The lunch crowd hadn't yet arrived, the business types with their stripy shirts, leather braces and corporate credit cards, the tourists who wanted to taste the famed pleasures on the cheap, the wealthy retirees who came on a particular day every week, even every day of every week.
Rod busied himself in the kitchen. He had training, knew how every dish went together, so Sophie was happy to see him running lunch. Dinner no, lunch yeah. Anyway, it kept his interest in the place high.
So Rod worked on the specials. Linguini - little tongues - with prawns in a pesto sauce. And steak tartare - steak à l'Americaine - with raw egg, capers and onions. Both dishes would have a little something special, something to make the business types and the tourists and the retirees sit up and take notice. There was a new chef in Oral Pleasures today. Just taste the difference.
Rod wore chef's whites. Tucked into his apron was a syringe full of fat. Woman ass fat. He made up a batch of base, enough for maybe ten orders of the linguini special. He squirted half the syringe into the heavy frying pan, along with plenty of diced onion and garlic. He gently sweated these off, the fat combining with the sulphurs of the bulb vegetables to cause an involuntary salivation. The other kitchen staff prepping everything else for lunch, the hand-cut fries, the sliced and diced onions, the salad greens, the fresh pesto, they each looked to Rod and smiled. Something smells real good, boss. Then he set the mix aside, ready to be cooked with the prawns as ordered, then mixed with the linguini and a little more of that oh-so-amazing house pesto.
The steak tartare didn't require cooking, so could be made up. He did five portions, prime aged beef, finely ground, with the rest of the special fat and sea salt and ground black pepper. He mixed the ingredients well with his bare hands and made up the six ounce patties, covered them with cling-film and into the refrigerator. Nice. If they didn't move, they would be fried up as burgers at dinner service.
'Order! Table five. Two linguini. One tartare. One fillet, medium rare, mash and onion rings.'
'And so it begins,' said Rod.
The secrets of the trade were so clear to him now, it was like enlightenment. Fat, ideally from cream and butter. Salt. Sugar. Use these ingredients copiously and the food will taste great. Almost every restaurant used this golden threesome to satisfy their customers. But the human fat that Rod had added to the raw steak and prawn dishes would deliver the creamiest, butteriest mouth-feel, the ultimate flavour. They'd love it.
The fillet steak went on the grill first. Its thickness needed time, even to achieve a juicy medium. The creamy, salty mash sat in a hot pot, ready to go, just a knob of butter. He called for a portion of onion rings. He plated up the steak tartare then, sliding the patty of meat onto a fresh plate, cracking a room temp egg and gently spilling it onto the pink and moist centre, the bullseye. A sprinkling of chopped onion and some capers and a final few grains of sea salt and set it aside.
He set a wide frying pan over a high heat, dropped the linguini into a pot of boiling, salted water, a dash of olive oil and a good pinch of fresh basil in there as well. As the pasta cooked, the frying pan received the fatty onion and garlic mix, sizzled and spat. After only a few seconds, two handfuls of grey prawns from a sustainable farm in Ecuador, their sugars instantly caramelising, bringing out a fabulous pink hue, like tiny flamingos dancing on a salty lake.
Stir the pasta. Nearly there. More orders came in, mostly steaks and lamb chops. Time of year. He passed these out to his team. Another tartare, also passed on as the prawns were done.
He took the pan off the gas ring, let it rest while he tasted the linguini, proving it al dente - firm to the tooth - drained it in a big stainless steel colander, watching the steam, the main cause of injury in restaurants. Jesus, cappuccinos and second degree burns, it's not funny.
So the pasta went back into the dry pot with a knob of butter, then the prawns with their human touch, then a couple of generous spoons of the house pesto. Stir it around, then spoon it carefully onto the plates. Clean around the edges of the plates, then onto the service area. Put up the tartare. The steak was perfect. He called for Pedro, a reliable fry chef from somewhere south in Brazil, to plate up the mash and onion rings.
'Already done, chef.'
'Thanks, Pedro. Service, table five!'
And the dishes were away. Rod watched as the waiters smilingly presented the plates to the table of four. He wiped his sweating forehead with his forearm, had a quick look around at his team, all okay, got started on the next linguini order. He worked fast, but couldn't resist watching table five as they took pleasure in the flesh of Eve.