This menu was something else.
Pages and pages and pages of items, ranging from American food to Asian delicacies, to Indian, to Spanish and more. She couldn’t even comprehend it. Every time she turned a page it was something else entirely. Why would anyone do this to themselves? The restaurant would be drowning in the necessary items to make all this, and no one could specialize in absolutely everything.
No one.
Not even her.
Could she make things from every place in the world? Yeah. But she wasn’t good at everything. Running her fingers over the back of her head, Hope flipped to another page. She mentally catalogued everything. Hundreds and hundreds of ingredients.
Hope glanced over her shoulder toward the kitchen and pressed her lips together hard. She knew that the chef in there wasn’t as seasoned as she was. He was newer to the business.That didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t know enough, but she doubted he could keep up with this.
A waitress came over, a nervous grimace on her face. “Was there something I could get you?”
“I don’t even know where to start.” Hope sighed with a laugh. “Is it typical that people are lost with the menu?”
The waitress nodded, but she still seemed so tight with nerves. That was going to have to change if they were going to spend the next week on Virginia Beach fixing this hotel up. Sometimes Hope swore she’d seen everything when it came to restaurants, but someone always threw her a curveball.
Hope dropped her gaze to the woman’s name tag and smiled at her again. “Maria, what would you say are some of the most popular items on the menu?”
“Umm…” She bit her lip and looked around the room. “A lot of people just order the American food or the seafood, but most of it is sent back to the kitchen, so I wouldn’t exactly call them popular.”
Oh, Maria was going to be her new best friend. Hope was going to need someone like her, someone who would be honest to a fault about exactly what was going on here. Because she couldn’t keep up the ruse any longer.
Three years ago when they’d started filming, she might have allowed some of those games to play out, but not now. Now she needed answers swiftly so they could work on solutions and get out of here faster. Maybe she wasn’t as cut out for this as she thought she was.
“Is that a chef issue or… something else?”
Maria shrugged and genuinely looked like she didn’t know the answer.
“Right.” Hope went back to looking at the menu. She still hadn’t gotten through every single page of it yet. Rolling her neck, she slapped it shut. She really didn’t need to see any more.Straightening her shoulders, she looked toward the kitchen doors. “I think I’ll go inspect the kitchen now.”
She hesitated a minute before bolstering herself and moving straight for the kitchen. Cadence and Mandy were behind her with the camera. She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d find in there, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know either. Biting her lip, Hope pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Right,” she whispered again, getting her bearings.
Two men stood inside. That was it. Two men in tattered t-shirts and with tattoos all up and down their arms. They hardly looked professional, and they hardly looked like they had any training. Hope eyed each of them over and then smiled. “I’m Chef Hope Lawrence. And you are…?”
She waited, but it was clear they were wary of her. Did they think she’d fire them on the spot? Or perhaps yell at them? Either that or she just wasn’t allowed into their little two-person club. When neither of them responded, she put her hands on her hips and straightened her spine a little. Sometimes her added height helped her come off as imposing.
“Is it just you two working back here and Maria out front?”
“Yes,” the one on the right replied.
“Yes, Chef,” she corrected. These two were cut from rough cloth, and she was going to have to put up the lines of how she would be treated immediately. “What’s your name?” she asked him directly.
“Trey.”
“You’re the chef here.” Her eyes lit up, and she walked toward him with her hand outstretched. “It’s good to meet you, Chef.” She used the same salutation, hoping that would tell him that she expected this respect thing to go both ways.
“This is Enzo,” Trey said.
“Your right-hand man, I’m sure.” Hope shook Enzo’s hand and then put her fists back on her hips. “Did the Borjeses talk to you about what we’re going to do here?”
“They said you were going to fix the problems,” Trey answered.
“In essence, yes. But usually I come in and observe first. I noticed that your menu has quite the variety of items on it.” She paused, hoping that would spur on some kind of conversation, but it didn’t seem to be working. They were still wary of her, seeing her as an enemy rather than someone who was there to help out. “Did you come up with the menu? Or did someone else…?”
“Joy did,” Trey said quickly, his mouth slamming shut as soon as he said that.
