I felt his frown follow me around the room as I inspected everything before the rest of the staff arrived.
“Do you want to go over the menu?” he asked as I opened one of the dishwashers and found it full. I wanted to growl. Didn’t they know to put everything away so it didn’t sit in there, collecting a funky smell and water stains all night?
“Um, maybe?” There was a roll of knives next to the glasses that someone had forgotten to take home. I tugged it open and found them smudged and not properly cared for. “I might start in here though, before everyone arrives.” I looked back at Ezra. “When do they start to show up?”
He glanced at his watch. “Two or three? I can’t remember.”
“Is that enough time to prep for dinner service?”
“They do a lot of it the night before,” he said. “So, it’s ready to go when they get in.”
I ground my teeth together and bit back the urge to scold him. Of course, my brother, the efficient business man, would prep everything the night before. That would make sense to him. He wouldn’t notice the difference in freshness from the night before versus the day of.
For as much as he prided himself on his ability to cook, he didn’t know the first thing about running a kitchen. Which was fine, when he hired excellent chefs to do the dirty work for him. But right now, I wanted to pull my hair out.
“How long has Bianca been without a head chef?”
“Over a year,” he said. “I’ve had chefs filling in throughout though. She hasn’t been completely rudderless. I’ve stepped in too. Whenever I could.”
I restrained the eye roll that so wanted to happen. “Okay. Yeah, I better start in here. When the rest of the staff arrives, I’ll come out and talk about the menu.”
“Are you sure you’re okay in here?” he asked, sounding doubtful.
“If I’m not, I’ll come find you.”
“Can I help?”
I held up a new rag I’d pulled from an open box full of them. “Not unless you want to get dirty.”
“You think this kitchen is dirty?”
I decided that lying to my brother wasn’t going to do any good. He needed to hear the truth. He needed to face reality—that he never should have waited for me to get experience. He should have just hired the first mildly talented chef he could find.
A first year home-ec student would have been better at this point.
“This place is filthy,” I told him honestly. “I’m surprised you don’t have a rat problem yet.”
He swallowed roughly, working his Adam’s apple up and down. “Are you serious?”
“Your staff has been slacking off in a major way, Ezra. This kitchen is a travesty.”
He rubbed his hand over his jaw, clearly having no idea it had gotten this bad. They’d probably been doing just enough that Ezra thought it was clean.
Or maybe they had never had the direction that they needed to know what acceptable standard in the food service industry was.
I supposed if their last boss was a total bum, then they probably didn’t know how a kitchen should look.
I was going to tell myself that until I believed it.
A sick feeling twisted through me. I’d wanted to ease into this job, take my time, slowly come to terms with the position I had accepted. I did not want to come in like a wrecking ball and dictator the shit out of my staff right out of the gate.
But apparently, my wishes didn’t come true.
Because this kind of negligence required some dictatorship asap.
I realized for the millionth time how lucky I had been to have Wyatt as my first real boss. He’d been diligent with how to take care of a kitchen. And he’d required us to do the same. It was a lot of awful work a lot of the time, but it taught us habits that would be beneficial forever.
Ezra stood there stewing for a few more minutes and then stalked off into the main body of the restaurant. I didn’t know where he was going or when he’d be back, but it didn’t matter. I had work to do.
