ingredients.
“Okay, for real. Why are you really here?” I ask Sebastian once Keva’s given us the instructions to get started. “Looking for a fire hazard? Violation of liquor license?”
“I like champagne, and I’d like to learn how to cook,” he says, pulling a jar of capers out of our basket and studying it.
“You can’t cook?”
“Not really. Can you?”
“No,” I admit. “Well, sort of. Growing up, my brother, sister, and I all had to take care of dinner one night a week. My sister sometimes used an actual cookbook and put together something passably good, but my brother and I mostly embraced boxed pastas and jarred sauce.”
“Did you have a specialty?” He hands me the package of smoked salmon.
“I make a pretty impressive Hamburger Helper, and my Chef Boyardee skills aren’t bad either. You?”
“Delivery. I’m really, really good at ordering delivery,” he replies.
I smile a little. I think maybe he does too.
Once our ingredients are laid out, Keva walks us through the next steps, encouraging those of us without a clear view of her table to come up for a closer look, which Sebastian and I do. She dices the red onion and salmon, grates a little lemon peel, mixes the blini batter… She makes it look easy.
Twenty minutes later, Sebastian looks over from the metal bowl he’s stirring and inspects my cutting board. “It looks like you’ve just dissected something, and not very well.”
“Yeah, well.” I go on my toes to peer into his mixing bowl. “That looks like brain matter. Did hers have so many bubbles?”
Our eyes meet for a second. “Switch,” we say at the same time as he hands me the bowl and moves behind me to take my place.
Ten laughing minutes after that, we sip the Deutz Millésime Robyn’s selected and stand before the ultimate jury. Keva is standing in front of our counter, hands on hips, staring at our finished plate. She has yet to say a word.
Sebastian and I look at each other out of the corner of our eyes, and he rolls his lips inward as though to keep from laughing. I’m less successful, and a giggle bubbles out as I look again at what can only be described as a massacre. Somehow our pancake has managed to be both burned and completely raw, the salmon has been overworked to the point of looking like mush, and Sebastian got way too into grating the lemon, so there’s a fine film of bright yellow covering the entire plate in a very neon-mold-type fashion.
Keva looks up and shakes her head at me. “How have you learned nothing from me over the years?”
“Okay, now hold on,” I say, still trying not to laugh. “It doesn’t look pretty, but it tastes good. You always say that it doesn’t matter how food looks, as long as it’s tasty.”
“I’m a professional caterer. I have literally never said that,” she says. “But you know what, go ahead and test that theory.”
She hands us each a fork and lifts her eyebrows. Sebastian and I tentatively accept them. “You first,” he says under his breath.
“Chicken,” I mutter, and gingerly scoop a small bite onto my fork and lift it to my mouth.
“Oh God.”
“Good?” he asks, taking a bite of his own. He makes one chewing motion then stops. “Oh God.” He echoes.
I manage to chew and swallow the one bite, but I do not go for seconds, and neither does he. It’s too salty from the capers (we added extra), weirdly crunchy from the lemon seed we accidentally got in there, and just all-around way too mushy.
Keva only shakes her head and walks away, looking bemused.
“We’ll do better on the next one,” I say, gulping water.
“We certainly can’t do worse,” he says, drinking his own water.
Robyn explains the next wine—the sparkling from England Keva was raving about earlier—and we wait as she and Josh wander around the room, filling glasses before we get started on the crab cake course.
“Seafood was a gutsy move,” he says. “Aren’t you worried about the shop smelling like a fish market tomorrow?”
“Keva assures me it’s only bad seafood that smells, and that fresh seafood like she’s selected has no smell at all as long as we take out the trash immediately after.”
“You believe her?”
“Not particularly.” I pick up a cracker, which is the only edible thing on the table. “But I comfort myself knowing that if we go out of business because it smells like fish, the building owner will be the one who has to deal