Chapter Two

Chapter Two

I banged into the kitchen, startling my aunt, who was adding longganisa, the short, fat sausages I’d named my dog after, to a breakfast platter.

My grandmother, Lola Flor, was grating coconut on the special bench she’d brought over from the Philippines. Remaining her usual aloof self, she said, “Is that how a lady enters a room? A little less noise, ha?”

“I’m sorry, Lola. It’s just . . . Derek Winter is here. With Mr. Long.”

Tita Rosie blew a puff of air that made the old-fashioned bangs curled over her forehead fly up. “Those two. OK, anak, I’ll take care of this. Just add some fried garlic and bring these plates to table six, yeah?”

She washed her hands, quickly dried them on a nearby dish towel, then grabbed a plate of pandesal to bring to the men.

I did as she asked, and when I reentered the dining area, Derek was snapping his fingers to get my attention. The rude gesture, coupled with his hideous uniform of year-round khaki cargo shorts (it was March in Illinois and there was like, half a foot of snow on the ground, yet he still wore shorts) and baggy sports jerseys, were what I had to put up with every time he dropped by for a meal. Which was surprisingly often, considering the negative reviews he wrote about us.

He was a notorious food blogger and critic for our local paper, which was pretty ridiculous since our town boasted a population of less than twenty thousand and consisted of chain restaurants with the occasional mom-and-pop shop sprinkled around the area. Shady Palms wasn’t exactly a hotbed of fine dining options—when Starbucks came to our town, it was literally front-page news.

Though according to my best friend, Adeena, a bunch of fun, new places had opened up within the last couple of years. Not that I’d had the chance to check any of them out since I’d been so busy with the family restaurant. You’d think Derek would focus on these new places since that was literally his job as a food critic, but nope. He seemed fixated on us.

Sadly, Derek was the kind of guy who prided himself on “telling it like it is.” In his mind, that meant calling people out over every imagined slight. He tried a new dish whenever he came to our place and managed to find fault with every single one, despite clearing his plate each time. Tita Rosie went out of her way to be gracious and make him feel welcome, and I hated it.

“Why are you killing yourself trying to impress this jerk?” I’d asked her several times. “We could be feeding him manna provided by the heavens and he’d still write a scathing review of the Lord’s kitchen.”

She pursed her lips the way she always did when she felt I was being blasphemous, then said, “Ay, it’s not about impressing him. He can write what he wants. But you know his mother has issues, so he could use a little kindness. Besides, I hate seeing someone unsatisfied with their food. It means they’re going unnurtured. Unfed.”

An expression of pain crossed her face as she said that, causing a pang in my heart. In typical Filipino fashion, my aunt expressed her love not through words of encouragement or affectionate embraces, but through food. Food was how she communicated. Food was how she found her place in the world. When someone rejected her food, they were really rejecting her heart. It crushed her.

And I did not take kindly to those who made her feel that way.

Luckily, Tita Rosie was taking care of Derek’s party, so I went over to table six to drop off the breakfast platters my aunt had prepared. I chatted with the family of four as I refilled their glasses of honey calamansi iced tea and delighted in their compliments. This refreshment was one of my concoctions—traditional, but with a bit of a twist. Just like all my creations.

I wandered around the restaurant with a pitcher of water in one hand and the tea in the other, topping up glasses as needed. I joked around with my godmothers and made them a couple more cups of instant coffee. I avoided Derek’s table as long as I could, but as I gazed around the space to check on the customers, he looked up from his plate and we locked eyes.

Fudge. Not like I could avoid him now.

Pasting my customer-service smile on again, I approached the table. “Would either of you care for a refill?”

Mr. Long was too busy shoving pork and chicken adobo into his mouth to respond, but Derek pushed his empty glass toward me. As soon as I filled it with tea, he knocked it back and gestured for another refill.

“Thirsty, huh?” I said as I filled the glass yet again.

“Got a sore throat. It’s been bugging me for a while and the tea helps.”

Just when I thought he was finally going to compliment the restaurant, he wiped his mouth and asked, “Where are my chopsticks?”

I took a deep breath. “Derek, you’ve been here tons of times. You know we don’t have chopsticks.”

“Well, how am I supposed to eat my noodles?”

“With a fork, like everyone else.”

“But noodles are supposed to be eaten with chopsticks,” the would-be gourmet whined. “What kind of Asian restaurant doesn’t have any?”

“The kind serving food from a country that doesn’t use them.”

At his blank look, I added, “We don’t really use chopsticks in the Philippines. We mostly use a spoon and fork or our hands.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. I served food, not history lessons. If he really wanted to know, he could google it.

Lola Flor came up at that moment and set a plate of suman and a bowl of ginataang bilo-bilo on the table. Mr. Long stopped gorging on the soy-sauce-vinegar-and-garlic marinated meats long enough to lean forward and say, “Ooh, that looks tasty. What is it, Mrs. M?”

He always called my grandmother “Mrs. M,” which Tita Rosie thought was him being friendly. She said it reminded her of the Fonz referring to Mr. Cunningham as “Mr. C” on Happy Days. My lola and I were pretty sure he just didn’t know how to pronounce our last name.

Lola Flor pointed to the suman, saying, “Sweet sticky rice cooked in coconut milk and steamed in banana leaves. The banana leaves give the rice its distinctive flavor. They’re garnished with latik. Caramelized coconut curds,” she added at Derek’s confused look. “In the bowl is ginataang bilo-bilo. Chewy rice balls, tapioca pearls, jackfruit, purple yam, and saba banana cooked in sweet coconut milk. The best thing to eat on a cold day like this.”

“That’s a lot of coconut,” Derek said, glancing at Mr. Long, who was looking oddly forlorn.

“I’m allergic to coconut,” he explained. “Do you have any desserts without it?”

My grandmother just raised her eyebrow and said, “Not today,” before walking away.

Remembering the amount of effort she put into hand-grating the coconut—the bench she used had a special coconut scraper attached to it—I could understand her impatience. However, it wasn’t Mr. Long’s fault he was allergic, and it was our duty to accommodate our customers’ dietary needs. She needed to start taking these things seriously, but she was so inflexible when it came to her recipes.

Seeing the ube, or purple yams, in Derek’s dish, I realized this was the perfect chance to test my creations on a customer.

“This is your lucky day, Mr. Long. I’ve been working on a fusion dessert for the restaurant, and you could be the first customer to try it. Would you be interested? There’s no coconut in it, I promise.”

He agreed, and I hurried back to the kitchen to grab the batch of ube crinkles I’d baked earlier that morning. I piled the cookies, their lovely violet color peeping through a light coating of powdered sugar, on a plate. I studied the offering, then added a small bowl of vanilla ice cream as well as a serving of my ube halaya, the purple-yam jam I’d used to create the cookies, to the dish. Perfect.

When I made it back to the table, Derek had already consumed the plate of suman and was preparing to tuck into the ginataang bilo-bilo. His eyes widened as I set the plate of cookies on the table.

“What’s that?” He’d broken into a sweat and was tapping an offbeat rhythm on the table with his fingers as he eyed the plate greedily.

“I call them ube crinkles. I used condensed milk instead of coconut to make the jam, so they should be safe for you, Mr. Long. I like to think of them as a Filipino-American hybrid.” I watched as Mr. Long and Derek each helped themselves to a cookie. I chewed on my lower lip as I waited for their reaction.

And waited.

And waited.

“So . . . how are they?” I finally ventured.

“Not sure what to think, actually. I’ve never tasted anything like it. Very delicate,” Mr. Long said, helping himself to another cookie.

Derek added, “I think it’s cute that you still dabble with baking, but it’s way too sweet. You’d think all those years practicing at that fancy school would’ve taught you better.”

And just like that, bitter memories of my ex-fiancé, Sam, critiquing my baked goods flashed through my mind. I remembered all the little jabs I had suffered at the hands of my ex, Mr. Big Shot Chef, as he condescendingly patted my hand, saying he was glad I had a hobby, but maybe I should stick with the business side of the restaurant and leave the food to him. Only to find him later stuffing down another of my date and walnut bars, or deconstructing one of my fusion biscotti flavors.

He knew I was good. But in his kitchen, there was no room for me to be great.

Shaking the flashback away, I looked at Derek, who was smearing ube halaya across the bottom of a cookie. He then added a scoop of ice cream and sandwiched it with another cookie before chowing down.

Was this dude seriously shoveling down the entire dessert platter despite insulting my food—to my face—a mere five seconds ago?

I snatched the plate away from him. “If the cookies are so disgusting, maybe you should stop eating them.”

Derek rolled his eyes and grabbed another cookie. “I never said they were disgusting. God, you’re so sensitive. If you can’t take the criticism, you don’t belong in the kitchen.”

Mr. Long frowned, eyes darting back and forth between us. His gaze lingered on Derek’s sweaty, pallid appearance as he handed Derek a handkerchief and then gestured for me to hand him the cookie plate. “Lila brought these cookies for me, son. I think you’ve had enough to write a proper review of them. You’re supposed to be watching your sugar levels anyway, remember? Did you take your insulin?”

Derek glared at him, but accepted the handkerchief and wiped the sweat and crumbs from his face. “Of course I took my insulin. I’m not a little kid, Ed. I can take care of myself.”

The stare-down between the two of them was making me uncomfortable, so I started to clear the plates from the table. When I grabbed the untouched bowl of ginataang bilo-bilo, Derek stopped me.

“I haven’t tried this yet. I can’t write a full review if I don’t taste everything on offer.”

I shrugged and slid it in front of him. “Knock yourself out. It’s one of my favorite cold-weather treats, so I hope you enjoy it.”

Usually consumed for breakfast or at snack time for meryenda, it had all the comfort of a warm bowl of oatmeal but enough sweetness to qualify as dessert. While it wasn’t the most Instagram-worthy dish, the various textures of soft and chewy with a bit of bite, combined with the sweet creaminess of the thickened coconut milk and my lola’s deft touch made it the Filipino culinary equivalent of hygge. Pure coziness and warmth in a bowl.

Derek spooned up a large portion, his eyes widening as he experienced the delicious interplay of all the different ingredients. For once, he was speechless.

I grinned as he seemed to squirm with delight. “Good, huh?”

He let out a long, drawn-out sigh but didn’t answer.

I put my hands on my hips. “Oh, come on. Would it kill you to say something nice for a change?”

He responded by convulsing violently, then face-planting right into the dish.