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She then turned to look at me, mouth gaping.
“What kind of lodge are you running that requires so little food?” She raised an eyebrow. “And why didn’t you say something about this? There’s enough space here to feed more than three-hundred people if you had enough talent, but you only stock enough to feed perhaps a hundred at most each meal.” She shook her head, scanning the cabinets again. “Good thing I’m here early enough to stock the basics before the season opens. There’s literally nothing good to eat in here.”
I waited for her to stop her lecture. I felt annoyed, but I tried to remind myself she meant it with a good heart. This wasn’t getting angry for the sake of getting angry. However, it did rub me the wrong way that she thought she could tell me what she needed and what I should have been able to supply for her.
When she was finished, I just stared her square in the eye.
“The people who come here come to fish and enjoy their time in nature, Miss Pennington,” I responded curtly. “You need to keep their meals simple. People need more than snail and string bean a la mode to be able to fish – and we have a few who come here to hunt in the various non-national park wilderness areas we have here. They supply their own food with the animals they hunt.”
“A la mode means—”
I cut her off. “Look, our menu is sandwiches and basic sides. That’s what we serve, and that’s what this kitchen is stocked for. We don’t need a pantry of fancy spices or appliances because we don’t serve complicated things.”
Her face visibly dropped, and she just closed the cabinet that she had been rummaging around in with an abrupt snap. I presumed she was looking for something else to cook with, but she wouldn’t find many appliances or extra gadgets in here. We kept it simple because the people weren’t here for every meal. Breakfast was probably the only meal everyone ate in the dining room, and even for that people came through at different times and we mostly served dry cereal.
Only during the winter was this dining room ever full because it was far too cold to eat outside.
“Then, perhaps you should show me where I’ll be staying…”
She muttered something under her breath, but I could only catch the general tone of it all. She sounded annoyed.
I felt annoyed.
Instead of saying anything about it to her, I nodded and led her out of the kitchen and up into the halls of the lodge itself.
“You’ll be living in room two-twenty. It’s right beside the stairs outside that lead to the kitchen door, and I believe you’ll have the best luck in this room with everything,” I said as I handed her the key. “We only have one spare key, so if you lose this, I’ll have to get another key made.”
“I’ll be careful with it. Promise.”
Her tone still sounded a bit snippy, and I figured she was still frustrated at the state of the kitchen. How was I supposed to know that she had expected something different? I had thought that all the restaurants she worked with came with all the equipment she was supposed to use and nothing more. My kitchen had everything she needed.
“I’ll take it from here. Think I can find my room on my own, thank you, Mr. Delaney.”
With that, she walked away.
I let her. This was not a good time to address anything else with her, and though I wanted to tell her that her attitude would be a problem, I didn’t have much of a choice right now. Stuck without a chef for the season was far worse than stuck with a chef who believed she had all the answers.
Rick walked over to me a few minutes later, as I stood getting other things at the front desk ready for the guests that would be coming in a few days.
“How’s the new chef?”
“She’s… different,” I replied. “No, she’s difficult,” I corrected. Then I sighed. “She thinks this is a five-star hotel and can’t comprehend that simple is just fine. I might have made a mistake hiring her,” I admitted with frustration.
Rick laughed a little.
“Who knows? It might be the kind of change we need here,” he teased. “Most of the complaints you’ve ever gotten about the lodge have been about the boring food, after all!”
Chapter seven
Laurel
While I knew that the lodge was under new management since the last time I had been to Waterfront, Idaho, I could not believe the audacity of the man I was supposed to answer to while employed here. To be a chef meant that I needed certain appliances, certain spices, and a certain degree of creative freedom to come up with a menu for the place. While I may not have been able to guess that I would have such a dirty kitchen to work in from the interview on the phone, I supposed that was my fault for not asking about the state of the kitchen.
Frustrated, I took out my phone. I knew Bailey didn’t actually have anything on her calendar today. She’d just told Luke that she needed to leave so that I could start my orientation. I texted her.
Ugh. Rough first hour of job. Want to pick me up and go for a drive?
She texted back almost immediately.
