“Food is meant to be shared,” she said. “You get more of the table that way. More of the experience.”
He thought about the eight banchan dishes at Zaya — the way they’d both tasted their way through them, comparing notes on the pickled radish and agreeing the cool cucumber was welcome after the kimchi — and understood exactly what she meant.
Whitebird sat at the foot of the bridge, with river views through the windows. Dark wood, warm light, white tablecloths. Completely, one-thousand percent different from Zaya’s.
Tuesday had obviously called ahead, and they were led to a table big enough for six people.
He ordered the Wanderlinger Pilsner, surprised they had something he actually liked. It’s from a Chattanooga brewery, and the club made an attempt to buy local.
He sat back and let her handle their order again. This woman knew her food and clearly had a good grasp on what he liked.
He listened to her rattle offfried green tomatoes, crispy pork ribs, smoked pork belly, cornbread, beef tartare, roasted beets.She slowed when the server turned a page, and picked back up.Meatloaf. Grilled lamb chops. Habanero glazed pork. Lamb shank. Short rib gnocchi.
The server didn’t blink, but she asked a few questions, which Tuesday easily answered, and then, “What will you have to drink?”
“Oh,” Tuesday said, “I forgot to look at your wine list. A Malbec, I think. What do you have, preferably from Argentina?”
“We have the Santa Julia El Burro, by the glass or bottle.”
“Oh, that’s perfect. So good, let’s go for the bottle.”
When they were alone, he asked her, “How many people are you expecting?”
“Just us.” She settled back in her chair, completely at home in the fancy restaurant. “We’ve been climbing for hours. I worked up an appetite, and I knew what I was doing.”
She looked around and lowered her voice. “Also, it’s kind of a deal I have with my inner animal. Really good food after I make her deal with heights. Shehatesit when I climb.”
“Mine did at first, but eventually saw the value in learning. It’s a new skill, right? Never know when I’ll be on the run somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, and knowing how to scale a wall might come in handy. I’m considering looking for an actual wall to try, once I get a little better on the fake ones.”
“I can take you. Belaying is different. I handle your rope while you climb, and then you handle mine. We have to climb one at a time, but it works out okay. There’s a fun wall a little way up Signal Mountain.”
The fried green tomatoes and ribs arrived first, and he took a bite of a tomato before he’d made a conscious decision to. The crisp of the cornmeal crust, the acid of the tomato, and whatever the kitchen had done with the accompanying sauce stopped him mid-reach for his beer.
“What’s on these?”
“Remoulade, probably.” She was already eating a rib. “Good?”
“Amazingly good. I’ve had fried green tomatoes, but never like this.”
And he wasn’t sure he could tell his aunt Carol that hers weren’t the best he’d ever had anymore.
“That’s the difference between knowing the technique and understanding the ingredient.” Tuesday said, and most of her rib was devoid of meat already. “Appalachian cooking at its best is more about what’s available locally, but it also leans heavily on its Scots-Irish and German roots, plus what early settlers learned from the Cherokee. It’s Southern-adjacent, but there are differences. Less rice and seafood, and a lot less heavily-breaded and then fried dishes.”
He thought about that while he tried the pork belly — smoked low and long, the fat rendered to silk. Meat that took two days to get exactly right, and tasted like it.
He thought about the restaurant on the mountain, the oval plates of liver, and the chicken hearts in the little cast iron skillet, and he thought about Zaya’s this afternoon, and the sixty-day ribeye he’d pulled off the grill at exactly the right moment.
And now everything at this table.
The food was completely different at every place, but alsorealfood, without fucking chemicals.
Most wolves prefer unprocessed food straight from the farm, but Tuesday took it farther. She went forcuisine, not just food. She found people who were not only careful with sourcing, but who knew what to do with it once they had it.
The lamb chops arrived, and he reached for one while she was testing the beef tartare. His first bite added even more points to his opinion of this place. Whoever was running things understood that lamb doesn’t forgive impatience.
“Where do they source?” he asked.
“Tennessee River Valley, mostly. If it isn’t regional, it isn’t on the menu, best I can tell.”
