to enjoy it. Anyway, that supper club started out for fun, you know? No one expected it to blow up so big. Some of my private clientele comes from the work I did with DPD."
"Huh." Kame pauses. "And now?"
"Now," Jin says, "I'm diversifying." He goes on to explain how the San Francisco supper club was a strictly pay-what-you-want model, "which worked all right," Jin continues, "because most of the time we broken even on our food cost, but it was never profitable. We didn't pay ourselves, and as you can imagine, doing this is pretty fucking labor intensive. All of us had other jobs. Now?" Jin looks around. "On the weekends we're still doing one pay-what-you-want dinner but the rest of the Lupo dinners are prix fixe."
"Makes sense," Kame says.
"It's a bit harder to source food here than it was when we had Napa so close, but I manage. Things are going well enough between Lupo and private events. And there's this project with Rowan. And I might - I have some other ideas. I'm exploring my options."
Kame's quiet for a moment. "Why'd you come back to New York," he asks, without letting himself think twice of the question. It's the most important question he hasn't had answered yet. Why now - and why here?
Jin stiffens, but then he laughs, and it comes out sounding a little...off. "Better to ask why I left San Francisco," he answers before launching into an explanation of being harassed by Las Vegas investors he half-suspected of being mob-affiliated who wanted to franchise his supper club concept. "It sounded too much like running a restaurant. If I wanted to do that, I would do that. I didn't need them hassling me, and they wouldn't stop."
Kame notes Jin's neat sidestep of his question, but he lets it go. "You don't want a restaurant?"
Jin hesitates. "Not yet? I could do it. I even have backers I actually like, but..." He slowly shakes his head. "It isn't time yet."
"Fair enough," Kame says. "But you didn't really answer my question."
"Why New York?" Jin asks, cocking his head at Kame. There's a strange intensity in his gaze, as if he wants to say something.
"Why not?" Jin says with a careless shrug, but Kame doesn't trust Jin's flippant answer. He watches Jin make a show of looking at his watch. "Listen-"
"No, I know, I'm sorry, I'm taking up your time when I should let you get to it. Unless you want me to stay? I'm happy to help out."
Jin shakes his head. "No, man. It's nice of you to offer, but you're our guest tonight. Just bring something interesting to drink, even better if you don't mind sharing it, and your plus one."
"Plus one?" Kame asks with a pang of dismay.
"Shit, I didn't tell you?"
Honestly, Kame doesn't remember if Jin did tell him, or if it was in the email he'd received. Probably.
"Can you find someone? Otherwise we'll have to try to scrounge someone up at the last minute." Jin's expression is a strange combination of relieved and anxious.
"Maybe I should let you do that," Kame says, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, man. But you guys have that huge mailing list. There's bound to be someone who really wants to come who deserves a shot."
Jin nods, looking away, already lost in thought. "Yeah, ok," he says absently, "I'll let Josh know."
Jin follows Kame to the heavy steel door, stands in the open doorway, one hand palming the doorjamb, as Kame turns.
"Thanks," Kame says. "It's been a good morning. I had a good time."
Jin smiles, his expression slightly more relaxed. "Yeah, me, too." He glances down at his watch. "I'll see you in...nine hours, then."
Kame taps the opposite doorjamb lightly with his fist. "Yup, see you soon." Before he turns away Kame hesitates for just a second before he says: "In bocca al lupo," and he watches Jin's face light up in a wide grin before Jin lifts his chin and howls quietly, an old shared joke from their time in Italy, a talisman against everything that could go wrong.
"Thanks, man," Jin says before Kame turns to leave, without hiding his smile: "I might need it."
--
Around eight-thirty, Kame walks to the appointed meeting place near the Essex St. subway station and he thinks there are already a couple people waiting. Eventually as the group widens, people begin looking at one another with curiosity and introducing themselves. Kame is taken aback when he gets recognized by name even if not by sight. A few minutes later, a guy in a Band Candy band t-shirt strolls up, introduces himself as Josh, and starts checking names off a list on his phone. He's frowning when he glances up, looking around as if he's searching for someone, but just then, one last person joins the group and Josh's face relaxes. Kame feels a thrill of shock when he realizes the last straggler to check in is none other than Rowan Petersen.
The next thing Kame knows, Rowan's craning his head, searching through the group until he finds Kame, and he walks over, sticking out his hand.
"Hi," he says, "Kazuya Kamenashi, right?"
Kame shifts the wine carrier containing a couple good bottles of red and white so he can shake Rowan's hand, and he manages a dry-mouthed smile. "Yeah, but just call me Kame. Rowan Petersen?"
"That would be me," Rowan grins. "I'm your plus one."
"What?" Kame's blinks.
"Yeah," he says, "Jin called me up and begged me to be free tonight, maybe he figured we could kill two birds with one stone, right? Since the three of us haven't managed to get together before now. So I'm your plus one."
"Oh," Kame says inarticulately. "That-that's great. Thanks." He finds his manners. "It's great you could make it."
"Yeah, it is, actually. Just lucky, I guess. Normally I work Saturday nights but I switched with one of my sous chefs who needed another day off, you know how it is, and so here I am."
"Have you done this before?" Kame asks curiously.
Rowan's shaking his head: "No, but I was lucky enough to get into one of the Pirate dinners when he was in San Francisco, about a year ago. That's how I met Jin. Since then, I've attended a few of the private dinners Jin's done here in New York - so I can tell you this: you're in for a treat. Cooks don't always get to do these events, yeah? It's always, like, journalists and food bloggers and civilian eaters. Not pros like us."
Josh leads the group back to the loft where good smells waft out before the front door even opens. As everyone makes their way inside, the space fills up with overlapping conversations intercut with The Raconteurs from the stereo. The folks in the open kitchen call out a greeting and salute with whatever utensil they're holding or they wave. Kame hangs toward the back of the group as Josh makes the introductions: Jin, of course, who's standing over the range, but there's also Tatsuya Ueda, a Japanese guy who's bent over the long side counter where sixteen dishes are carefully laid out and in the process of being plated. Leticia, an Argentine woman who goes by T, is assisting Tatsuya with plating while Lucy and DeMarcus, both African-American, move between the central island and the back counter.
Josh tells everyone to feel free to wander around, take pictures and ask any questions before he joins the kitchen crew, leaving Kame and the other guests to their own devices to mingle or liveblog or get out their cameras.
Kame discovers he's enjoying himself as he sips a nutty microbrew brought by one of the bloggers and he chats with his neighbor, an art dealer, at the table before he excuses himself to wander toward the kitchen. Admittedly, most of the guests are fairly star-struck by Rowan who, as a James Beard award winner, is very much a celebrity among the foodies in the group, so Rowan remains entrenched at the center of about half the group. It actually puts Kame at ease because even though he gets a little name-recognition, and most of the guests know his restaurants, the pressure is off him.
There's a camera on a tripod aimed toward the kitchen area and guests wander around with cameras in hand to photograph the kitchen crew at work, questioning them about what they're preparing and how it was made. Kame admires how each of the six people in the kitchen seem easy with carrying on conversations with guests while still focusing on the complex flowing ballet of individual tasks. Tatsuya, Kame learns, is a professional painter who's also crazy about food; the dinner parties allow him to put his artistry on a plate. And DeMarcus is a former corporate lawyer who gave up negotiating contracts at a top twenty firm to open a bakery in Brooklyn where he makes specialty cakes to order along with pastries and breads. Lucy and T both work for one of the big New York catering companies which is a steady paycheck but, as T explains, the cooking can often be tedious. They both profess to welcome the challenge of Jin's playful, adventurous menus so they can remember what it's like to prepare interesting, delicious, and artistic high-end food.
Kame, whose palate is admittedly jaded, is relieved to admit the food is interesting - and delicious. There's a handwritten menu affixed to one of the refrigerators with magnets, but Kame tries not to look at it so he won't be spoiled for the surprises Jin has in store. There's a beautiful green risotto redolent of asparagus garnished with small garlicky snails, morel mushrooms and crisp-tender asparagus tops. Glowing reddish-orange ocean trout is perched on a bed of tofu encircled by a squid ink dashi with smoky katsuoboshi and garnished with salted cherry blossoms and shiso leaf. Rice cakes with a spicy pork sausage and bok choy sauce are garnished with scallions and crispy fried shallots.
Nearly everyone ooohs and ahs over each new dish that's brought to the table, many photographs are taken, notes are made, dishes are immediately liveblogged. Conversation at the table swings between analysis of each dish and topics as varied - and amusing - as pro and con rants about anal sex, vegetable sentience, and the problems in designing furniture for modern technology. Rowan turns out to be more personable than Kame had expected; from his interviews Rowan has always come across like a real food nerd, like one of those quiet, driven types not much given to socializing but instead he's surprisingly fun with a warm, direct gaze that's somewhat at odds with his emo-kid punk rocker look. In fact, Kame has to remind himself that Rowan is Jin's friend and possible business partner, and someone with whom he'd been irrationally angry (jealous of, even, if he's perfectly honest with himself) not that long ago.
When Kame looks up from where he's sitting at the far end of the long table, Jin, standing over the range at the island, is always watching him and nodding with a happy smile.
And then there's the steak tartare served with creamed kimchi, tiny balls of Asian pear and the beautifully-posed purplish tentacles of a small squid. All it takes is one small forkful from the jewel-toned mound of finely minced rare steak, quick-seared on one side and anointed with the fermented acidity and spiciness of kimchi puree blended with heavy cream and Kame actually wells up at how good it is. The entire table nearly goes silent for two whole minutes in stupefied admiration.
Fortunately there's a little break after that dish so Kame makes his way to Jin as the others are getting ready to pass around flutes of bright green cucumber sorbet as a palate cleanser.
"That was fucking amazing," Kame says in an undertone, not bothering to hide his admiration. Jin flushes bright red, his eyes flicking up to Kame for a moment that seems to last a long time before Jin goes back to watching the scallops he's flash-frying in two cast iron skillets, a smile hovering around his lips. Kame guesses the scallops are going into some kind of fancy lettuce wrap when he sees all the butter lettuce he'd washed earlier being laid out on fresh plates in the staging area.
"I'm glad you liked it," Jin says, looking almost shy, but also triumphant, "I remember-"
"-how much I adore good steak tartare. You have to tell me where you sourced the beef. Holy fuck, Jin. And the creamed kimchi puree. I'm totally stealing that idea, just so you know."
Jin laughs, his face still pink with pleasure. "Pay me royalties, motherfucker, and you're welcome to it," he says with a wide grin.
Kame strokes his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe I will."
Beverages flow into the night and new dishes arrive at staggered intervals as Jin and his crew continue to prepare and pass them around. At last two dessert courses are handed down to round out the meal: Japanese black sugar shortbread accompanied by bright-tasting yuzu curd and a silky green tea panna cotta. It's followed by brioche ice cream with smoked maple syrup - which, Kame thinks, tastes like french toast might if was run through an ice cream machine - garnished with tiny spheres of green apple that provide a pop of fresh tartness to balance against the rich ice cream.
Rowan turns to Kame as red envelopes are passed around.
"I guess I don't need to ask if you enjoyed it," Rowan says. Kame chuckles.
Kame admits only to himself that he was a trifle worried he might be disappointed so naturally he's beyond relieved he can lavish unreserved praise on Jin's cooking. As a professional, he's well aware of the costly ingredients, not to mention the intensive labor and days of prep required for such a sophisticated presentation. Kame tucks a wad of cash into his red envelope as if he'd ordered a similar multiple course tasting menu at any good high-end fine dining Manhattan restaurant such as Rowan's Gretel or his own Sesamo.
No one seems ready to leave so most people stick around and someone breaks into a bottle of an intensely smoky Lucifer mezcal. Everyone pitches in on the clean-up. Used to hanging with fellow cooks and chefs and his own restaurant-world friends, Kame doesn't really do events like this. He's very pleasantly surprised at how different it's been from what he was expecting, and what a nice collection of people turned up - Kame appreciates that the company is as responsible for his good vibes as Jin's food.
Kame and Rowan linger after the other guests leave. Tatsuya, Jin's third roommate, jams a hat on over his asymmetrical haircut and goes off with Lucy and T while Josh pleads exhaustion and heads to bed. Which leaves Kame with Jin and Rowan on the L-shaped couch with Jin sprawled out on his back, one hand tucked under his head, the other dangling to the floor.
Jin's eyes are closed when he asks: "You guys want to go out?"
Kame glances at his watch. It's one-thirty. The dinner party lasted a little more than four hours and Jin's been up since dawn. Kame exchanges a glance with Rowan.
"Maybe the better question is do you want to go out?" Rowan asks.
Jin cracks an eyelid in their direction. Mumbles something Kame can't quite make out.
Kame glances briefly at Rowan before he says, "Jin, we're gonna head out."
Jin's eyes pop open. "I'm coming with you. We were going to talk."
Rowan shakes his head decisively. "Not tonight you aren't. Get some sleep and we'll figure out another time soon."
"Don't wait for me, Rowan," Jin murmurs, closing his eyes again, and rolling onto his side, his hands tucked up under his cheek. "Just ask him."
Rowan gets to his feet and bends over to brush his fingertips against Jin's hair in a surprisingly tender gesture. He shakes out the blanket over the back of the couch and spreads it over Jin. "'Night, Jin," he says.
Kame, watching, feels a peculiar surge of something between envy and longing as he pushes himself to a stand. Rowan looks back at him and gestures toward the door with his head. Kame nods.
"Good night, Jin," Kame says in Spanish, the words familiar in his mouth from all those years when he would breathe them into Jin's neck before falling asleep. He turns to follow Rowan, feeling strangely reluctant to leave.
--
They're quiet in the elevator going down, but once they emerge onto the street, Kame just half a step behind Rowan, Rowan turns, and with an inquiring sideways look he asks, "Feel like a drink?"
Which is how they end up at a bar a few blocks over, not that they need any more to drink after the free-flowing mishmash of craft beers, small-batch liquors and the array of good wines they've been imbibing for the last few hours. But Kame finds himself unable to resist so they perch on stools at a long zinc bar beneath snaking neon blue lights, feeling rather as though he's underwater as they clink their matching glasses of single malt.
Rowan rests his elbows on the table and looks down into his glass before speaking.
"So I'm probably crazy to do this, but - well, Jin's probably told you I'm opening up a new space."
Kame nods. "I walked through it briefly last month."
"The idea is for the front end to be an upscale experimental bar and lounge with really good, really interesting cocktails. But when I was talking to our architects, we realized there was room enough to configure something different in the back-" Rowan pauses.
Kame looks at him, and is surprised to see a flash of hesitation cross Rowan's face before it's replaced by resolve.
Rowan shifts on his stool to address Kame with his direct blue-eyed gaze. "I thought it might be cool to do a kind of chef's table in the back. It'll be a bar, you know like a sushi bar, six seats, tops, sort of like Jose Andres' minibar used to be in D.C. I figure we'd do it once or twice a week, or Friday through Sunday, at least at first, just to see how it works out, how the logistics shake out for the kitchen arrangements. But the idea is not to have a single creative head but to have a rotating roster of chefs, both restaurant chefs-"
"-like me."
"Yeah." Rowan nods. "-and chefs like Jin. I'd like to collaborate with people whose food I admire, and people who have a similar approach when it comes to technique and taste. People who enjoy taking risks. So, yes, like you."
"So this is what - like an ongoing pop-up restaurant?"
Rowan nods, taps his fingers on the bar, betraying his nervousness. "Yeah. I know it probably sounds too 'conceptual-'" Rowan makes air quotes with his hands. "But I want to generate a conversation between cooks and diners. No servers. It's just us and them for a couple hours and a lot of delicious food." He goes on to explain that he doesn't intend to settle on a consistent food style: he wants a venue for experimentation.
"How would you convince diners to take the risk, though?" Kame asks - reasonably, he thinks. "People tend to gravitate toward the familiar."
"But not everyone," Rowan says. "There's definitely a demand for interesting food experiences. I mean look at all the people who came to Lupo tonight. Most of them were first timers who just wanted an adventure, an event, not just a meal. You can have a meal anywhere. We'd put our effort into creating something special that's also satisfying. Anyway, it's six seats in a city of millions, so I'd be surprised if we couldn't drum up enough interest for a few nights a week. The harder part will be finding chefs willing to participate. So I figure, we give it a shot, and if it goes well, I can consider expanding it to the rest of the week. If it doesn't, then I come up with a new plan."
Kame hums into his scotch, considering. The idea is compelling, but maybe not for the reasons Rowan is describing. Kame and Yamapi have been pitched countless times for all kinds of projects and collaborations and restaurant development deals. They nearly always say no because they're content doing their own thing, which absorbs more than enough of their time and energy. However, an intermittent commitment is tempting, might even be doable, and the venue for experimentation sounds right up his alley - but, really, when it comes down to it, Kame decides he likes Rowan, liked him immediately, much to his surprise.
And if Jin is involved-
Kame hopes Jin never discovers how easy he is.
Kame slowly finishes off his scotch as he listens to the rest of Rowan's pitch, dropping his glass to the bar when it's empty.
"Maybe this sounds pretty fucking pretentious coming from a guy like me," Rowan says, "I'm too young, too naive, all that. I know. Fuck the James Beard award, I know my limitations, right? But I think this can work, and with the right people, I think it would be awesome. A small group of cooks cooking for an intimate group of people. Cook whatever they want to cook, do something different, whatever. The main point for everyone is to have fun."
When he meets Rowan's eyes again he's struck by how earnest the kid is, how enthusiastic. He's already wondering how he can fit yet another committment into his overburdened schedule.
"So, uh. What do you think?" Rowan asks.
Kame hears the nerves in Rowan's voice, and smiles to dispel them.
"We can talk about this more," Kame says. "But - yeah, I'm definitely interested."
+part seven
::
::
"So?" Meisa says when she opens the door for Kame and turns, leaving him to close and chain the door before he follows her into the sunny corner flat she shares with her husband.
Kame only grunts in response as he follows her toward the kitchen.
"Come on, Kame," she says, "use your words."
Kame grimaces at her before shooing her out of the kitchen. "Go," he says, giving her a little push toward the table. "Sit, relax."
Meisa's severe face cracks a grin. "Ooooh, bossy."
Kame lifts one eyebrow from where he's briskly washing his hands in the deep old-fashioned enameled sink.
"Don't give me that look," she says, narrowing her eyes. She pushes a wing of dark hair away from her face.
"So what should I be doing here?" Kame says. "I'm starving."
While Meisa directs from her seat at the table where she's simultaneously flipping through stacks of paperwork and clacking away at the spreadsheet on her laptop, Kame busies himself with preparing their lunch: mixed greens with wedges of hard-boiled eggs and artichokes and shaved curls of parmigiano reggiano, accompanied by a loaf of good bread, and a whole salami that smells good enough to make Kame's mouth water from half a meter away.
When Meisa makes to get up, Kame gestures for her to stay put. He finds the bamboo placemats and spreads them on either side of the other end of the table, laying out square plates with their prettily-composed salads, the wooden board with the bread and salami, a pair of glasses, silverware and napkins.
"To drink?" Kame asks from the open refrigerator.
"I'll have iced tea - it's in the green pitcher. There's beer, if you want."
But Kame brings only iced tea to the table, and sits down opposite her as she shifts over to the place setting he's laid out.
Meisa beams. "This is nice. I should have you over to make lunch for me more often."
Kame lifts his glass to clink hers. "Maybe you should." He smiles easily, listening as Meisa points out that her husband actually made the bread before the conversation shifts to business for a while.
"So your face has seen better days," Meisa says eventually. "Yamapi told me what happened. And he told me to remind you that you're an idiot."
Kame can't help cracking a smile as he shakes his head. "He's right," Kame says before stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth.
"So are you going to tell me, or do I have to drag it out of you?"
"We talked," Kame says.
Meisa nods. "Good." She waits, but when he doesn't continue, she prompts: "And?"
Kame shifts before he pulls a face. "It was a long time coming," he says. "We had ten years to stew over everything that happened." He pauses before he corrects himself: "I had ten years to stew. And...I was unfair."
Meisa reaches out to touch Kame's hand. "Hey," she says, catching his eyes. "You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to."
Kame shakes his head. "No. It's - it's fine. I - I suppose it's better if I talk about this stuff instead of, you know..." He trails off.
Meisa smiles gently. "Okay."
So Kame tells her everything, not easily, and sometimes with burning cheeks, but he tells her. Just to get it off his chest, and if he's honest with himself, he feels relieved when he's done. A little lighter.
"Well, it all sounds promising," Meisa says, a far away, thoughtful look in her eye. "When will you meet Rowan?"
Kame shrugs. "We're still trying to figure that out." Jin has been emailing Kame and Rowan with possible dates, but none have worked out yet.
"I'm dying to know what Rowan's cooking up," Meisa says. "Har har."
Kame shakes his head. "Very funny." But he agrees with her, somewhat sheepishly. "Me, too. I've been trying not to get too excited about some unidentified project, but-" He leans over to slice off a few hunks of salami, peeling the membrane off before popping the savory, fat-studded coin of air-dried pork into his mouth. "Wow, this is good, where's it from?"
Meisa describes the shop in Brooklyn she found with her husband recently. "Well, I expect a full report when you get the low-down from Rowan."
Kame smiles. "Of course. You'll be the first to know. So when are you joining us for drinks? Ayase was saying she missed you last week."
"One of these nights," Meisa says vaguely. "René gets home from his studio and he wants to make plans for the baby and go shopping. Did I tell you he's decided to make the cradle?"
Kame grins. "You're surprised? That sounds like the René I know. Any cradle made by him will probably turn out to be a gallery piece."
Meisa grabs the salami from his hands. "Hey, leave some for me," she says, taking up her knife. "And it's exactly like René. But we stay up late and then I get lazy. By midnight I don't feel like going out anymore." She makes a face. "I know. I'm turning into one of those people."
"No, you aren't," Kame says before he gives her a close look. "You're doing all right?"
Meisa nods vigorously, one side of her face chipmunk-cheeked from the large hunk of salami she's just popped in her mouth. "Oh, my god, this is so good," she mumbles with her mouth full. "I am definitely going back there."
"Just so long as you promise not to move to Brooklyn," Kame says darkly.
Meisa laughs. "No chance of that."
"Good," Kame says.
--
It's one in the morning in mid-June when Kame and Yamapi make it to Bar Pintxos. They're both still in their suits, but Kame loosens his silk tie as they make their way toward the back.
"Boss!" Haruka exclaims when she catches sight of Kame. She's tilting backward in her chair, precariously balanced on two legs against the brick wall behind her; her chair slams down before she springs up to greet him. Offering her face so he can kiss both cheeks, she then takes him by the chin tilting his head one way and the other, studying him critically in the poor light of the lounge. She's giving him shit, as per the usual: his face and bruised ego healed weeks ago.
"You look respectable again," she pronounces with a decisive nod. She offers Yamapi a half-drunk salute and twirls before she flits back to her seat.
"Why," Yamapi asks the ceiling, "are you so weird?" He lowers his eyes from the ceiling to Haruka whose cheeks puff out in a gleeful smile.
Kame makes the rounds to greet Runa, Meisa, and René. René hooks a couple chairs from nearby and drags them over. Kame drapes his suit jacket over the back of one and sprawls into it.
"What are we drinking?" Kame asks as he slouches into his chair and closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. It's good to sit; he's been standing for the last few hours at a cocktail party fundraiser for City Harvest he couldn't really skip out on. He's glad his face is back to normal, or at least as normal as it's ever been, so he could leave off the explanations.
"Sangría," René says, pouring from a cream ceramic pitcher into a short glass. Meisa's husband, a French-speaking Métis from Ontario, is an artist and graphic designer; he's responsible for the stylized table-and-olive-cluster that forms the Kayakuya logo as well as their stationery, menu designs and various other graphics used throughout the restaurants. René is also seriously good looking with burnished brown skin, dark, shining waves of shoulder-length hair and dark-fringed brown eyes. It's difficult for Kame to avoid imagining how gorgeous Meisa and René's offspring will be with their combined genes.
"Mmmm," Kame hums, smiling as he sips his fruited sangría. He leans across René and touches Meisa's hand where it rests over the gentle swell of her belly. "You made it," he says.
Meisa returns Kame's smile, glancing at René. "I finally convinced this one to leave off nursery planning for an evening so we could see you guys."
"But, sweetie, isn't it past your bedtime?" Yamapi says with smirk.
"Fuck you," she fires back. "I'm pregnant, you ass. I'm not an invalid."
"And how is little Newt," Yamapi asks with a mischievous tilt to his lips.
"Newt is just fine," Meisa replies, narrowing her eyes a bit at René who's responsible for the Aliens-inspired nickname. "Twenty weeks, now."
"And you, René? How are you holding up?" Yamapi says, blinking in exaggerated sympathy at René who smiles widely, looking sideways at his wife and stroking a finger through her hair.
"Hel-lo," Meisa says, waving her hand. "René has nothing to cope with. No-thing. I'm the one who has to buy new clothes and can't drink the sangría."
"Poor baby," Yamapi says, shaking his head in mock-sorrow.
"Again I say, fuck you, Yamashita."
He tsks and tilts his head sideways. "Such a lady."
"Just you wait, Uncle Yamapi. Your time will come."
"That's right," Haruka pipes up, "you're first on the babysitter rotation schedule we're putting together."
"Traitor!"
"You know you love me," Haruka beams.
"So we've been hassling the happy couple," René says, leaning back in his chair, stretching out his long legs, and clasping his hands behind his head, "because they're dragging their feet."
"We are not," Runa mutters. She's not much taller than Haruka, but she's more solidly built, with blended features from her Japanese-Danish father and her green-eyed Afro-Puerto Rican mother. She also has bright red streaks in her medium brown hair, a lovely leaf-patterned shoulder piece tattooed under the right strap of her tank top and tiny hollow blue stars circling her left wrist.
"It's been four months," Meisa says, "and you still haven't set a date. That's what I call dragging your feet."
"Nah," Runa says, "give us a year, and then we'll be dragging our feet."
"You have to help us out," Haruka pleads, turning the full firepower of her wide brown eyes onto Kame. "You know how hard scheduling this is going to be. We really want all of you to be there and I'm not sure how-"
"We'll figure it out," Kame says decisively. "We will. Do you have a month in mind?"
Haruka trades a sidelong glance with Runa. Runa turns to Kame and says "Maybe next July. I talked to Pablo-" She means her boss, the executive chef at Eleven Madison Park. "-and he reckons he can give me a couple weeks off then."
"You mean July 2022, right? Next July," Kame clarifies.
Runa nods. "Yeah. No way do I have time for a vacation this summer."
Yamapi meets Haruka's hopeful eyes. "What, are you asking us for permission?"
"Well," she hedges. "Sort of?"
"Madre de Dios," Kame says briefly, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. "You don't need our permission."
Yamapi says: "Of course she does. Permission denied. See? Problem solved. You'll just have to elope. I hear we have a lovely courthouse."
"Fuck you, Yamashita," Runa says laconically.
"He's joking," Haruka says.
"I know," Runa grins with a lot of teeth. "So am I."
"What can we do about the restaurant?" Haruka asks.
"Hire temps?" Kame says, half-joking before he shrugs. "I don't know. July might work. We'll talk to Nina and Tegoshi about scheduling and see how we can manage coverage. Where are you thinking about having the wedding?"
"Buenos Aires," Haruka says at the same time as Runa says "Sydney."
Kame's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. "Uh-"
Meisa's cackles helplessly. "Oh, Kame, if only you could see your face..."
"Kidding," Haruka grins. "Although-" She exchanges another long glance with Runa. "-we'd love to do a month in New Zealand for our honeymoon."
"Or Poland with a detour to the Norwegian fjords," Runa says.
"Or Alaska and Hawaii," Haruka continues in a musing tone.
Runa heaves a sigh and murmurs, "Yellow Mountain. Macchu Picchu." She takes up her glass and clinks Haruka's. They both take a drink.
"A month," Kame repeats faintly. Yamapi says: "Absolutely not."
"What," Haruka laughs. "We can dream, right?" She shrugs with a sunny smile.
"Of course you can," Meisa says indulgently. "You two deserve to have a nice honeymoon-"
"Honeymoons are so overrated," Yamapi says.
"-of no more than two weeks," Kame finishes, shaking his head sadly.
Haruka heaves a deep sigh. "Oh, all right."
"Seriously," Runa says, "we're thinking of doing it somewhere upstate."
"You'd better get cracking," Meisa says sternly. "Or there won't be anywhere left to book for next July."
"I know," Haruka wails, covering her face with her hands.
"Just hire a planner and let them handle the logistics, right?" Kame says. "No point twisting yourselves in knots if you don't have to."
"A planner for what?"
Everyone looks up to see Imai Tsubasa standing over them. "Hey," Kame exclaims, jumping up. Tsubasa does the rounds of greetings before he pulls up a chair beside Kame.
"Nice shirt," Kame says, clearing his throat darkly.
Tsubasa looks down at the Barcelona jersey he's sporting over his long cargo shorts with an expression of exaggerated innocence. "Jealous, Kame? There's always next year."
Kame, a fan of Real Madrid, chooses not to stoop to exchanging petty insults over Tsubasa's misguided love for the wrong Spanish team. "Will Takki stop by?" he asks instead.
Tsubasa shakes his head ruefully. "He's still messing around with meat glue, I don't know. It's hard to pry him out of the kitchen lately."
"Things are going well, though."
Tsubasa nods, light catching on one of his rings as he brings the glass to his mouth. "Pretty well." He frowns slightly before taking a sip. When he lowers the glass he says, "but not a whiff of the Times reviewer, and it's been more than four months. I'm not sure what that means."
"Maybe she's going all Ruth Reichl on you," Kame smiles, referring to the former Times reviewer famous for employing elaborate disguises to remain anonymous at restaurants.
Tsubasa looks doubtful.
"Try not worry about it," Kame says, although he knows it won't convince his friend. No review from the New York Times is never a good thing, especially not for such a high-end high profile endeavor as Takizawa. "It was eight months before Zenzero got reviewed. It'll happen."
Despite his skeptical expression, Tsubasa nods. Then he says, "By the way, have you heard of this newish underground supper club? I think it's called Inbocalupo, something like that."
But for the name, it wouldn't have registered: supper clubs are a dime a dozen in the city. However, hearing Tsubasa say the name, Kame feels that peculiar sensation again, like warm water rinsing over him. He swallows thickly. "In bocca al lupo?" he says, giving it the correct Italian pronunciation.
Tsubasa shrugs. "I guess - I wasn't paying close attention."
"And it's a supper club?" Off Tsubasa's nod, Kame shakes his head. "No-o, it doesn't ring a bell." Kame frowns. He hasn't been super-diligent on staying updated lately; he tries, but he doesn't always make it through Nina's daily curation of food and industry-related media, which is never a good thing. "Is it - what have you heard?"
"People are talking about it, that's all."
"Online?"
"Yep. And there's a website." Tsubasa pulls out his phone and taps at it for a moment before putting it away. "There," he says, "I've sent it to you. I was just curious, that's all. Good buzz."
Kame, with a strange nagging sense in the back of his head, resolves to check it out when he gets home, but, by the time he heads home around three, he's completely forgotten.
--
It isn't until the following day that Kame opens Tsubasa's email and finds the link to a website. When it opens, it's a black screen with the stylized design of a wolf in three-quarters profile with an open mouth. He clicks on the logo and again, more black screen with a brief, somewhat vague description:
"This is not a restaurant, it's a dinner party.
We stand at the crossroads of food, music and art.
An exploration in social dynamics.
Friends, old and new.
Impermanent, always transforming.
No menus. No dress code. No pretense."
There's the sign-up for a mailing list and a few guidelines. And a photo gallery of beautifully-staged dishes. To Kame's eye, the avante-garde plating style feels familiar.
Kame hesitates for only a moment before he sends Jin a message.
-Can I talk to you
-sure.
And then his phone is ringing, a video call, but at the last second, Kame opts for voice only.
"Hi," Jin says. "I can't see you."
"Um," Kame says articulately, but Jin helpfully continues.
"Is your connection bad? Hey where are you?"
"At home," Kame manages.
There's a pause. "Do you want to meet?"
Kame chews his lower lip. "I'm not sure I have the time," he says.
"So what's up?" Jin asks after another pause.
"So a friend of mine told me last night about this supper club." Kame glances at the website on his screen and reads off the name, inboccalupo, in pale lowercase font, where it appears stark against the black background. It's a mash-up of a common phrase Kame learned when he lived in Italy: while it literally means "in the mouth of the wolf," it's only ever used to wish someone "good luck."
Which, Kame thinks, is apt for a supper club with no menu, requiring a leap of faith. Once, when they were younger, he and Jin had toyed with the very same idea.
Jin's silence is profound.
"Is it you?" Kame asks at last, when he hears nothing for a long, interminable moment.
They've never spoken much about what kind of work Jin's actually doing in New York, but Kame's gotten the impression that, aside from whatever he's doing with Rowan Petersen, Jin's been supporting himself with patchwork gigs: catering shifts, personal chef services, temping in restaurant kitchens. At least, Jin never seems to have copious free time of the unemployed.
But whatever this is, it just highlights for Kame how little he actually knows, of what Jin's up to now - or what happened during the past they don't share. They still haven't talked about the last ten years; it's become verboten somehow, as if it's something they're both afraid to touch.
At last Kame hears a somewhat embarrassed laugh. He almost wishes he had allowed the video call.
"I was going to tell you," he hears Jin admit. "I wasn't trying to hide it from you."
For some reason, that almost makes Kame feel worse.
"Okay," he says.
"Look," Jin says, "why don't you come? We have a dinner on Saturday. Josh is about to make the announcement."
"Jin-"
"Don't say no," Jin says. "Just come and I'll explain everything, ok?"
Kame considers that.
"Unless," Jin continues, less certainly, "you're busy. But-" His voice brightens. "If you're busy on Saturday, I'll get you in the next time you're free, I promise."
Kame's already checking his calendar. "I'm free," he says, "Saturday."
"The only thing-" Jin falters.
"What."
"I'd love for you to get the full experience, you know? But maybe - maybe you'd like to, I don't know, hang out? Earlier, I mean. So we can talk."
Kame rubs his forehead. "That's fine, Jin," he says.
"Great!" Jin exclaims so enthusiastically that Kame can't help but smile, remembering, with a pang, Jin's tendency to bounce, puppy-like, when he got excited about something. "It's a date."
Kame clears his throat and relaxes a little. "Well, it's certainly something," he says wryly.
Jin laughs. "See you Saturday," he says and Kame doesn't think he's imagining the warmth in Jin's voice.
"Wait," Kame hears, just before he's about to end the call.
"Bring something you'd like to drink," Jin says, "it's BYOB."
-
Kame agrees to meet Jin at the Union Square Greenmarket Saturday morning before it opens for last minute shopping. Jin is waiting with a steaming cardboard cup of hot coffee when Kame arrives, which despite the warmth of the May morning, Kame accepts gratefully, cupping both his hands around it and sipping delicately. It's excellent. Jin always had a knack for finding good coffee.
It's early so they're both quiet in the beginning. Jin browses with a kind of fierce concentration, one hand dragging his little trolley stuffed with cloth shopping bags. He's wearing a pair of sunglasses against the morning sun; they both are, but more often than not, the shades end up on top of Jin's head because, as Kame knows from his own experience, it's impossible to properly judge the color of fresh fruits and vegetables with tinted lenses distorting their true appearance. Kame reflects that if Jin was trying to break the ice and put him at ease, he couldn't have chosen a more perfect activity. Kame loves this part of his job, and he's always loved it. It's always worth the sacrifice of sleep to make one's way through the stalls overflowing with every shade of green and the colors of summer vegetables, to touch everything, breathe in the good vegetal perfumes, and taste the wares from the hands of the farmers themselves. Kame is friendly with a bunch of farmers at this particular market so he takes the opportunity to steer Jin to the men and women with whom he personally has relationships. He doesn't think Jin been in New York long enough to develop the familiarity Kame's spent the last decade solidifying.
When they're done, there are pencil-thin bunches of asparagus, beet greens, tender lettuces, three different kinds of radish, parsnips and scallions tucked into the trolley. Jin has some kind of complicated spreadsheet on his pad that he consults, explaining in an aside to Kame that the whole gameplan is in the pad's brain; he'd be fucked without it. Kame's only relieved to see that Jin's achieved some kind of formal organization from the freewheeling it's all in my head technique he used to employ when he was younger.
"Glad to see you aren't writing on your hand anymore," Kame says, smiling to remove any possible sting.
Jin lifts his hands with a grin. "Look, ma," he says.
"What now?"
"Now we prep," Jin answers. "I know it's early, but are you hungry?"
Off Kame's nod, Jin says, "Ok. We'll have something when we get home."
Two subway rides, a bit of walking, and some forty minutes later, they arrive at Jin's flat, which turns out to be a loft-like space in a building with a decidedly unimpressive exterior. But after an elevator ride to the fourth floor, the door opens on a dim space that brightens instantly when Jin bashes his elbow against a set of toggle switches. Kame follows Jin into an open space with exposed brick exterior walls, white interior walls with wood accents and black-framed black-and-white photographs, pale hardwood floors and wood-beam pillars near the open kitchen. The furnishings are minimal, neatly arranged: a long black wooden table with eight comfy-looking upholstered chairs arranged on either side. A stereo system, a fancy medium-sized flat-panel tv. A single leather L-shaped sectional couch with a small leather trunk coffee table divides the living and dining areas.
And lining one wall of the narrowish space are bookshelves, black metal, loaded with books.
"It's a sublet," Jin says to Kame's lifted eyebrows. "-and I have two roommates. The broom closets pretending to be bedrooms are there," he gestures, "and the bathroom is there."
"Oh," Kame says. It's probably snug for three people, but Kame thinks his entire (admittedly super-tiny) flat could fit into the place twice. "The books?" Kame asks, drifting toward them.
"Mostly mine," Jin says. "I got rid of a lot stuff when I left California, you know? But not the cookbooks. I've been collecting those for years - couldn't leave them behind."
The open kitchen is the flat's dominant feature with the range installed in an island in the center of the space under a massive ventilation hood. There are long deep counters running in an L shape along two walls plus two sinks, all kinds of cabinets, not to mention a dishwasher, a pair of refrigerators and a freezer unit.
"This is crazy," Kame says. When he looks over at Jin, Jin's flushed from more than the brisk walk in the mid-morning heat. "Did you win the lottery? How in the hell did you find this place?"
"It looks more impressive than it is-"
"Looks?" Kame says, lifting his eyebrows.
"Whatever. Josh found it last year through someone he knows - wasn't even advertised, or I'm sure it would have vanished immediately. I don't know all the details, but it was some chef who got divorced and took a job cooking for some outfit in the Yukon or something like that. Didn't want to give up the property, I guess, and when Josh explained what I was doing, he was - apparently - happier to rent it to someone in the trade. And before you get too impressed, most of my dishes and glassware are from Ikea." Jin stops. "You would not believe our electric bill."
Kame throws Jin a disbelieving look. "Oh, yes, I would." Even with the most energy efficient models, refrigerators and freezers are notorious power sucks.
"Yeah, we unplugged the second refrigerator for a while because it wasn't getting enough use to justify the cost of keeping it on. Now that I'm so busy, we had to turn it back on."
After Kame helps Jin unload everything, Jin busies himself with fixing something to eat. "Kame, have something. Put the lettuce down. I didn't ask you to join me to put you to work."
Jin pours dark green olive oil onto a plate and slices a crusty loaf of bread on a wooden board. From the refrigerator he retrieves several jars and flat containers which he juggles on his way back to the island where he arranges marinated white anchovies on a dish flanked by tongues of roasted red pepper in olive oil and sliced garlic, and another heap of pickled cauliflower, carrot and artichokes. The vinegar scent tickles Kame's nose. And there are olives, a multi-hued collection spilled into a glazed earthenware bowl.
"And cheese," Jin murmurs, unwrapping what Kame immediately recognizes as a dry, aged wedge of Spanish Manchego, one of Kame's favorite cheeses. Kame can smell its salty, sheep's-milk tang from more than a meter away. Finally, Jin snaps open a container of rosy membrillo, a thick, sweet Spanish paste made from quince, and slides the container, along with a knife, next to Kame's hand.
Kame looks up at Jin with a surprised smile.
"My favorite," he says, with a strange upwelling in his chest. "You remembered?"
Jin throws Kame a glance that seems almost shy before he looks down again, dragging a hunk of bread through the plate of olive oil sprinkled with coarse salt.
"Of course," he says around his mouthful of bread. "How could I forget? You always insisted on keeping a block of membrillo in the refrigerator and if we ever ran out before you'd bought more, you'd go out to get more even if it was pouring rain. Of course I remember."
Kame chuckles, as he cuts a slice of the quince paste and layers it on top of a chunk of cheese. "God," he mumbles, when he finishes his mouthful, "tastes like home."
Jin's watching him with an odd, pinched expression when Kame looks up at him. "What?" Kame asks, "did I get it on my face?" Kame reaches with his tongue for the far corner of his mouth, which fortunately no longer hurts. "This is my favorite kind of lunch," Kame continues as he draws the back of his hand across his mouth, "just like old times." It hurts less to remember.
Jin only hums a neutral response, manages a small smile, and he looks away.
--
It isn't until later, after they've cleared the debris of their light meal, that Jin begins to explain as he sets to work prepping the produce he'd bought in the morning. Kame hates to stand around doing nothing so he convinces Jin to let him help. After sufficient wheedling, Jin relents and lets him start washing the bags of butter lettuce.
He starts with Chengdu. "Six months there, at a school learning Szechuan cooking, which was hard as fuck considering they taught in dialect. I had an American classmate and also one from Uruguay who helped me out in English and Spanish." Kame hears Jin chuckle. "I still think I was crazy to do it, but-" Kame glances over his shoulder to see Jin shrug.
"Did you learn any dialect?"
"Sure," Jin says. "Some. I can say a few things and I can understand a little more. When you don't have a choice, you pick things up pretty fast, you know? After that, I traveled around Asia and India for more or less six years, off and on," Jin continues, "but I actually lived, you know, where I had an actual address? In Hong Kong, Japan, and you know I was in Vietnam. I guess I'd had enough of everything we grew up with, especially classical western cuisine. I needed to start over, even if it meant being an apprentice again wherever anyone would have me." Jin shrugs lightly as he finishes running his knife through the mountain of asparagus where he's discarding the dry ends and giving the slender stalks a rough chop before tossing them into a wide skillet of translucent onions sauteing in olive oil. There's already a kettle of water beginning to whistle which he turns off before stirring the asparagus and onions.
"What's that for?" Kame asks, looking over his shoulder again. He watches Jin pour some boiling water into the asparagus-onion mixture and sets a timer. He then moves toward the freezer with a bowl which he partially fills with ice.
Jin's lips twist mischievously. "You'll see."
Kame makes a face. "Right," he says, "Fine. Be that way. I see how it is."
"Come on, man. You're gonna be my guest tonight. I can't give away all my secrets. It would totally ruin the effect."
"So no one knows what you're serving before they arrive?"
Jin shakes his head. "Nope. That's part of the fun - for me and hopefully for them, too. I guess it must be, considering we have a few thousand people on our mailing list and we only do sixteen seats or less for each dinner."
"Wait. Did you said a few thousand?"
"Yeah. Some of them came with us when I announced we'd be shifting the supper club to New York City - some of the people on the original mailing list weren't even from the West Coast. We'd have people fly or drive from all over the country if they got an invitation."
Kame's trying to process all of that. "But I thought you said your friend sent the invitations out two days ago."
"Yeah, but not all our dinners are last minute. Some of them are announced a month ahead of time or two weeks, one week. It isn't supposed to be predictable. And if you don't get in this time, you go back into the pool for the next time."
"How do you decide who to invite? Is it just luck of the draw?" Kame asks, leaning back against the counter with the washed lettuce spread out on sheet pans behind him. Jin points out a cabinet in which Kame finds a few salad spinners of varying sizes with fabric piled on top. Kame immediately understands.
"Yes and no," Jin replies, pouring the bright green asparagus and onion mixture into a colander set in the large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. "So the way it works is, we announce a dinner to the mailing list. Anyone interested in that date replies and then from the people who are interested, Josh usually chooses people who haven't been able to get in before and he makes sure there's always at least one person who has done it before. In total there are eight invitations sent out and everyone gets a plus one. That's it."
"So this is what you did in San Francisco?" Kame asks as he piles some of the lettuce into one of the cotton bags and starts shaking it over the sink.
"Uh, yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to leave that part out. Yeah. I've been doing this supper club for three years now."
"Why?" Kame asks without thinking as he loads up the damp cotton bag with a new batch of clean, wet lettuce, trying to shake as much excess water off.
"What do you mean?" Jin looks up from where he's stirring the cooling mass of asparagus bits and chopped onion. He lifts the colander and using a spatula, scrapes the mixture into the commercial-sized blender standing ready.
Kame considers before he rephrases. "I mean, what inspired you to do something like this? Was the supper club your business plan, or did you have something else in mind?"
Kame hears Jin chuckle. "No way, man. I didn't have a business plan when I came back to the States. I just wanted to do something interesting, figure out what my style was, what kind of flavors I wanted to cook. Since I'd left the straight career path to be an apprentice and travel, I had a weird resume."
"But you know, a lot of chefs really look for your background," Kame points out, getting into a rhythm with the lettuce drying. "You have exactly the kind of experience someone like me would hire in a second - you were a stagiare in Europe, so you have a classical Western foundation but you had the balls to say "fuck everything" and just go off to travel and study something different. That would seriously make me think 'this person really cares about food.' I don't want to hire one of these kids who thinks that cooking in one of my restaurants is just a job. I want to hire someone who really loves what they do, who's always thinking ahead, and trying to grow and improve. Those are the cooks who make me really fucking happy."
Silence follows Kame's passionate declaration and his cheeks flush as he realizes he's just gone off without thinking - and who he's been spouting off to. He turns to find Jin staring at him with a curious expression, caught between shock and pleasure and something else he can't identify.
Kame ducks his face into his shoulder to wipe non-existent water from his cheek.
"I'll keep that in mind," Jin says lightly with a tiny smile before hitting the button on the blender which effectively kills conversation for a few minutes. He briefly stops it a few times to scrape around inside the blender with a spatula, to test the texture of the bright green puree until he's satisfied. He turns it off, removes the jar of the blender and scrapes the entire smooth mass into a two quart with a snap-lid which he shoves into the refrigerator. Kame glances over and through the open door, sees a refrigerator full of neatly stacked rectangular containers with freezer-tape marker-scrawled labels.
"Nice organization," Kame says. Jin closes the fridge door and smiles.
"That's the only way this works," he replies.
"So this is your job now," Kame says, looking around.
"One of them," Jin says, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back against the refrigerator. "I mostly do private dinners and events. But this is what I love. I can cook whatever I want and people keep coming."
"It's all word-of-mouth?"
Jin nods. "When we originally started this in San Francisco, there were seven of us, mostly professional cooks. So in the beginning, I didn't design all the menus - we'd take turns as if we were all the Dread Pirate Roberts."
"Did you have a collective name?" Kame asks, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half-grin.
"Dread Pirate Dinner."
Kame levels a narrow look at Jin. "No, really."
"Yes," Jin laughs, "really. We had a whole pirate theme." Jin shrugs helplessly. "Our guests seemed to enjoy it. Anyway, that supper club started out for fun, you know? No one expected it to blow up so big. Some of my private clientele comes from the work I did with DPD."
"Huh." Kame pauses. "And now?"
"Now," Jin says, "I'm diversifying." He goes on to explain how the San Francisco supper club was a strictly pay-what-you-want model, "which worked all right," Jin continues, "because most of the time we broken even on our food cost, but it was never profitable. We didn't pay ourselves, and as you can imagine, doing this is pretty fucking labor intensive. All of us had other jobs. Now?" Jin looks around. "On the weekends we're still doing one pay-what-you-want dinner but the rest of the Lupo dinners are prix fixe."
"Makes sense," Kame says.
"It's a bit harder to source food here than it was when we had Napa so close, but I manage. Things are going well enough between Lupo and private events. And there's this project with Rowan. And I might - I have some other ideas. I'm exploring my options."
Kame's quiet for a moment. "Why'd you come back to New York," he asks, without letting himself think twice of the question. It's the most important question he hasn't had answered yet. Why now - and why here?
Jin stiffens, but then he laughs, and it comes out sounding a little...off. "Better to ask why I left San Francisco," he answers before launching into an explanation of being harassed by Las Vegas investors he half-suspected of being mob-affiliated who wanted to franchise his supper club concept. "It sounded too much like running a restaurant. If I wanted to do that, I would do that. I didn't need them hassling me, and they wouldn't stop."
Kame notes Jin's neat sidestep of his question, but he lets it go. "You don't want a restaurant?"
Jin hesitates. "Not yet? I could do it. I even have backers I actually like, but..." He slowly shakes his head. "It isn't time yet."
"Fair enough," Kame says. "But you didn't really answer my question."
"Why New York?" Jin asks, cocking his head at Kame. There's a strange intensity in his gaze, as if he wants to say something.
"Why not?" Jin says with a careless shrug, but Kame doesn't trust Jin's flippant answer. He watches Jin make a show of looking at his watch. "Listen-"
"No, I know, I'm sorry, I'm taking up your time when I should let you get to it. Unless you want me to stay? I'm happy to help out."
Jin shakes his head. "No, man. It's nice of you to offer, but you're our guest tonight. Just bring something interesting to drink, even better if you don't mind sharing it, and your plus one."
"Plus one?" Kame asks with a pang of dismay.
"Shit, I didn't tell you?"
Honestly, Kame doesn't remember if Jin did tell him, or if it was in the email he'd received. Probably.
"Can you find someone? Otherwise we'll have to try to scrounge someone up at the last minute." Jin's expression is a strange combination of relieved and anxious.
"Maybe I should let you do that," Kame says, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, man. But you guys have that huge mailing list. There's bound to be someone who really wants to come who deserves a shot."
Jin nods, looking away, already lost in thought. "Yeah, ok," he says absently, "I'll let Josh know."
Jin follows Kame to the heavy steel door, stands in the open doorway, one hand palming the doorjamb, as Kame turns.
"Thanks," Kame says. "It's been a good morning. I had a good time."
Jin smiles, his expression slightly more relaxed. "Yeah, me, too." He glances down at his watch. "I'll see you in...nine hours, then."
Kame taps the opposite doorjamb lightly with his fist. "Yup, see you soon." Before he turns away Kame hesitates for just a second before he says: "In bocca al lupo," and he watches Jin's face light up in a wide grin before Jin lifts his chin and howls quietly, an old shared joke from their time in Italy, a talisman against everything that could go wrong.
"Thanks, man," Jin says before Kame turns to leave, without hiding his smile: "I might need it."
--
Around eight-thirty, Kame walks to the appointed meeting place near the Essex St. subway station and he thinks there are already a couple people waiting. Eventually as the group widens, people begin looking at one another with curiosity and introducing themselves. Kame is taken aback when he gets recognized by name even if not by sight. A few minutes later, a guy in a Band Candy band t-shirt strolls up, introduces himself as Josh, and starts checking names off a list on his phone. He's frowning when he glances up, looking around as if he's searching for someone, but just then, one last person joins the group and Josh's face relaxes. Kame feels a thrill of shock when he realizes the last straggler to check in is none other than Rowan Petersen.
The next thing Kame knows, Rowan's craning his head, searching through the group until he finds Kame, and he walks over, sticking out his hand.
"Hi," he says, "Kazuya Kamenashi, right?"
Kame shifts the wine carrier containing a couple good bottles of red and white so he can shake Rowan's hand, and he manages a dry-mouthed smile. "Yeah, but just call me Kame. Rowan Petersen?"
"That would be me," Rowan grins. "I'm your plus one."
"What?" Kame's blinks.
"Yeah," he says, "Jin called me up and begged me to be free tonight, maybe he figured we could kill two birds with one stone, right? Since the three of us haven't managed to get together before now. So I'm your plus one."
"Oh," Kame says inarticulately. "That-that's great. Thanks." He finds his manners. "It's great you could make it."
"Yeah, it is, actually. Just lucky, I guess. Normally I work Saturday nights but I switched with one of my sous chefs who needed another day off, you know how it is, and so here I am."
"Have you done this before?" Kame asks curiously.
Rowan's shaking his head: "No, but I was lucky enough to get into one of the Pirate dinners when he was in San Francisco, about a year ago. That's how I met Jin. Since then, I've attended a few of the private dinners Jin's done here in New York - so I can tell you this: you're in for a treat. Cooks don't always get to do these events, yeah? It's always, like, journalists and food bloggers and civilian eaters. Not pros like us."
Josh leads the group back to the loft where good smells waft out before the front door even opens. As everyone makes their way inside, the space fills up with overlapping conversations intercut with The Raconteurs from the stereo. The folks in the open kitchen call out a greeting and salute with whatever utensil they're holding or they wave. Kame hangs toward the back of the group as Josh makes the introductions: Jin, of course, who's standing over the range, but there's also Tatsuya Ueda, a Japanese guy who's bent over the long side counter where sixteen dishes are carefully laid out and in the process of being plated. Leticia, an Argentine woman who goes by T, is assisting Tatsuya with plating while Lucy and DeMarcus, both African-American, move between the central island and the back counter.
Josh tells everyone to feel free to wander around, take pictures and ask any questions before he joins the kitchen crew, leaving Kame and the other guests to their own devices to mingle or liveblog or get out their cameras.
Kame discovers he's enjoying himself as he sips a nutty microbrew brought by one of the bloggers and he chats with his neighbor, an art dealer, at the table before he excuses himself to wander toward the kitchen. Admittedly, most of the guests are fairly star-struck by Rowan who, as a James Beard award winner, is very much a celebrity among the foodies in the group, so Rowan remains entrenched at the center of about half the group. It actually puts Kame at ease because even though he gets a little name-recognition, and most of the guests know his restaurants, the pressure is off him.
There's a camera on a tripod aimed toward the kitchen area and guests wander around with cameras in hand to photograph the kitchen crew at work, questioning them about what they're preparing and how it was made. Kame admires how each of the six people in the kitchen seem easy with carrying on conversations with guests while still focusing on the complex flowing ballet of individual tasks. Tatsuya, Kame learns, is a professional painter who's also crazy about food; the dinner parties allow him to put his artistry on a plate. And DeMarcus is a former corporate lawyer who gave up negotiating contracts at a top twenty firm to open a bakery in Brooklyn where he makes specialty cakes to order along with pastries and breads. Lucy and T both work for one of the big New York catering companies which is a steady paycheck but, as T explains, the cooking can often be tedious. They both profess to welcome the challenge of Jin's playful, adventurous menus so they can remember what it's like to prepare interesting, delicious, and artistic high-end food.
Kame, whose palate is admittedly jaded, is relieved to admit the food is interesting - and delicious. There's a handwritten menu affixed to one of the refrigerators with magnets, but Kame tries not to look at it so he won't be spoiled for the surprises Jin has in store. There's a beautiful green risotto redolent of asparagus garnished with small garlicky snails, morel mushrooms and crisp-tender asparagus tops. Glowing reddish-orange ocean trout is perched on a bed of tofu encircled by a squid ink dashi with smoky katsuoboshi and garnished with salted cherry blossoms and shiso leaf. Rice cakes with a spicy pork sausage and bok choy sauce are garnished with scallions and crispy fried shallots.
Nearly everyone ooohs and ahs over each new dish that's brought to the table, many photographs are taken, notes are made, dishes are immediately liveblogged. Conversation at the table swings between analysis of each dish and topics as varied - and amusing - as pro and con rants about anal sex, vegetable sentience, and the problems in designing furniture for modern technology. Rowan turns out to be more personable than Kame had expected; from his interviews Rowan has always come across like a real food nerd, like one of those quiet, driven types not much given to socializing but instead he's surprisingly fun with a warm, direct gaze that's somewhat at odds with his emo-kid punk rocker look. In fact, Kame has to remind himself that Rowan is Jin's friend and possible business partner, and someone with whom he'd been irrationally angry (jealous of, even, if he's perfectly honest with himself) not that long ago.
When Kame looks up from where he's sitting at the far end of the long table, Jin, standing over the range at the island, is always watching him and nodding with a happy smile.
And then there's the steak tartare served with creamed kimchi, tiny balls of Asian pear and the beautifully-posed purplish tentacles of a small squid. All it takes is one small forkful from the jewel-toned mound of finely minced rare steak, quick-seared on one side and anointed with the fermented acidity and spiciness of kimchi puree blended with heavy cream and Kame actually wells up at how good it is. The entire table nearly goes silent for two whole minutes in stupefied admiration.
Fortunately there's a little break after that dish so Kame makes his way to Jin as the others are getting ready to pass around flutes of bright green cucumber sorbet as a palate cleanser.
"That was fucking amazing," Kame says in an undertone, not bothering to hide his admiration. Jin flushes bright red, his eyes flicking up to Kame for a moment that seems to last a long time before Jin goes back to watching the scallops he's flash-frying in two cast iron skillets, a smile hovering around his lips. Kame guesses the scallops are going into some kind of fancy lettuce wrap when he sees all the butter lettuce he'd washed earlier being laid out on fresh plates in the staging area.
"I'm glad you liked it," Jin says, looking almost shy, but also triumphant, "I remember-"
"-how much I adore good steak tartare. You have to tell me where you sourced the beef. Holy fuck, Jin. And the creamed kimchi puree. I'm totally stealing that idea, just so you know."
Jin laughs, his face still pink with pleasure. "Pay me royalties, motherfucker, and you're welcome to it," he says with a wide grin.
Kame strokes his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe I will."
Beverages flow into the night and new dishes arrive at staggered intervals as Jin and his crew continue to prepare and pass them around. At last two dessert courses are handed down to round out the meal: Japanese black sugar shortbread accompanied by bright-tasting yuzu curd and a silky green tea panna cotta. It's followed by brioche ice cream with smoked maple syrup - which, Kame thinks, tastes like french toast might if was run through an ice cream machine - garnished with tiny spheres of green apple that provide a pop of fresh tartness to balance against the rich ice cream.
Rowan turns to Kame as red envelopes are passed around.
"I guess I don't need to ask if you enjoyed it," Rowan says. Kame chuckles.
Kame admits only to himself that he was a trifle worried he might be disappointed so naturally he's beyond relieved he can lavish unreserved praise on Jin's cooking. As a professional, he's well aware of the costly ingredients, not to mention the intensive labor and days of prep required for such a sophisticated presentation. Kame tucks a wad of cash into his red envelope as if he'd ordered a similar multiple course tasting menu at any good high-end fine dining Manhattan restaurant such as Rowan's Gretel or his own Sesamo.
No one seems ready to leave so most people stick around and someone breaks into a bottle of an intensely smoky Lucifer mezcal. Everyone pitches in on the clean-up. Used to hanging with fellow cooks and chefs and his own restaurant-world friends, Kame doesn't really do events like this. He's very pleasantly surprised at how different it's been from what he was expecting, and what a nice collection of people turned up - Kame appreciates that the company is as responsible for his good vibes as Jin's food.
Kame and Rowan linger after the other guests leave. Tatsuya, Jin's third roommate, jams a hat on over his asymmetrical haircut and goes off with Lucy and T while Josh pleads exhaustion and heads to bed. Which leaves Kame with Jin and Rowan on the L-shaped couch with Jin sprawled out on his back, one hand tucked under his head, the other dangling to the floor.
Jin's eyes are closed when he asks: "You guys want to go out?"
Kame glances at his watch. It's one-thirty. The dinner party lasted a little more than four hours and Jin's been up since dawn. Kame exchanges a glance with Rowan.
"Maybe the better question is do you want to go out?" Rowan asks.
Jin cracks an eyelid in their direction. Mumbles something Kame can't quite make out.
Kame glances briefly at Rowan before he says, "Jin, we're gonna head out."
Jin's eyes pop open. "I'm coming with you. We were going to talk."
Rowan shakes his head decisively. "Not tonight you aren't. Get some sleep and we'll figure out another time soon."
"Don't wait for me, Rowan," Jin murmurs, closing his eyes again, and rolling onto his side, his hands tucked up under his cheek. "Just ask him."
Rowan gets to his feet and bends over to brush his fingertips against Jin's hair in a surprisingly tender gesture. He shakes out the blanket over the back of the couch and spreads it over Jin. "'Night, Jin," he says.
Kame, watching, feels a peculiar surge of something between envy and longing as he pushes himself to a stand. Rowan looks back at him and gestures toward the door with his head. Kame nods.
"Good night, Jin," Kame says in Spanish, the words familiar in his mouth from all those years when he would breathe them into Jin's neck before falling asleep. He turns to follow Rowan, feeling strangely reluctant to leave.
--
They're quiet in the elevator going down, but once they emerge onto the street, Kame just half a step behind Rowan, Rowan turns, and with an inquiring sideways look he asks, "Feel like a drink?"
Which is how they end up at a bar a few blocks over, not that they need any more to drink after the free-flowing mishmash of craft beers, small-batch liquors and the array of good wines they've been imbibing for the last few hours. But Kame finds himself unable to resist so they perch on stools at a long zinc bar beneath snaking neon blue lights, feeling rather as though he's underwater as they clink their matching glasses of single malt.
Rowan rests his elbows on the table and looks down into his glass before speaking.
"So I'm probably crazy to do this, but - well, Jin's probably told you I'm opening up a new space."
Kame nods. "I walked through it briefly last month."
"The idea is for the front end to be an upscale experimental bar and lounge with really good, really interesting cocktails. But when I was talking to our architects, we realized there was room enough to configure something different in the back-" Rowan pauses.
Kame looks at him, and is surprised to see a flash of hesitation cross Rowan's face before it's replaced by resolve.
Rowan shifts on his stool to address Kame with his direct blue-eyed gaze. "I thought it might be cool to do a kind of chef's table in the back. It'll be a bar, you know like a sushi bar, six seats, tops, sort of like Jose Andres' minibar used to be in D.C. I figure we'd do it once or twice a week, or Friday through Sunday, at least at first, just to see how it works out, how the logistics shake out for the kitchen arrangements. But the idea is not to have a single creative head but to have a rotating roster of chefs, both restaurant chefs-"
"-like me."
"Yeah." Rowan nods. "-and chefs like Jin. I'd like to collaborate with people whose food I admire, and people who have a similar approach when it comes to technique and taste. People who enjoy taking risks. So, yes, like you."
"So this is what - like an ongoing pop-up restaurant?"
Rowan nods, taps his fingers on the bar, betraying his nervousness. "Yeah. I know it probably sounds too 'conceptual-'" Rowan makes air quotes with his hands. "But I want to generate a conversation between cooks and diners. No servers. It's just us and them for a couple hours and a lot of delicious food." He goes on to explain that he doesn't intend to settle on a consistent food style: he wants a venue for experimentation.
"How would you convince diners to take the risk, though?" Kame asks - reasonably, he thinks. "People tend to gravitate toward the familiar."
"But not everyone," Rowan says. "There's definitely a demand for interesting food experiences. I mean look at all the people who came to Lupo tonight. Most of them were first timers who just wanted an adventure, an event, not just a meal. You can have a meal anywhere. We'd put our effort into creating something special that's also satisfying. Anyway, it's six seats in a city of millions, so I'd be surprised if we couldn't drum up enough interest for a few nights a week. The harder part will be finding chefs willing to participate. So I figure, we give it a shot, and if it goes well, I can consider expanding it to the rest of the week. If it doesn't, then I come up with a new plan."
Kame hums into his scotch, considering. The idea is compelling, but maybe not for the reasons Rowan is describing. Kame and Yamapi have been pitched countless times for all kinds of projects and collaborations and restaurant development deals. They nearly always say no because they're content doing their own thing, which absorbs more than enough of their time and energy. However, an intermittent commitment is tempting, might even be doable, and the venue for experimentation sounds right up his alley - but, really, when it comes down to it, Kame decides he likes Rowan, liked him immediately, much to his surprise.
And if Jin is involved-
Kame hopes Jin never discovers how easy he is.
Kame slowly finishes off his scotch as he listens to the rest of Rowan's pitch, dropping his glass to the bar when it's empty.
"Maybe this sounds pretty fucking pretentious coming from a guy like me," Rowan says, "I'm too young, too naive, all that. I know. Fuck the James Beard award, I know my limitations, right? But I think this can work, and with the right people, I think it would be awesome. A small group of cooks cooking for an intimate group of people. Cook whatever they want to cook, do something different, whatever. The main point for everyone is to have fun."
When he meets Rowan's eyes again he's struck by how earnest the kid is, how enthusiastic. He's already wondering how he can fit yet another committment into his overburdened schedule.
"So, uh. What do you think?" Rowan asks.
Kame hears the nerves in Rowan's voice, and smiles to dispel them.
"We can talk about this more," Kame says. "But - yeah, I'm definitely interested."
+part seven