Page 88 of Aftertaste

Everything, Stan. You areeverything.

And I’m so, so sorry for what I made you do.

PREVIEWS

THERE WERE WHISPER-THINcrepes spread with translucent smears of butter. There wassinigang, blistering hot and bracingly sour, tamarind and bilimbi and mangosteen lip puckering beneath fish sauce and prawn. There was tangy, creamy, homemade skyr, topped with good olive oil and flakes of hand-harvested salt, smoked sturgeon roe, garnished with dill. There was spicy chorizo on crisp, toasted bread, fennel sliced thin over top. There was a T-bone cooked medium-well (making everyone wince) but also seared octopus, deep caramel brown, its tentacles a Fibonacci dream, and olive-and-rosemary leg of lamb, and oysters Rockefeller, Ritz crackers subbed in for the crumb. There were charred vegetables, peppers and eggplant and whole heads of garlic spooned over grill-marked Halloumi. Eggplant another way, caponata, piled atop shallot-rubbed toast. Eggs, deviled with caramelized onions and just a kiss of mayonnaise, and Whampoa-style, creamy, with cornstarch and fish sauce, and scrambled in a bacon-egg-cheese-salt-pepper-ketchup on a hard roll. A bowl of Lucky Charms with all the marshmallows picked out, then added back in once the cereal got soggy. A peanut butter and pickle sandwich on white bread, the crusts cut badly, uneven, like a teenager’d done it.

And there was something else Kostya noticed now, his focus sharper thanit had ever been. The way emotions hit his tongue—not just something that he witnessed between the Living and the Dead, but feelings he could taste right in his mouth. The unabashed joy of spaghetti carbonara. The absolute abandon of a triple-decker turkey club. The particular sadness of lemon cake. When the ghosts appeared, Kostya could see it in their faces—the sentiments he’d tasted, seasoning the memories that shepherded them back.

He wished he could watch forever, every reunion, every tearful or uproarious or tender goodbye, the way he’d been able at Hell’s Kitchen. But he was booked solid. Previews were busy, seatings slamming them every hour from noon to four and again from five to eight, reviewers and VIPs whisked through DUH’s black mirrored entry to an aperitif at the rib-cage bar (two if they were behind) before being escorted to their private chamber, a server waiting inside to explain the menu.

In the dining room, Kostya saw the effects of his talents for the first time, the light show as the spirits arrived eliciting gasps and awed applause. (Stella had totally nailed it.) Downstairs, there was a steady churn of chits, the ticket machine sputtering as diners sampled the regular menu (which expanded nightly to include the latest aftertastes) in preparation for their main event. The kitchen hummed, everyone cooking not only with technical skill but with care, their hearts clearly in it.

It wasn’t like at Saveur Fare, where precision demanded silence and the tension was thick as Texas toast. At DUH, the noise and chaos mutated into a calm, easy focus. With the occasional dirty joke, because itwasa kitchen, after all, but still, there was reverence here. The knowledge that what happened in these rooms was a miracle.

BY THE ENDof the first service, they’d worked out a rhythm.

Once he got an aftertaste, Kostya would return to the kitchen and hand out assignments—Listen up, everybody: Room Three’s got apple tart. I need someone mincing McIntoshes, and I mean mince, not dice—Tony, that’s you.I need apâte sucrée, but the butter’s gotta be by hand—Stephanie, go. And Mica, I know you just walked in, but I gotta send you out again—Bourbon Vanilla Extract; we only got the regular stuff.

That was one liberty they’d taken with the Escoffier method of kitchen labor. Unlike restaurants that served off of a standard menu, they found it hard to stock everything they might need to get through their Chef’s Tastings—the ghosts could, and quite often did, orderanything—so Mica, the youngest guy on the line and the greenest, became their runner, on standby to get any ingredient they were missing, a map pinned to his station with the nearest bodegas, supermarkets, specialty stores and restaurants, and the fastest bike routes to each.

Once they got that going, aside from the usual kitchen shenanigans—servers getting antsy (I need my apps out yesterday!); someone slicing their hand open (Yo, man, pass me that stack of towels! Now, now, now!); or the occasional small fire or burnt dish (Ain’t no saving that. Do it again!)—things were basically butter.

The aftertastes came in without hiccups, no missing pieces or lost connections. Kostya knew what to do now; he had learned. His movements were so assured in the kitchen, so intentional, that he overheard the garde-manger whispering to Rio, wondering if this could really be the same guy who’d been here just days before, messing up dishes.

He still got the occasional diners who couldn’t generate an aftertaste, but that wasn’t a problem, exactly. Kostya had agonized when it happened in Hell’s Kitchen, but he saw it differently now. So did his patrons, once he explained. The realization had come from something Maura said:Hungry Ghosts are the kind that come back.The spirits who returned were ones without closure. The kind still searching for peace. The Living who couldn’t feel their departed—it was because their Dead were full. Which, while disappointing for their dining experience, was a pretty good thing, generally. (Still, to soften the blow, Kostya threw in dessert on the house.)

Big picture, it was all much simpler than he’d built it up in his head to be.Almost like the ghosts who wanted dinner had been there, waiting nearby for Kostya to open DUH’s doors. Like they’d been in line, just itching to cross. Maybe he’d somehow made a reputation for himself on the other side. Maybe there was an otherworldly reservation system that tapped into his. Maybe, he flattered himself, his name was over there in lights, being hailed in ghost newspapers or whispered in phantom bars.

And (bonus points) since they’d opened, nothing bad had happened! Nodarknesshad followed anyone across the border. No one was coming for anyone else. It wasOnly Dana, it turned out,and no Zuul. And Maura had been fine—perfectly conscious—this whole time. What a relief! Finally,finally, after all he’d been through, everything was going right.

FRIDAY WAS THEIRlast service of the week, and the final preview seating before their official opening to the public on Saturday. It was nearing close, and they’d had a full house save one no-show (the nerve!). The kitchen was winding down, the dishwashers elbow deep in suds, Big Mike scrubbing down the sauté station. Kostya had notes for the team—new aftertastes he wanted to include in the standard rotation, a happy-dance-inducing pork bellybaobun and a fully loaded (with cornichons and anchovies and seared tuna and cheddar) baked potato that was like Niçoise salad’s sexier cousin.

“Gather round, everybody!” he said. “We got updates. Opening night tomorrow. But first—I gotta tell you. You all kicked ass this week. Made me proud.”

“Don’t get soft, homie,” Rio said, grinning, but Kostya could tell he felt the same way. Their kitchen had absolutely killed.

The crew assembled around garde-manger, Rio at his side with a notebook, a few of the guys still wiping their hands on towels, Steph honing a knife at the counter, the zip and clank of steel.

Kostya was in the middle of the ingredients list for the pork belly whenAllison, the hostess, sprinted down the steps, her face flushed, fear in her eyes.

“He’s here!” she panted. “The no-show? It’s theTimes! Wants the full menu in thirty minutes.” She turned to Kostya, mortified. “And he said to tell you he wants a word.”

WHILE THE KITCHENreturned to a rolling boil, the language decidedly saltier than during the other seatings that week, Kostya buttoned a clean chef’s coat and ascended the stairs.

Dan Evans, MFA, CWPC, FU Very Much, was an unflattering caricature of food critics. The kind of guy who had been known to make chefs cry, to fold restaurants over his knee for a spanking, to take them from toast of the town to just, well, toast. His bad reviews had doomed Angelique in Midtown, Meat Market in Bushwick, and the entire Duck Duck Goose chain (may their commoditized confit rest in peace). To top it all off, he was notoriously shitty to waitstaff, purposefully abusing them just to see if they’d stay polite, to make them, in his words (June 11, 2017, “Aria—More like Recitative”) “sing for their supper without souring the notes.”

Viktor’s publicist had briefed Kostya on him, a whole half hour filled with headshaking and hand-wringing and you-better-nots.

“He will hit right where it hurts,” she informed him. “Gird your loins.”

When Kostya opened the door to Tasting Chamber No. 4, he recognized Dan from the grainy photo the publicist had slipped him. He wasn’t supposed to know what the critics looked like—they were supposed to be anonymous, to dine just like everybody else—but this guy had become so notorious in food circles that people passed around stills to warn one another.

Beyond being generally loathed, he was aggressively unappetizing. Short, squat, his face wide and jowly, with bags beneath his eyes and thick folds in his forehead. Kostya was reminded (a little pang hit him) of FreddieMercury, his ex’s Frenchie, only Dan Evans was far less cute and certainly less friendly. He surveyed Kostya with beady brown eyes, artificially magnified by expensive glasses, and cleared his throat.

“Good evening, sir,” Kostya said carefully. “Our hostess said you wanted to speak with me?”

“You”—he frowned—“are the executive chef? Oh dear.”

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