The Chef's Choice / The Boss's Proposal. Kristin Hardy

passing plates to one another, saucing and garnishing, each of them working on three and four dishes simultaneously.

      And as in a ballet, there was always one who was impossible to stop watching. Damon worked the end of the line in constant motion, bending, reaching, flipping, stirring, shaking a sauté pan with one hand while seasoning an entrée with the other. And, she swore, plating up with a third. There was a precision to his movements and more than a little grace, as though he were indeed going through the moves of a dance. He seemed totally absorbed in the process, bending over every plate as he worked with a swift, silent, almost ferocious concentration.

      “Two scallop, veal medium rare, rib eye well,” Andy called out.

      “Two scallop, veal medium rare, rib eye dead.” Damon reached to the shelf above the stove line for a trio of sauté pans, setting them on the stove to heat.

      “One rib eye dead,” echoed Roman with a grin, slapping the cut on the grill.

      Grabbing a cylindrical bain-marie from its simmering water bath, Damon ladled a sauce into a fourth pan and put it on a back burner to reduce. “Where are we at on table ten?” he asked, moving a sizzling pan of what looked like tenderloin from stovetop to oven.

      “Ready on the rib eye, one salmon in the salamander, one on the grill,” Roman responded.

      “Risotto’s done. One minute on the lobsters,” put in Rosalie, winding pasta around a meat fork to provide a bed for one of her lobster tails.

      By the time she’d finished speaking, Damon had the veal seasoned and into the pan with the shallots to sear off. “Okay, stop where you are on the last order. Let’s focus on getting this eight-top out.” Reaching into one of the ovens, he pulled out two sauté pans, each with a piece of meat that was finished cooking. Lamb loin, Cady recognized.

      He flipped the meat onto the cutting board and deftly sliced each loin into medallions, leaving them together like a sideways stack of poker chips. Even as he reached out, Rosalie passed him a pair of plates with mashed potatoes piled in one corner. He pulled a bubbling sauté pan of what looked like wine sauce from the stove and drizzled a circle onto each plate, then used his knife to lay the stack of medallions in the middle, pressing them gently over so that the perfect rounds of lamb lay against one another in the ring of red.

      “Veg, Rosalie,” he said, sliding over the two plates so she could add the tiniest zucchini and yellow squash Cady had ever seen. Meanwhile, Rosalie had traded him her two lobster plates. With a squeeze bottle, he added a few precise dots of lemon butter sauce around the edges of each, adhering to some vision that only he could see.

      Meanwhile, Andy the expediter was madly sprinkling sliver-thin parsley chiffonade over the lamb and risotto and sticking what looked suspiciously like fancy potato chips into the top of the mashed potatoes. He and Damon slid the plates across the counter to the pass.

      Less than a minute had elapsed.

      “All right, table ten up,” Damon called. “Let’s go, people. Hands on hot food.” He clapped his hands. The runners swarmed in.

      Cady cleared her throat. “Chef?” she said.

      Damon turned from adding knobs of butter to two of his sauté pans. He started to flash a smile. Until he saw the plate in her hands. “What’s that?"

      “Fois gras glazed tenderloin from table four.”

      “I can see that.” He flipped the veal. “The question is what is it doing back in the kitchen?"

      This was the delicate part, she thought. Little was more irritating to a chef than having to interrupt the complicated dance of getting orders out the door to redo a plate he’d thought was safely gone. And when that chef was Damon Hurst, almost anything could happen.

      “The customer isn’t happy. He says it’s too dry. He wants a sauce."

      Damon’s eyes narrowed. “Table four, that was medium well, right?”

      Cady nodded.

      “Well, yeah, it’s dry. It’s been cooked to death.”

      “I tried to suggest the rib eye, but he didn’t want to hear it.”

      “Roman, toss this one in the Frialator,” Damon directed, slapping a new piece of tenderloin onto a sizzle platter and sliding it down the counter as if he were playing kitchen shuffleboard. “Set phasers for medium well."

      “Aye, aye, Captain.” Roman grinned.

      Damon turned back to the stove to get the veal in the oven and add scallops to the other two sauté pans. “Now what’s his sauce issue?"

      “He says when he saw glazed, he wasn’t expecting a crust,” Cady said.

      “Did you tell him that’s how the dish is made?”

      “He didn’t want to listen to me.” “Maybe he’ll listen to me,” Damon said with an edge to his voice.

      The printer chattered. “Three lobster, one scallop, two tenderloin medium, one lamb rare,” Andy read. “I don’t really think—”

      “I’ve got to get some entrées plated,” Damon interrupted.

      “But what do I tell him?” Cady asked desperately.

      “Leave it to me. I know how to handle these kinds of idiots. Now go take care of your tables.” He turned away, hands already moving in a blur.