Dec 23, 2015
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from China
seen from Bosnia & Herzegovina
seen from United States
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from France
seen from Russia
seen from Thailand
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Germany
seen from Ukraine
seen from Germany
seen from Türkiye
seen from South Korea
i hope everyone in this trash ass fake bougie italian restaurant heard my mom and i having a serious conversation about my mental health
i’m trying to will myself to finish my homework for this online class--750 words on the first chapter--with incentives, threats, etc but what it really comes down to is....
i don’t want to do it
ot3s + third wave coffee shops!
i told zedmmartin i was gonna write a blurb from this list but obviously my brain decided some weird variant of the barista au and an ot3 from this list !! i am a weak-minded fool! enjoy this ridiculous thing!
“I’m tellin’ you, little Jethro is a gymnast in the making. See?”
It’s a cute picture--Raleigh rolls his eyes and throws the metal paddle back in the bucket with the now-thoroughly-mixed Meyer lemon sorbetto. He squints at the phone screen. “Not impressed, man! Your kid can stay standing for--what?--three seconds before he’s on his ass, with no idea how he got there. You should see what Oona can do, and she’s not even four! Did Yancy not show you her moves on the monkey bars?”
And Tendo would probably be offended if he knew Raleigh hadn’t been there that day at the park, cheering on his son. Besides, you can’t pit a man against his own niece.
“But was she that good at sixteen months?? Don’t think so. My boy c--oh shit, incoming.”
The bell shakes as the door opens, but the soft jingling is quickly muffled by some very colorful shouting on the phone. Raleigh’s face sinks into an actual frown, seeing who’s making such a ruckus on an early Saturday morning.
“Yeah, well we can just add that to the list of shit I can’t do, can’t we, Mori?”
Tendo, the sneaky fucker, slinks back into storage before Raleigh can even open his mouth, asking for a break from this one. The few techies in the café raise their heads from their tablets, only briefly glaring at the disturbance, before reburying themselves in their coding or whatever-it-is--Raleigh’s really not up on Silicon Valley's brightest and what exactly they “do.”
He approaches the counter, shoulders stiff, eyes narrowing at the man who hasn’t acknowledged that he’s even indoors, let alone a quiet café in Oakland.
“Just email it! Stacker’s up my ass about this, and I’d rather not deal with him more than I need to, yeah?”
Every fucking Thursday morning. This furious Australian guy stomps in after his morning run for a coffee--his order changes frequently enough that Raleigh can’t forgo communication, make this dick’s drink, then make fast change.
No matter what, "Mori” has always done something to royally piss this ginger off, and they are always in the middle of some absurd shouting match as he’s walking into Tendo’s coffee shop.
This asshole, and his stupid Apple Watch, which--has that even been released??--has a wireless earpiece he’s constantly shouting into, always seem to ruin Raleigh’s morning. He’s rude to Mori, to whomever takes his order--usually Raleigh--, and to the people in line he’s been known to completely ignore and cut in front of some weeks.
Raleigh hates this guy, all his stupid gadgets, the way he yells at Mori, and stupid six-figures-salary life. But more than anything, he can’t stand he way the black Underarmour shirt rides up when he ties his shoes, giving Raleigh a glimpse of the dimples on his back, leading down to what is one really spectacular...
Raleigh may hate him, but he’s not blind.
Especially when the douche is wearing those bright blue shorts.
“What can I get you?”
“Dry cappuccino to go--don’t know why you can’t just do it. He’d rather hear this from you than me!”
There’s a blessed lull in the shouting on his end, and suddenly his eyes go wide. “Oh, no. Don’t you think about it. I’ll be at the office in an hour and we can--shit.”
The ginger doesn’t even look up from his watch, from tapping at the obnoxiously tiny screen, just goes to sit at a table for his drink. Before Raleigh can grumble his way to the espresso machine, a few more early risers come in to order.
“Hey man, a little help?” he calls back. Tendo quickly weaves between the curtain, makes his way to the Marzocco, ignoring Raleigh’s glare.
“What’re we lookin’ at, Becket?”
While the machine that prints the tickets is out of commission, they’re writing down drink orders. Raleigh squints to look at the tablet, writes down the douchebag’s name, hands the sticky note to Tendo.
Raleigh passes off a few more orders to Tendo, when the door opens again.
She doesn’t even notice Raleigh, or his sudden but silent intake of breath; the way his eyes widen; his heart’s need to shift into overdrive. She is beautiful in her work pumps, well-tailored skirt and blazer. He’s never been one for businesswomen attire, but somehow the crisp suit, slick hair, and that determined frown on her face make her easily the most beautiful person Raleigh has seen. (The red lipstick helps, too.) For her part, she doesn’t seem to see anything or anyone inside; instead, she blows past the counter, her eyes never leaving her target.
Raleigh winces at the sound of her hand connecting with the douchebag’s face. Everyone looks up from their conversation, their tablets, the espresso machine--Tendo accidentally drops an empty milk pitcher, the metallic echo shattering the silence.
Then she is off, pointing and speaking very loudly--not yelling, almost scolding--in Japanese, ready to smack the guy again, if she needs to. Both of them are red in the face, but the douche is just taking it, waiting for a break in her tirade to cut in with his own.
‘This must be Mori,’ Raleigh dumbly thinks. Of course this guy would get into it like this with a woman at work, before he even makes it to--
Oh, she’s kissing him now. So, she’s not work.
The kiss seems to calm them both down--Douche looked ready to throw down for a moment--and she sits down with him. Their voices are hushed now, quick Japanese with a few words Raleigh can make out in English--Hercules, sleepover?, cappuccino.
Mori finally seems to absorb her surroundings. One of the tech guys quickly darts his head down, pretending he hasn’t been staring since she walked in. Her cheeks, already pink from anger, go a deeper rouge, her embarrassment sinking in.
Douche says something that makes her focus back on him. She touches his cheek, and he gives her what Raleigh assumes is his cocky grin, but the softness behind his eyes gives away how he really feels. Raleigh has to look away from the intimate moment. Then Mori stands up, goes to the counter.
A beat.
She smiles at Raleigh.
Another beat.
He forgets how to speak.
One more beat.
“Hi,” she says, and Raleigh has never liked her voice more than when she is speaking to him.
He does manage to ask, “How’re you doing today?”
“Good,” she pauses, with a blush. “Better, thank you. Can I have a French press with your...” she looks at the chalkboard on the far wall. “Is the Kenyan any good?”
Great, coffee questions. Raleigh can handle himself with coffee questions. “Yeah, they’re uh--honestly, if you want the Kenyan, I’d go for an Aeropress. It makes a cleaner finish for more complex coffee.”
“And the Kenyan is complex?”
He knows he looks dopey smiling at her. He doesn’t care. “Definitely.”
She nods. Smiles back. Raleigh might not make it to the afternoon if she does that again. “I’ll have that, then.”
“Makoooo,” whines the ginger from his seat. “Those take forever, we have to be in the office by eight-thirty.”
Mako looks at Raleigh for confirmation, which he gives her. “Takes a while, yeah. So does the French press.”
She huffs. “Okay, then what will be fast?”
“I don’t know--”
She turns back to the douchebag. “I wasn’t asking you,” she chides gently, then looks to Raleigh again. “He’s the expert.”
And of course, he blushes, because a beautiful woman trusts him over her douchebag boyfriend--oh fuck, they’re dating--to get her a morning caffeine fix, which he obviously values very highly.
“Cappuccino?”
She smiles again. “I don’t like milk in coffee.”
“We’ve got soy!” Tendo calls from the machine. “Good stuff, too.”
“I don’t like the taste. It’s too...nutty?”
Raleigh thinks for a moment. “Do you like sweet coffee?”
“I do,” she says.
“I’ve got just the thing, then. Can you trust me to make this for you?”
And then she laughs, and Raleigh knows he won’t be happy if he doesn’t hear that sound as often as he can. “More than him,” she teases, as the douche finally stands to join her.
“Not very nice, Mori,” he says. “I’ll get another cappuccino, too.”
“Ooh, the croissants look good,” Mako says, pointing to the glass display case.
“They are, it’s all from our sister store, out in Berkley,” Raleigh says. “My brother and sister run it. Everything’s fresh from this morning.”
Mako takes out her wallet. “I’ll get three, then--and an almond croissant.”
Raleigh boxes up the pastries while Tendo makes another Doucheccino. He winks when he passes the tamp to Raleigh who’s making Mako her drink.
“I just added cinnamon simple syrup to it,” he explains, pouring the milk and froth into a paper cup. “That way, it won’t be nutty from the soy, just brings out more flavor in the coffee.”
She takes a sip. The happy sigh she makes is all the validation Raleigh needs. Then she says, “I will be back tomorrow for this.”
Once the door closes again, Tendo has to poke Raleigh several times with the milk thermometer to bring him back to the new drink orders piling up.
----
oops this was supposed to be shorter and have the actual plot point in it.
p sure they’re all gentrifiers just because i put them in oakland. but it was exclusively for comedy purposes bc the last time one of charlie hunnam’s characters was in o-town they were shooting up bodegas on harleys and starting race wars!! LOL!!!!!!!
restaurant aus are important
“You’re lookin’ bored out here, whelp.”
D’Artagnan has his nose buried in the training manual again--bless him--but the look he gives Porthos said he is keen for a reprieve.
Good for Porthos, who had a daunting checklist to get through before dinner service.
He has the dishwashers julienning potatoes for pomme paille; Anne was picking up cheesecloth for the saucisson sec, while she waited for the macaron shells to set; the morning line cook Laura was shucking Tsarkayas.
It was still early, and the stations were prepped for lunch, when Laura would start helping D’Artagnan make sandwiches and coffees for curious tourists and the loyal startup kids who work from home. The book was pretty full for Thursday night, and the other line cooks and Tréville weren’t scheduled to be in until noon. Porthos needed as much help as he could get.
Bad for d’Artagnan, as the manual he’d been studying did not cover the coded language of the restaurant.
Any time a manager, especially Constance, asks, “Would you mind doing…?” you should hear, “You are about to do this for me...”; if someone sees you in the dining room without your hands full and asks, “May I speak,” they're saying “I need a favor”; and “Behind!” shouted in a busy kitchen really means, “Move. Now.”
Looking bored in a restaurant is like wearing a GIVE ME WORK sign across your forehead. It’s not likely Constance or Maria covered this during training; Porthos figures the kid should learn this lesson in his first week on the job.
D’Artagnan, for his part, at least recognizes Porthos’s attempt at an innocent smile, and some of that enthusiasm shifts. (Either that, or he’s still unhappy with the nickname, but Porthos thinks it’s miles better than ‘New Coffee Girl’.) It was the same look Porthos gave the privates serving under him when he wanted to get out of latrine duty. Unlike in Kandahar, Porthos has authority to delegate in the restaurant--there was more to do than take advantage of his empty bunk and Flea’s not-so-secret stash of Penthouses.
“It won’t take long,” Porthos says, and hopes he’s right. For any of his line cooks, it’s a basic prep job, but he really has no idea if this boy from a farm town of maybe sixty will be as fast as he needs.
Only one way to find out, he reasons, nodding at Rémy in greeting while the cleaner stops his almost-violent scrubbing of the windows to wave back.
He sets down two hotel pans on the counter in front of d’Artagnan, points to the one full of-- “Fava beans: the bean so nice, you have to peel it twice.”
The kid barely raises an eyebrow at the joke, but with an in-time at 6:30 AM, and nothing to do but stare at the canal across the way, Porthos understands.
He quickly explains the easiest way to peel the second skin off the individual beans--dig your nail into the indent a bit, then peel--and situates a trash can to throw away the empty shells for an efficient one-man assembly line. “Then put the beans in this empty pan. And don’t worry if the two sides slide apart. Good?”
D’Artagnan nods. “Think so, Chef.”
It’s been a full year, and Porthos still has to fight to keep from squaring his shoulders and smiling proudly when staff calls him that.
“Oh, wait!” the kid calls nervously, just as Porthos is pushing open the door to the manager’s office.
He moves back next to d’Artagnan, who’s holding a shelled bean in his hand. “Like this?”
Porthos smiles and nods. “But have a look at this one, yeah?” he says, taking it from d’Artagnan’s hand. “Can’t use these white ones. Fucking annoying you still have to peel ‘em to see whether they’re that good green color or not. But hopefully, there aren’t too many.”
He watches d’Artagnan peel a few more, making sure he has the hang of it. The kid looks nervously at the hotel pan full of beans, but he hasn’t lost that eager-to-please grin that got him hired in the first place.
Porthos hums in approval. “I’ll leave you to it, then?”
D’Artagnan is beaming by the time the door to the kitchen swings shut.
---
Anne huffs over a pot of sugar, knowing her impatience won’t make it melt any faster. She has Grégoire on standby with the chunks of butter; the table next to the stovetop has the six pints of cream she’ll have to whisk in; then the buttercream is already made, but the cakes are still cooling on the rack next to the dough roller--fuck, still need to roll the croissant dough before I leave, she thinks bitterly--and only once the caramel done cooling can she--
“Anne? Chef?”
She tries not to give Tréville the glare she reserves for her cooks when they bicker, and her not-quite-ex-husband.
“How’re we looking on macarons for tonight?”
It’s more than twelve hours into her day, with at least two more to prep for tomorrow morning. She can trust Grégoire, Olivia, and Renée with plating desserts for dinner service, which starts in twenty minutes. But with the wedding cake order for Saturday morning, she’s almost drowning in all of her responsibilities. Time and labor intensive macarons are not a priority.
“Olivia filled the shells this afternoon, fifty of each. There’s some already out in the café,” she says without looking up, finally seeing the absurd amount of white sugar go clear and gooey in the pot.
“Well, we have a full book tonight, plus the forty-person BEO at 6.”
“For that bank’s client dinner? They're a pre-fixe for tonight: chocolate mousse or raspberry dacquoise. I just finalized the menu with Porthos.”
Tréville shakes his head, and groans. “They have the Épée Menu, but Louis just told me he’s promised them all pastry boxes. Apparently the clients they want to impress are all from America--massive dessert people looking to skip Ladurée.”
Anne needs to do a ten count, before she is sure she won’t find the closest sharp object, walk into the front, up to the company’s private dining manager, and stab him in the throat.
Grégoire pipes up, a rarity in front of the executive chef. “There are still some macaron shells left on the speed rack, and Olivia didn’t use all the rose cardamom filling.”
And Tréville actually pats the boy on the back before he looks back at Anne. “Sorry about this, that I’m the one to tell you, but--well, you know better than the rest of us how he is,” he says with sympathy.
Anne manages to smile at him. “It’s not your fault, Jean. But, thank you.”
While she is waiting for the caramel to cool, her pocket buzzes.
sorry about the mix up! i thought i told you about my idea while at rochefort’s office. think you can still swing it in time? - L
She glares at her cracked screen. Why in the world would he bring up work in the middle of dividing up their assets and--Anne, a stern voice says in her head that sounds suspiciously like her mother.
Breathe. Ten Count. Breathe again. Type.
it’s no problem, gregoire and i are doing the macarons now. but we’ll need those clear boxes you’ve been getting from the craft store. think you can swing about 50 of them on short notice?
She’s being petty. She doesn’t care.
Her phone vibrates again as she hits send--not a text from Louis, then.
what a shit day and it’s only 5! come over later, we can snuggle and be grumpy all night.
Anne feels some of the weight of the day leave her shoulders, and manages to hide her smile from her busy cooks as she types a reply.
They’d said it’s a bad idea, especially with Louis and his snake of an attorney finding any way to cheat Anne out of alimony. Days like today are hard enough without thinking about her divorce and how it’s affecting the company, even though Tréville has been more than kind about the ordeal.
So maybe Anne was being irresponsible when she sent that text asking about good white Rioja. And all those cigarette breaks back in the winter were just an excuse to draw attention to her mouth, even if she would mostly bitch about her and Louis fighting to keep the cat he never liked in the first place. But isn’t it easiest to fall for someone who already knows your shit, who still wants to be with you in spite of it all?
yes. as long as you bring that beaujolais i like.
Anne hears a text alert bings in the main kitchen. Anne walks to the sautée station to grab a whisk, and sees Constance checking her phone.
That smile and wink from Constance is enough to get Anne through piping and boxing 129 macarons by herself.
--
who knows where milady, aramis, and athos are?!! (i might. maybe.)
i have a lot of background i want to fill in but no idea how to include it. we’ll see if i take this anywhere, but hot dang I WROTE A FUCKING RESTAURANT AU LIKE I’VE BEEN SAYING I’D DO!
ok but gUESS WHO WROTE A RESTAURANT AU FT SOUS CHEF PORTHOS AND D’ARTAGNAN THE NEW COFFEE GIRL
HEAR ME OUT THO……
sous chef porthos
[highkey considers devoting my life/blog to howard charles’s baby hairs]
i miss the ot3 roadtrip verse fuuuuck