"Anything else, Inspector?" I tuck the card back into my pocket, flipping another egg with more flair than strictly necessary.
"This isn't an inspection," she says, but her voice has lost some of its edge, gone a little flatter, like she's trying to convince herself as much as me.
"Could've fooled me." I plate the next order with a practiced flourish, sliding it across the makeshift counter to a kid who's been waiting with the kind of patience that deserves extra chorizo.
She adjusts her grip on the clipboard, her knuckles pale. "I'm just making sure you understand the standards here."
"I understand them fine. I also understand that nobody's going to care about my ServSafe card if the food's terrible." I ladle hot sauce onto a fresh plate, hand it to the next customer. "So how about you try some and tell me if I'm meeting your standards."
I plate a portion before she can refuse. Eggs, chorizo, a careful drizzle of fermented hot sauce, chives scattered on top like punctuation.
She stares at it like I've handed her a live grenade.
"I already ate," she says, her voice clipped, professional, the kind of deflection she's probably used a thousand times to politely sidestep things she doesn't want to engage with.
"Then eat again," I counter, keeping my tone light but insistent, nudging the plate a half-inch closer to her across the worn wooden surface of the table.
"I don't—" she starts, but I cut her off before she can finish the protest, because I know exactly where this is going and I'm not letting her off the hook that easily.
"You came here to judge my sourcing," I say, meeting her eyes directly, my voice steady and reasonable despite the challenge underneath. "You can't do that without tasting the result. That's the whole point, isn't it? You want to know if I'm doing right by the ingredients, well, here they are. Cooked. Seasoned. Ready to prove themselves."
Her jaw works, and for a second I think she's going to walk away. But she takes the plate, balances it on top of the clipboard, and picks up the fork.
The first bite is cautious. Small. Clinical.
I watch her face. The way her eyes close for half a second. The way her shoulders drop just a fraction. The way she chews slowly, deliberately, like she's cataloging every flavor.
When she opens her eyes, they're sharper.
"The paprika's Spanish," she says finally, her voice careful, factual, like she's delivering a laboratory result rather than making conversation.
"Yeah," I reply, not bothering to soften it with an apology or justification. It is what it is.
"Not local," she continues, her pen already moving to annotate something in that infernal clipboard of hers, and I can practically hear the little checkbox being mentally ticked off in her assessment of me.
"Pine Hollow doesn't grow paprika. I checked." I keep my voice mild, informative, because I actually did the work. I spent an evening going through supplier lists and talking to farmers, trying to find a source that would satisfy both my standards and whatever rubric she's operating under. "Trust me, I looked."
"You could source from a regional spice co-op," she counters immediately, the suggestion already loaded and ready like she'd been waiting for this exact opening, probably had it written down somewhere in her notes as a contingency plan.
"I could," I acknowledge, giving her that much ground before I dig in. "Or I could use the best paprika I can find and make sure everything else is as local as possible. Balance, right?" I cross my arms, lean back against the market table, feel the wood press into my spine. "I'm not trying to be a purist, Ivy. I'm trying to make food people actually want to eat. Food that tastes good, not just food that checks boxes."
She sets the fork down with a deliberate click against the ceramic, her expression carefully neutral, unreadable as a closed book. Then she says, quietly, almost reluctantly, "The eggs are perfect."
It's not a compliment, not exactly. It's a concession, dragged out of her by honesty and maybe the lingering taste on her tongue. But I'll take it. I'll take any ground I can get with her.
"Thanks," I say simply, keeping the triumph out of my voice because I know she'll hear it and regret the admission.
"The chorizo's oversalted," she adds immediately, like she needs to balance the scales, to take back a little of what she just gave me.
"Martin likes it that way," I counter, then add, because it matters, "So do I. It's bold. It's supposed to punch through."
"Your plating's chaotic," she says next, and now there's the faintest hint of something that might be amusement tucked into the corner of her mouth, so small I might be imagining it.
"My plating's energetic," I correct her, gesturing toward the plate with one hand, defending my artistic choices even though I know exactly what she means with the spill of chorizo, the way the yolk threatens to escape, the herbs scattered like they were tossed from a distance.
"That's not a culinary term," she says, dry as dust, but her eyes are lighter now, less guarded.
"Should be," I insist, holding her gaze, letting the grin spread across my face because I can feel the shift between us, the way the conversation has turned from interrogation into something closer to sparring, something almost enjoyable.
