I walked past the line cooks, past Luis, who wouldn’t meet my eyes, past Carlos, who looked uncomfortable. I walked through the dining room, where forty customers pretended not to stare. I walked past my mother at the host stand, her face stricken.
“Maya,” she started.
I kept walking.
I got into my beat-up 2008 Toyota Corolla and drove to my apartment in Echo Park. I sat in my car for twenty minutes, too numb to move. Then I went inside, lay on my bed, and finally let myself cry.
My phone rang at 11:30 p.m.
My mother.
“Mija, are you okay?”
“Did he send you to call me?”
“No. He’s still angry. But Maya, you know how he gets during service. The pressure.”
“Don’t defend him, Mama.”
“I’m not defending him. What he did was wrong. But he’s your father. He loves you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
She sighed. “Come by tomorrow. Talk to him. He’ll have calmed down by then.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m not coming back, Mama. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
“Don’t be dramatic. Where else are you going to work?”
That question stung because it was valid. I had dropped out of college to work at Casa Torres. I had no degree, no other experience. Restaurant work was all I knew.
“I’ll figure something out,” I said.
“Mija, be reasonable.”
“Good night, Mama.”
I hung up.
For the next three days, I sat in my apartment applying to every restaurant job I could find. Line cook, prep cook, dishwasher. I didn’t care. I just needed work.
On day four, I got a call from a small Italian restaurant in Silver Lake called Lucia. The owner, an older woman named Lucia Rossi, needed a line cook.
“You have experience?” she asked during my phone interview.
“Three years at Casa Torres.”
“Torres? The Mexican place in East LA?”
“Yes.”
“Good food. Why did you leave?”
“Creative differences with the owner.”
She laughed. “In this business, that usually means family drama. Let me guess, your father.”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“My son worked for me for two years before I fired him. Couldn’t take criticism. Thought he knew better than me.” She paused. “You still talk to your father?”
“No.”
“Good. Family and business don’t mix. When can you start?”
I started at Lucia’s the next Monday. The pay was terrible, $14 an hour, barely enough to cover rent. The kitchen was tiny, the equipment ancient. We did maybe fifty covers on a good night. But Lucia was a brilliant chef. She had trained in Italy and worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Rome and Florence. She taught me things my father never had.
Proper technique. Flavor balance. How to build a dish from the ground up.
“Your knife skills are sloppy,” she told me on day two. “Who taught you to chop like that?”
“My father.”
“Well, he taught you wrong. Watch.”