Chef Tattoo Quotes

I walked in without knocking. The screen door banged to a close behind me announcing my presence. I followed my nose to the kitchen and found Kaleb standing by the stove. He stirred something that smelled absolutely delicious a wooden spoon in one hand and a huge chef’s knife in the other. “Are you sober?” I asked from the doorway. He turned and leveled a smile at me that made me a little wobbly. “I am." “Good. Because if not I was going to take the deadly kitchen utensil away from you.” I crossed the room and pulled myself up to sit on the counter beside the stove. A cutting board full of green peppers and two uncut stalks of celery waited for attention from the knife. Melted butter and diced onions bubbled in a sauté pan on the stove. “You cook." Kaleb was so pretty I was jealous. Pretty with ripped muscles and a tattoo of a red dragon covering most of his upper body. “Yes,” he said. “I cook.” “Do you usually wear a wife beater and,” I pushed him back a little by his shoulder “an apron that says ‘Kiss the Cook’ while you’re doing it? ” He leaned so close to me my heart skipped a couple of beats. “I’ll wear it all the time if you’ll consider it.

It’s more common for people to get fire tattoos. Symbols of passion, transformation, change. But I wanted smoke because it’s what remains. After the fire, after everything is destroyed, you’re left with smoke and ash. You’ve gotta make somethin’ out of it.

Everywhere Gage looked, his fingers itched to touch and his brain raced to keep up. A snake coiled beneath his right pec, an eagle took flight over his left. Stars, numbers, and Celtic symbols fought for real estate. Gage would need weeks to explore the storied terrain of Brady’s body. Better put in for some vacation time now.

The stainless-steel mold gives the cheese its disc shape, about ten inches thick and two feet in diameter. But the mold serves another increasingly important function, as an anticounterfeiting measure. The molds are specially produced by the Consorzio Parmigiano-Reggiano, an independent and self-regulating industry group funded by fees levied on cheese producers. Carefully tracked and numbered, molds are supplied only to licensed and inspected dairies, and each is lined with Braille-like needles that crate a pinpoint pattern instantly recognizable to foodies, spelling out the name of the cheese over and over again in a pattern forever imprinted on its rind. A similar raised-pin mold made of plastic is slipped between the steel and the cheese to permanently number the rind of every lot so that any wheel can be traced back to a particular dairy and day of origin. Like a tattoo, these numbers and the words Parmigiano-Reggiano become part of the skin. Later in its life, because counterfeiting the King of Cheeses has become a global pastime, this will be augmented with security holograms... One night, friends came to town and invited Alice out to dinner at celebrity chef Mario Batali's vaunted flagship Italian eatery, Babbo. As Alice told me this story, at one point during their meal, the waiter displayed a grater and a large wedge of cheese with great flourish, asking her if she wanted Parmigiano-Reggiano on her pasta. She did not say yes. She did not say no. Instead Alice looked at the cheese and asked, "Are you sure that's Parmigiano-Reggiano?" Her replied with certainty, "Yes." "You're sure?" "Yes." She then asked to see the cheese. The waiter panicked, mumbled some excuse, and fled into the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later with a different and much smaller chunk of cheese, which he handed over for examination. The new speck was old, dry, and long past its useful shelf-life, but it was real Parmigiano-Reggiano, evidenced by the pin-dot pattern. "The first one was Grana Padano," she explained. "I could clearly read the rind. They must have gone searching through all the drawers in the kitchen in a panic until they found this forgotten crumb of Parmigiano-Reggiano." Alice Fixx was the wrong person to try this kind of bait and switch on, but she is the exception, and I wonder how many other expense-account diners swallowed a cheaper substitute. This occurred at one of the most famous and expensive Italian eateries in the country. What do you think happens at other restaurants?

I looked expectantly to the window but there were no plates lined up. Instead Scott, the young, tattooed sous chef, passed me a sliver of tomato. The insides were tie-dyed pink and red. "A Marvel-Striped from Blooming Hills Farm," he said, as if I had asked him a question. I cupped it while it dripped. He pinched up flakes of sea salt from a plastic tub and flicked it on the slice. "When they're like this don't fuck with them. Just a little salt." "Wow," I said. And I meant it. I had never thought of a tomato as a fruit----the ones I had known were mostly white in the center and rock hard. But this was so luscious, so tart I thought it victorious. So----some tomatoes tasted like water, and some tasted like summer lightning.

Wait, what's the chef's name?" she asked. "I think I read about him in ELLE." "Ooooh, ELLE," Elliott mocked. "He must be a big deal, then." "He is a big deal!" Emerald said, slapping him with the menu. "Or at least he's cute!" I wanted to yell Enough. I wanted to redo the whole night- the outfit from Emerald, seeing Kyle, my orders off the menu. "His name is Pascal Fox," I said quietly, way too quietly for normal conversation, and unintelligible in this loud restaurant. The open kitchen's steam and smoke masked Pascal a bit, but I still caught a glimpse. Even though he was getting a lot of media attention, he didn't look like a man who cared about photo shoots and celebrity. He looked like a serious chef with a lot on the line. He sprinted sideways through the narrow galley, threw something out. His chef's jacket was rolled to his elbows, revealing a mural of indecipherable tattoos.

Just then I looked up to see Chef Pascal standing over our table. "Excuse me for one moment." He reached over me, and I think Emerald and I both gasped aloud at him. He smelled like bacon and caramelized onions and had a movie-star-perfect face, soft but still chiseled. A little stubble. Dark skin and big eyes with long, thick lashes. And the gold streaks in his eyes? Even better in person, luminous and crackling with light. Now I felt like Melinda in the living room, asking me what I was. Was he Egyptian? Mexican? Spanish? But of course he wasn't like me at all. He was closer to a model or an actor than anyone like me. Pascal didn't appear to notice our gawking. He removed the housemade kimchi-ghee hot sauce from our table and replaced it with a new bottle. He gave a soft, barely there smile, then continued to the other tables, leaving almost every girl- and many guys- shivering in his wake. "Ha!" Emerald said, clearly exhilarated. "That was a rush, huh?" "Yeah..." Elliott struggled. "That guy... has a lot of tattoos." I watched Pascal march back into the kitchen. From the pass, where the dining room met the kitchen, I thought I saw him look back at me, too. Yeah, right, Tia, I thought just as quickly. Like that could ever happen.