Dinner Service

The Amuse-bouche

The server approached with the practiced silence of someone who knew interruption was unforgivable. Sloane’s pen stilled mid-word as she glanced up from her notepad, and the young woman smiled with the nervous energy of impending importance.

“Chef’s compliments,” the server said, and set down a small white plate.

A single oyster rested on crushed ice that had been shaped into a perfect nest. The shell’s nacre interior gleamed, catching prismatic colors. A dollop of mignonette nestled in the shell’s curved edge, clear as window glass, studded with fine-diced shallot. Three tiny pearls of caviar crowned the oyster’s plump flesh. The scent reached her first—clean ocean, minerals, the faint iodine tang that meant genuinely fresh shellfish.

Sloane’s stomach tightened.

She’d reviewed oysters in a dozen restaurants and knew the difference between Kumamotos and Blue Points, could identify a Chesapeake from a Wellfleet by brine alone. This was textbook. Restrained, classical, demonstrating fundamental skill without showing off.

The kind of offering Marcus Chen would send to open a conversation.

She picked up the shell, felt its cool weight in her palm. The caviar caught the light. Ossetra, she noted mentally, the pop of salt already anticipated on her tongue. The mignonette would cut the brine, champagne vinegar for acid, shallot for bite. She knew.

But her hand wasn’t steady.

Caramelizing onions and fresh herbs drifted from the kitchen, the scent of a restaurant hitting stride. It should have reassured her; it didn’t. His attention burned. She didn’t look up; couldn’t. If she met his eyes now, across thirty feet of dining room, she might bolt for the door. Every professional standard she’d built over eight years could crumble. She risked remembering too much.

Sloane brought the oyster to her lips and tipped it back.

The ocean hit first. Cold brine, clean and sharp, tasting of deep water and salt wind. The oyster’s flesh yielded between her teeth, a texture between silk and custard, and then the caviar burst, each bead releasing its concentrated essence. The mignonette followed, acid cutting through richness, shallot providing an herbal note that made her think of summer gardens and—

—salt air. Morning light. A hotel balcony overlooking the harbor.

She’d wrapped the sheet around her shoulders and stepped outside to watch the boats. The air had tasted like this. Like brine and promise. Like the moment before possibility turned complicated. Inside, Marcus slept, one arm sprawled across where she’d lain. She’d stood breathing Atlantic air, salt, seaweed, Marcus’s skin, soap and sweat, something quintessentially him. Trying to decide if she was brave enough to stay for coffee.

She hadn’t been.

Sloane set the shell down with more force than necessary. The ice crackled. She reached for her water glass, took a sip, tried to wash away the memory with something neutral and cold.

Focus. Do your job.

She picked up her pen with deliberate precision, and wrote: Oyster: impeccably fresh, clean shuck, excellent brine. Mignonette balanced. Ossetra garnish suggests attention to detail without overstatement.

The words looked clinical on paper. Controlled. They said nothing about her throat tightening at first taste, her mind jumping to that June morning, or her pulse hammering hard enough to feel in her fingertips.

They said nothing true at all.

In the open kitchen across the dining room, framed by brick and steel, Marcus turned from the pass and looked directly at her. His gaze had weight. His hands were steady on the stainless-steel counter, confident. Waiting.

The kitchen staff moved in practiced choreography, but she caught the sous chef’s glance, noted how the young cook at the garde manger slowed his plating to watch. They knew something was happening. The tension was thick as demi-glace, palpable even to them.

Sloane met Marcus’s eyes for exactly two seconds. Long enough to acknowledge receipt. Brief enough to hide everything else.

He nodded once, a chef accepting a diner’s approval, and turned back to his station. She caught the set of his shoulders, the deliberate way he picked up his knife. He knew she understood.

This wasn’t just an oyster.

This was the first word in a conversation she’d been running from for six months. He’d chosen the one flavor that would drag her straight back to the morning she left, the moment she’d stood on that balcony and decided safety was smarter than staying.

Sloane looked down at her notes. At the careful, clinical words that said everything a critic should say and nothing that mattered.

The server appeared again, soft-footed and smiling. “How was the amuse-bouche?”

“Perfect,” The word emerged steadier than she felt, restrained, exactly as practiced. “Please give my compliments to the chef.”

“Of course.” The server’s smile widened, pleased. “Your first course will be out shortly.”

Sloane nodded and turned her attention to the wine list, though the words swam on the page. The paper carried the faint vanilla scent of expensive printing. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Her pulse throbbed in her throat, wrists, and the base of her skull. She’d eaten one oyster, and already she was coming apart.

Six more courses to go.

She was in so much trouble.

Roasted Beet Salad

“Chef’s second course,” the server said as she set the small white plate with practiced grace. Service mattered. She noted it.

“Roasted beets with whipped goat cheese, candied walnuts, and aged balsamic reduction. The beets are from Fox Hollow Farm, just seven miles north, and the goat cheese is made at Seven Arches Creamery, just to the west.”

Sloane looked down at the plate. The presentation was deliberate, almost austere. Three beets, roasted to perfection and sliced, their deep burgundy bleeding slightly into the white. A quenelle of goat cheese mousse, pale and cloud-like. Candied walnuts scattered like afterthoughts. A drizzle of balsamic so dark it was nearly black, beaded on the plate’s rim with the thick viscosity of reduction done right.

She knew this dish.

They’d discussed it over their second bottle of wine that night. She’d mentioned the beet salad at a bistro off Rue de Bretagne. He knew the place from his time in Paris, and she’d told him how it changed the way she thought about root vegetables. How the chef had understood that beets didn’t need to be masked or sweetened beyond recognition, just honored. Roasted low and slow until the sugars concentrated, paired with something sharp enough to cut the earth.

Marcus had listened, nodding, looking into her eyes and stroking the back of her hand as she spoke. He’d asked questions about the preparation, but also what she’d felt, why it mattered, the scents and mood that stayed with her.

And here it was, on her table, seven miles from Fox Hollow Farm.

Her pen hovered over her notebook. Seasonal ingredients. Local sourcing. Classic preparation. The words felt hollow.

She lifted her fork, separated a slice of beet from the mousse. The first bite hit her palate in layers. Earth came first: the concentrated sweetness that came from patient roasting. Then the cheese, bright and tangy, with a faint animal funk, nothing industrial about it. The walnut added textural contrast, that necessary crunch, while the balsamic brought acid to balance the richness.

Technically flawless. Composed and balanced, showing restraint and understanding in equal measure.

It was also a message.

I remember Paris, every word you said. I was listening.

She set down her fork. Her pulse hammered in her ears. One dish could be coincidence. An oyster was a classic amuse-bouche, nothing personal about that choice. But this? This was specific. This required memory and intention. He must have been thinking about that night the same way she’d been trying not to.

Movement in the kitchen caught her attention. Marcus stood at the pass, watching. Not obviously waiting for her reaction, just the focused awareness of a chef during service. His sous was plating something at the next station, but Marcus’s attention was elsewhere. On her table. On her.

She forced her expression to remain neutral. Years of practice meant she could taste transcendence and write “adequate” without her face betraying a thing. Could sit across from a chef whose entire dream hung on her opinion and smile politely while mentally composing the review that would end their career.

But this felt different. This felt like being read.

Sloane reached for her water glass, buying time to steady herself. The dining room hummed with quiet conversation. Other critics were making notes, photographing their plates, already drafting their social media posts. The table next to her held two food bloggers debating the merits of heritage-breed pork. Normal. Professional. This was just another press preview at one more farm-to-table restaurant, trading on trend and locality.

Except her parents had done exactly this. Roasted beets from the farm three miles away, cheese from their neighbor’s goats, walnuts from the tree behind the kitchen. They’d believed with the passion that ignores razor-thin margins or fickle customers who wanted consistency over surprise.

She remembered three years of watching her parents pour everything they had into a dream that the market didn’t want, at least not then. Or wanted but couldn’t sustain. She’d never decided which truth hurt more.

The beet in front of her belonged on her parents’ menu. Would have, if they’d lasted long enough to see farm-to-table become profitable instead of precious.

This is what they tried to do, she thought. She hated how her throat tightened. Am I about to watch it fail again?

“How is everything?” The server had returned, smile bright and expectant.

“Very good,” Sloane heard herself say. Professional. Neutral. Giving nothing away.

The server’s smile widened. “Chef mentioned he’s personally overseeing every plate tonight. He wants everything to be perfect.”

“I’m sure it will be.”

She waited until the server left before looking back at her notebook. Course 2: she’d written on the page. Below it: Roasted beets, Fox Hollow Farm. Whipped goat cheese, Seven Arches Creamery. Candied walnuts. Aged balsamic reduction.

Technical. Accurate. Completely insufficient.

She added: Perfect execution. Classic technique. Flavors well-balanced.

He remembers. He’s doing this on purpose. And I don’t know if I can sit through five more courses of being reminded that I left.

In the kitchen, Marcus turned back to his station. She watched his hands move with absolute certainty, plating the next course, wiping the rim clean. The same hands that had held her face while he kissed her, sure fingers that had stroked her through passion, teased her to dizzying heights.

He’d listened then, too, affirming her desires with a touch, a look, a kiss.

Sloane finished the beet salad, each bite a small rebellion against the part of her that wanted to stand up and walk out before this became more than she could control. The food was too good. That was the problem. Not good in the technically proficient way she could dismiss with faint praise. Good in the way that mattered. That meant something. The way her parents had dreamed of making food before the dream became a debt they couldn’t pay.

The way that night had meant more.

She closed her notebook and reached for her wine. The glass was already being refilled by an attentive server. Through the kitchen window, she could see Marcus checking tickets, speaking to his sous, moving through the organized chaos with the easy command of years in professional kitchens.

But every few minutes, his gaze shifted. Found her table. Lingered just long enough to confirm she was still there.

Five courses. She had to sit through five more courses of this.

And despite every instinct screaming at her to protect herself, to maintain her professional distance, to remember what happened to people who let passion override pragmatism, Sloane found herself waiting for the next plate with something that felt dangerously close to anticipation.

Is it just the food?

Wild Mushroom Pasta

The third course arrived differently.

Not carried by the server, but by Marcus himself. He came through the kitchen archway, white bowl cradled in both hands. Her pen froze mid-sentence.

She’d managed clinical notes during the oyster course. Had kept her composure through the beet salad, despite recognizing the Paris bistro story she’d told him at two in the morning. But watching him walk toward her table, the dining room noise fading to white static, she understood that the first two courses had been warm-ups. Reconnaissance.

This was the opening move.

He set the bowl down with the precise care of someone who’d plated a thousand dishes but was treating this one like it was the only one that mattered. His hands—those hands—steadied the rim, adjusted the placement by a fraction of an inch. Long fingers, prominent knuckles, the old mandoline scar pale against his skin. She’d traced that mark in the dark, kissed it.

“Tagliatelle,” he said. His voice was exactly as she remembered: low, certain, with that slight roughness from calling orders across a kitchen for hours. “Wild mushrooms. We foraged the maitakes this morning from a farm about fifteen miles north. Chanterelles are local too. The porcini are dried, imported from Italy.”

Professional. Informative. Everything a chef should say to a critic.

But he was looking directly at her, and there was nothing professional about it.

“Sloane Mitchell,” he said. “I looked for you.”

Hearing him say her full name felt like being seen after six months of hiding.

The dining room tilted. Around them, servers moved between tables, other diners laughed and photographed their plates, but the space between Marcus and her table had collapsed to something small and airless.

She should deflect. Should ask a technical question, pull him back to safe territory.

“The mushroom varietals,” Sloane heard herself say, voice level despite her racing pulse. “How do you balance the different moisture contents during the sauté? Maitakes dry out so quickly.”

A muscle in his jaw tightened. For a second, she thought he might call her out, demand she answer him honestly. Instead, he played along.