"Sit down. Drink your coffee. Tomorrow morning, you will mince me a bowl of garlic. You will not drop a single clove on the floor. You will not flinch when the cameras come."
He sat. He drank his coffee. After a long minute, he said, very quietly, "I never had nobody bet on me before."
"I'm not betting on you, Tony." She set her cup down. "I'm just letting you in the kitchen."
He looked at her. He nodded once. Then he wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist before she could see.
She picked up the white sous chef's hat from the bedside table—the one she had bought sixteen years ago, the first week she became a working chef. She turned it in her hands. The crown was creased exactly where it had always been creased. The brim had a small dark stain from a kitchen in Atlanta she did not need to name out loud. She put it on her head.
In the morning, she would walk into Quarter Street Food Festival with three birds, two coolers, one apprentice, and a notebook her mother had stopped writing in sixteen years ago.
She did not know that Garrett Holloway, sitting in his own kitchen across town, was on his third whiskey and his second hour of staring at a freeze-frame of a signature on a screen.
The Quarter Street Food Festival opened at 6:00 in the morning under a flat gray sky. Vendors rolled their gear onto the central plaza in trucks, in carts, on flatbeds. The festival had been the city's anchor cultural event for fifteen years: 58 booths this year, three judges, a single best-of-festival prize of $25,000. Vanessa Sinclair had been on its planning committee for nine of those fifteen years; Garrett Holloway was its anchor television personality.
Mama B's Plate had been added to the lineup four days ago when the bet had hit the news. The two booths sat on opposite ends of the central row.
On the south side, the Sinclair's tent stretched the length of three regular booths: vinyl banners with Garrett's face in three-quarter profile, a live broadcast crew from cable with two cameras on dollies, three commercial fryers preheating to 350 degrees, five sous chefs in matching black coats, and a wood plaque on the front counter that read, "King of the Fry: Featured Sinclair's Quarter Recipes."
On the north side, Mama B's Plate: one fryer, one grill, one folding prep table, two coolers under the table, and a handwritten chalkboard reading, "Buttermilk fried chicken, summer succotash, peach hand pie." Brianna was in her white sous chef's hat, and Tony was in a clean apron mincing garlic. They had no banner. They had no broadcast crew. They had no microphone.
At 8:00, Garrett began his pre-show. He worked at the fryer with the cameras tight on his hands. He talked through the brine—twelve hours in his proprietary blend, dredged twice in seasoned flour, fried in two stages, the second stage at exactly 325 degrees. He waved a thermometer. He waved a thigh. The crowd around the Sinclair's tent grew to 280 by 9:00. Vanessa, in cream linen, worked the press in a separate area.
At 10:00, Brianna lit her fryer. She did not announce it. She did not look up. She set the temperature. She tested the oil with the end of a dry wooden chopstick; when the wood released a steady ring of small bubbles, she nodded once.