Dine With Me Page 4

  He gave Clancy a wink. “You’re in for a treat.”

  * * *

  Treat was an understatement.

  As Clancy coveted his last bite of The French Laundry’s famed oysters and pearls—two trimmed, meaty oysters in butter, eggs and tapioca pearls, and topped with a giant dollop of caviar—semi-orgasmic seemed a more accurate description than merely treat. Each spoonful of yummy exploded with texture and flavor in his mouth. Luxury in every bite.

  Same as the tiny bites that had preceded it—a medley of amuse-bouche plates and a sunchoke soup Clancy would sell his soul for. Like he’d sell his soul for the blissed-out look on Miller’s handsome face. Long lashes lowered, blue eyes slitted, and a secret satisfied smile hidden in his beard. He’d been uptight earlier at the hotel, then relaxed as they’d laid down the ground rules, but the tension had returned as they’d neared the restaurant—eyes, forehead, and mouth corners creased, jaw tightened, and shoulders reared back. But all those battle-ready tells disappeared with a bowl of shellfish, eggs, and caviar.

  Clancy likewise surrendered, using the delicate mother-of-pearl spoon to scoop the last bite into his mouth, humming contentedly.

  Miller smiled from across the table. “Live up to the hype?”

  “More than.” Clancy wiped his mouth with the linen napkin and had barely placed it back in his lap when two suited waiters stepped into the room off the main dining area where they were seated. With just three tables, a slanted roof, and a view of the reserve cellar through a window in the stone wall, the intimate ante-chamber was quieter than the main dining room, though even that space was smaller than Clancy had imagined. As a whole, the area for servers to maneuver was minimal and yet they moved about with effortless coordination, like they were on a wide-open football field instead.

  Or on a stage, more precisely.

  The two servers at their table cleared the plates and moved back out of the room, the maître d’ who’d greeted them at the door stepping in after. “Satisfactory, gentlemen?” Lucy asked, her smile genuine and friendly.

  “Excellent,” Miller said. “As always.”

  Another suited man, older with a kind face and stylishly coiffed salt-and-pepper hair, appeared around the corner and clasped Miller’s shoulder. “Chef, good to see you.’”

  A passing waiter double-tapped Lucy on the shoulder. “I’m needed in the kitchen,” she said, then to Clancy, “We’ll be sure to get you back there before you leave, so you can see it too.”

  Lucy ducked out and the older gentleman moved farther in, holding out his hand. “Ben Turner, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Rhodes.”

  “Clancy, please,” he said, returning the handshake.

  “Ben’s the manager here,” Miller said. “He and Lucy keep the front of house running smoothly.”

  Clancy adjusted his glasses and looked over Miller’s shoulder to the dining room again. “It’s like a ballet. They all know their steps, when and where to turn, and when to exit stage right or left.” He thought to mention the chef’s partner, who he knew from articles he’d read had enlisted a dance choreographer to train the waiters to move so gracefully, but then he remembered the rules, and simply said, “It’s incredible.”

  Ben squeezed Miller’s shoulder. “Can you believe this big guy used to dance?”

  Clancy’s attention shot back to Miller. “You waited?”

  Miller nodded. “I was out here for a year before moving into the kitchen.” He shifted in his chair, body and gaze angled toward the dining room. “Chefs should have this experience too. It’s important to understand how every part of the beast operates.”

  “He was a favorite, in the dining room and the kitchen,” Ben said fondly. “Seven years ago now and the regulars still ask about him.”

  Clancy didn’t doubt it. Miller’s love of food and the industry was obvious already and to a guest, that translated. As did blue eyes, chestnut hair, a sexy smile, and the touch of Southern drawl.

  Ben’s voice broke through Clancy’s inadvertent staring, and blushing, if the heat hitting Clancy’s cheeks was any indication. But neither Miller nor Ben seemed to notice as they discussed wine for the rest of the meal. “Sloan said you wanted to open the Conterno.”

  “Yes, with the truffles, please.”

  Truffles. Clancy suppressed an excited shiver.

  Ben’s response chased it the rest of the way off. “You sure about that?” he asked Miller. “You’ve had it in the cellar for years.”

  “It’s time,” Miller replied.

  “All right. We’ll get it decanting while you continue through the first half.” Ben smiled again at Clancy, but something in the expression was too practiced this time. “I hope you continue to enjoy, Clancy.”

  “Thank you.” He waited for Ben to leave, and for the approaching pair of waiters to lay out the next course in front of them—crispy frog legs with an egg-shaped dollop of creamed spinach and round drops of sweet and peppery condiments—before asking Miller, “Exactly how many years have you hung on to that bottle?”

  “I bought it with my first paycheck from here.”

  “You really don’t have to break out the good stuff for me.”

  Miller crunched through a small bite of frog leg, chewed, and swallowed, his satisfied smile reappearing once more. “It’s not just for you.”

  This meal wasn’t either, Clancy sensed, even if it was part of the tour. He let the matter of the wine go—distracted by the frog legs, then the crab wrapped in fluffy layers of pasty, then the roulette of “tête de cochon” topped with a fried quail egg abed a float of sauce gribiche. Moat was more like it; he had absolutely zero objections.

  Despite the couple of earlier speed bumps, conversation flowed more easily as the meal progressed, the both of them trained to talk to strangers, yet to Clancy, this didn’t feel like sitting across the table from someone he’d just met. As promised, Miller gamely answered all his questions about how this or that was prepared, about working with the local purveyors, and about the white wine—a sauvignon blanc from Pouilly-Fumé—that he’d selected to go with this portion of the meal. All of it, every bite, every sip, was a taste bonanza in Clancy’s mouth.

  Especially the seemingly simple, divine dish that came next. Two razor-thin potato slices had been pressed together to form a sort of potato Lik-A-Stix that was stuck in layers of truffle custard and truffle gravy, all in an egg shell with its top removed. A moan may have slipped out as Clancy finished it in three bites.

  Miller smirked. “You want to ask for another, don’t you?”

  “Who wouldn’t? It’s so simple and yet not.”

  “And yet not. Just getting the damn top off the egg is a skill.”

  They shared a laugh as the waiters removed the plates, then Clancy, giving up the ghost on manners after a bottle of champagne and two glasses of wine, rested his elbows on the table and sank into the comfort that was emanating from his stomach. “Are we starting here because it’s close to home?”

  “In part.” Miller sipped from his glass and sat back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “It’s also the place every foodie wants to visit, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yeah, but you have to enjoy it too.” Surprise flashed across Miller’s face and Clancy added, “You’re schlepping all over the country with a stranger at the holidays. I could have been a total dick.”

  Miller raised a brow. “Who says you’re not?”

  Clancy put a hand to his chest in affected outrage. “Me?”

  The bushy chestnut brow dropped on a grin.

  Clancy carried on, smiling too. “But if I was, which I’m not, at least you would enjoy the food.”

  Miller shifted forward again, matching Clancy’s posture, bringing them nose to nose over the table. “You’re just trying to get the list out of me.”

  Clancy thought to shrug a shoulder bu
t he was too caught up in the flecks of gold he’d only just noticed in Miller’s eyes. His admiration was interrupted, however, by waiters entering with their next course, Lucy trailing behind them with a polished wooden box. Laughter bubbled out of Clancy as he got a good look at the plates. “They look like—”

  “We call it the Flying Nun,” Ben supplied, as he slipped in after the waiters, balancing a tray of wine things. He placed two giant glasses on the table and held out the bottle of Barolo for Miller to inspect. Miller nodded, and Ben, after handing off the tray to the departing waiters, filled their glasses with the wine from the decanter. “We actually retired these dishes, but they were Miller’s favorite so I dug them out special, just for him.”

  Hands over his face, Miller groaned. “I dropped so many.”

  Eyes on the amusing plate that looked like a nun’s habit, Clancy didn’t notice Lucy approaching until the overwhelming scent of earth hit his nose. “White truffles from Alba,” she said, displaying the delicacy in the open box. “Pairs perfectly with the wine and pasta.”

  By the time she was done shaving God-only-knew how many ounces of truffle over his plate, Clancy couldn’t even see the pasta.

  A knee knocked his under the table. “Stay with me,” Miller whispered.

  Clancy wasn’t sure what was more intoxicating—the earthy aroma that filled the room, Miller’s gravelly voice full of humor, or the heat radiating from the leg next to his.

  Lucy tapped the last shaving off onto Miller’s plate and Ben set the decanter and bottle on the table. “Enjoy,” he said, squeezing Miller’s shoulder once more. Clancy could sense the friendly affection there.

  Clancy picked up his fork and wound strands of the brown butter drizzled tagliatelle around the tines. Spearing extra truffle shavings onto the end, he raised the fork to his mouth and took the single best bite of food of his life. He closed his eyes, savoring the decadence on his tongue. “Okay,” he said, eyes half-slitted. “This is just flat-out orgasmic.”

  Miller laughed out loud, drawing stares from the nearby tables. He lowered his voice and whispered, “Don’t make a mess in your pants.”

  Clancy muffled his laughter in his wineglass. It truly was a great pairing, the dry wine wiping clean his palate so he could experience that first rich, silky taste of pasta and truffle over and over again.

  After a few bites, he slowed himself by asking Miller again why TFL first.

  Miller laid down his fork and sipped at his wine, looking around wistfully. “They know how to treat their diners. How to read a table like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Interact or not, pacing, portions, without the diner having to say a word. It’s customer service at its finest.”

  Clancy could see that, just in the different way the waiters handled the three tables in this room. Social and familiar with theirs, polite and friendly with the second-time guests next to them, and practically invisible to the business dinner of four behind them. “And the food is damn good too.”

  “That too, though it’s not for everyone. No restaurant is.”

  “Fools,” Clancy said, and shoveled in another forkful of decadent pasta.

  “They also treat their staff right. It’s one of the more civil kitchen environments that I’ve worked in. I wanted—”

  He cut himself off, the stiffness from earlier in the night returning. He didn’t have to say the words for Clancy to hear them. He’d wanted to run his own restaurant this way. With kindness, civility, and attentiveness. Though he was just getting to know the man, Clancy suspected Miller had done just that, for the time it’d been open. Clearly that hadn’t been enough. Clancy wanted to ask more, but Miller had cut himself off from going there and he wasn’t supposed to be the focus; the food and this experience were. Clancy wouldn’t go there either, at least not now. They were here tonight to enjoy themselves, both of them. “I’ll tell you what I want,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  Clancy cut his eyes to the decanter. “More wine.”

  Miller picked it up and topped off their glasses. “Pace yourself. We have a ways to go still.”

  Clancy may have been imagining things—there’d been three bottles of wine already—but to his ears, it didn’t sound like Miller was only talking about tonight’s meal. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  * * *

  The food orgy didn’t stop with pasta and truffles. Buttery lobster claws on risotto enriched with mascarpone cheese—how was that even legal? Roasted squab served with young strawberries and rainbow chard. Dry-aged rib eye with fall vegetables and the best bordelaise sauce Clancy had ever tasted.

  After a cheese course of Tête de Moine, the aroma of the fragrant cheese filling the room as Lucy shaved florets off the wheel table-side, they were treated to a dizzying array of desserts. The Laundry’s signature coffee semifreddo and cinnamon-sugar doughnuts, a pecan tart with bourbon-laced Chantilly cream, and a decadent white truffle sundae, because nothing said “OTT Luxury” like truffle-steeped milk churned into ice cream and served with a dessert wine that tasted sweet and smelled like...truffles.

  And after all that, Lucy and Ben had the nerve to send him off with a bag of snacks—cookies, chocolates, granola, and fruit—“in case he got hungry.” He was still giggling at that absurd statement as Miller shooed him out the door. He’d be lucky if he ate again this week, which was problematic, as they were flying to their next destination tomorrow.

  “Did you walk through the restaurant’s garden today?” Miller asked.

  Clancy shook his head dramatically, then had to adjust his glasses. “Was too busy enjoying my lie-in on the Egyptian cotton sheets.”

  “Your lie-in?” Miller laughed. “Were you watching BBC all day?”

  “It was raining outside.”

  Miller laughed and nudged him across the street toward the garden. “Walk, then. It’ll help the digestion.”

  Clancy buttoned his overcoat and patted his belly. “I’m not sure how I got it all in there.”

  “Never had a meal like that before?”

  Even with the moon shining bright, Clancy had to watch his step over the curb and wood mulch, then onto the grass and level ground again at the edge of the garden. It was mushy from the earlier rain, but the thick grass kept his Oxfords out of the mud, mostly. “I’ve been to places with tasting menus before, but nothing quite like that.”

  Miller shoved his hands in his coat pockets and turned right, down the first row. “Around LA?”

  “There and Chicago.” Clancy stopped at each placard they passed, reading what winter vegetables grew in the neatly maintained plots.

  “Alinea?”

  “That was my last Michelin-star meal, before this one.”

  “The flavor Grant packs into those courses is incredible.”

  “Right!” Clancy had talked incessantly about that meal for weeks after. “That truffle explosion course.”

  “One of the best,” Miller agreed.

  At the end of the row, they peeked into the chicken pen where all the residents were tucked into their coop or hay for the night. They turned the corner and headed down the next row. Clancy hung back, taking in the impressive scope of the cultivated garden, alight in the moonlight. And the impressive backside in plaid pants that walked ahead of him, sure-footed, like he’d traversed this particular ground countless times.

  “How’d you get into food?” Miller asked. “Especially with all those years of schooling and residency.”

  “LA’s a big town, you know.” Clancy thanked his long legs, able in just a few strides to catch up with Miller, who’d stopped next to a half-harvested plot of willowy, leafy stalks that towered over them both. At least eight feet high, they looked like corn stalks, but not. “Holy shit, what are these?”

  “Remember that soup you were moaning over at the start of the meal?” Miller laughed when Clancy stuck his tong
ue out at him. “All that—” he waved a finger up and down at the stalks, then pointed at the ground “—for a bulb down there. Jerusalem artichoke, also known as—”

  “Sunchoke. I had no idea this was how they were grown.”

  “Bitch to clean,” Miller said, as he led them on down the row. “And you didn’t answer my question. Were you always a foodie? Because you look like you barely eat.”

  “Hey!” Clancy backhanded Miller’s gut. “We can’t all be bears.”

  Miller feigned injury, clutching his belly, and trapping Clancy’s hand underneath. Their hands tangled briefly, so did their gazes, sparking like they had at their first meeting. Clancy hoped like hell his blush wasn’t noticeable in the moonlight. He drew his hand out from under Miller’s big warm one.

  “I liked food well enough as a kid. Mom could cook, and we had a chef that came in once a week to prepare meals and such. I’d hang out with her, watch what she did on those nights when my parents would take their night out on the town. That is, until Mom left.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Clancy said. “They all still get along. My dad and stepdad even golf together, if they’re in the same town. My parents still love each other, but they weren’t in love any longer.”

  It wasn’t exactly tension that rippled through Miller, but a sort of pensiveness that made Clancy wonder again about what his mother had mentioned on the plane. About Miller and Sloan. But not wanting to destroy the happy bubble cast by the meal and moonlight, Clancy didn’t poke. “Anyway, when she left, he lost his weekly dining companion.”

  “So you filled in?”

  “It was the only thing I could do to get him out of the house those first few months, aside from when he went to work.”

  “I thought you said—”

  Maybe not poke directly, but Clancy could offer Miller his sympathy, vague as it was. “Didn’t mean he didn’t miss his best friend.”