Free The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand Page B

table twenty. Would you mind running the sauces for me? They’re on the counter.”
    Since he had so politely identified himself, Adrienne could hardly say no, even though his request put her back in the kitchen. She pushed through the door, narrowly missing Bruno with another fondue pot. Adrienne shrieked—to have splattered Bruno with hot oil on her first night! Fiona shot Adrienne a look of blue fire, then called out, “Ordering table fourteen: one sword, three frites—rare, medium rare, medium well, two clubs, one duck SOS, two sushi, and a lamb killed for Mr. Amman-Keller. It appears he didn’t learn anything about food over the winter. Can I help you,
Adrienne
?”
    The use of her name threw her. “Sauces?” she squeaked.
    “Who has time to get the girl some sauces?” Fiona said. “Eddie?”
    A wicked laugh came from the garde-manger station. The rest of the cooks didn’t even deign to answer. Therewere six sauté pans on the range and Adrienne watched a piece of marinated swordfish hit the grill. One of the cooks pulled a pan of steaks from the oven. Paco lowered a batch of fries into the oil.
    Fiona checked the tickets hanging like they were pieces of laundry she wanted to dry. “I don’t have time for this,” she said.
    “Joe said they’d be out on the counter,” Adrienne said.
    “Someone else took those.”
    “Can you tell me where to look?”
    Fiona stormed away. Adrienne watched Eddie construct the lobster club sandwich; she was hungry again. Someone spoke up from behind the pass. “You’d better go with her, girlfriend.”
    Adrienne hurried after Fiona’s braid, her slides clomping even worse in here with the cement floor. Fiona, Adrienne noticed, was wearing black clogs. They stepped into a huge refrigerator. “This is the walk-in,” Fiona said. She used the overly patient, patronizing voice of a teacher speaking to a very stupid pupil. “The sauces are parceled out and kept in here.” She handed Adrienne four bowls that comprised a lazy Susan that went around the fondue pot. “Cocktail, goddess, curry, horseradish. Please identify the sauces when you put them on the table.”
    “Yes, chef,” Adrienne said. Then wondered if that sounded snide. She took the bowls from Fiona. “Thank you for your help.” She wanted to say something to save herself. “Your cooking is the best I’ve ever tasted. You probably hear that all the time.”
    Fiona shook her head, said nothing.
    On the way back to the hot line, Adrienne spied Mario standing at a marble-topped table in a back enclave of the kitchen. He wore surgical gloves and was blasting the top of a crème brûlée with a blowtorch. He was listening to something on a Walkman that was making him dance. When Adrienne and Fiona walked by, he whistled.
    “That’s enough, Romeo,” Fiona called out. “I know you’re not whistling at me.”
    “You got that right, chef,” he said.
    Adrienne was too embarrassed to breathe.
    Back at the pass, the tickets had multiplied in the thirty seconds that they’d been gone. Adrienne had belly flopped with Fiona, and now she had to worry about how to lift the fondue pot to get the sauces in place.
    Someone from the line called out, “Eighty-six the sword.”
    “Damn it!” Fiona shouted, so loudly and angrily that Adrienne nearly dropped the sauces. “How did that happen?”
    “We’re out of ripe avocados,” the cook said. “I thought there was a whole other crate, but I just checked them and they’re hard as rocks. You want to put a different sauce on the fish?”
    “No,” Fiona said. She yanked a ticket down and studied it. “Hey, Adrienne! You want to fly to California and get us some ripe avocados? If you need an escort, Mario will happily join you.”
    The guys on the hot line hooted. Adrienne smiled weakly. She was being teased. Adrienne took it as a possible sign of improvement.
    She ran the sauces to Cat at table twenty, she fetched a bottle of Laurent-Perrier from the wine cave for