miller family restaurant (the bear insp) au in which young upstart chef ellie comes to stage at jackson, a world-class restaurant run by the famous world-renown miller brothers and their wives
executive chef maria miller recruits ellie from FEDRA culinary school, in which she has garnered a reputation for being a tough as shit student but the most resourceful and quick chef under 20 that anyones seen in years. maria visits FEDRA one day as a favor for marlene, who is connecting her with ellie in hopes that a staging experience at somewhere upscale will be a better fit for her than, as ellie puts it, “being stuck in a shithole amateur cooking camp.”
from what marlene tells maria, ellie is just too quick and too precise and too damn good to be contained at FEDRA culinary school, at least for right now. most young chefs are there because FEDRA is a big name and they want big reputations: ellie is there because being a chef is all she knows, all she has, and that’s exactly the type of chef FEDRA wants. marlene fought to have her there, at first, because she thought ellie would be a good fit.
turns out, ellie is somewhat of a goddamn nightmare to teach, especially in FEDRA’s rigid environment. as skilled as she is, ellie is far too creative, too independent, too quick to improvise over following her sous’ orders. other students loathe working beside her because they can’t keep up, and the teacher’s can’t stand coaching her because she acts like they have nothing to teach her (which, to be fair, they really don’t. she’s a beast.)
marlene is thinking that ellie may benefit from some real experience in a fast-faced, high-functioning restaurant, where she can either learn to work with a team or get her inexperienced ass metaphorically kicked. so she calls up maria and asks if she has any time to allow ellie to stage at jackson, the most famous chilean-southern soul fusion restaurant in texas (or anywhere. because there isn’t enough of this type of fusion cuisine at all, especially recognized in fine-dining. even though it’s so mf GOOD okay lets move on).
maria meets ellie and loves her, mostly because the young and cocky chef reminds her of the greener version of tess she met in culinary school. she gives ellie a stern but heartfelt one-one-one that can basically be summed up with “fuck around in my restaurant, and find the fuck out,” and invites her to stage.
chef de cuisine/head chef joel miller greets ellie on her first day with nothing but barked orders and grumpiness. he’s a fucking asshole, but every move he makes in the kitchen is as sharp and precise as a killer. he plates like a dream and pushes orders out faster than anyone ellie’s ever seen, so she decides to stick by him and keep up. at first he’s resistant and annoyed—he keeps sending her away to help esther on pastries—but eventually he sees how fast she picks things up and how eager she is to learn. one day he overhears her telling esther that before FEDRA she was completely self-taught, and it astonishes him: suddenly, he can’t deny his own desire to work with and teach her.
so he does. he keeps her close in the kitchen and orders her to watch his every move and step, which she does with hungry eyes. she does not, unfortunately, hold back the snark—no matter how many times he tells her to shut her damn trap, chef, and focus up.
(he relents pretty quickly when she snaps to reveal, annoyed and fed-up, that she can fucking focus better when her mouth is moving along with her hands. after that, joel never gets on her for talking while she works. he lets her and his sous chef chat away)
sous chef tommy miller is everyone’s favorite chef, undoubtedly more kind and friendly in the way he handles the kitchen staff than his older brother (who people still love, but c’mon. chef joel is scary.) tommy delights in the way ellie gives joel shit and doesn’t hesitate to join in whenever he gets the chance. any and every time his wife maria pops in the kitchen, he manages to bypass whatever he’s doing to sneak her a lightening-quick kiss. whenever joel calls out orders to the kitchen, tommy answers back “yes, jeff!” which ellie loves and copies. they are fast friends and a great working pair, and he makes sure that ellie has as much fun as she can while she stages with jackson.
ellie doesn’t see much of the general manager, but anytime she does, tess servopoulous is speaking and moving with undeniable, intimidating purpose. she’s always fixing an issue or solving a problem before ellie even realizes or hears that there is one. one day, ellie runs into her after a busy night and starts to introduce herself—tess stops her with a “i know who you are, maria and joel and tommy all told me great things about you. plus, i havent had to deal with you, yet, if you know what i mean, so you must be doing great. lets go out to eat sometime, yeah?” which nearly knocks ellie completely over, she’s so excited. she goes home that night so happy she could float.
near her last day of staging, tess and maria take ellie out one day to tour around local places they love, introducing her to their favorite dishes and chef friends they keep in touch with around austin. more than one, tess introduces ellie as our little protégé, which makes her blush and want to hide her face.
by the end of the day they’re stuffed, but tommy and joel join them at some pastry place for desert. theyre all together and shooting the shit, and ellie is getting so so so emotional thinking about not getting to be with her little jackson family anymore. she knows that there’s nowhere else she’s grown more as a chef, as a person, as a daughter: there is no place else she’d rather be.
maria pulls out a pizza-themed thank you card and some papers and ellie thinks that this is it, that they’re doing some cruel sick little goodbye that they think is heartfelt but is really nothing but goddamn cruel. she wants to cry and scream and get up to leave, but suddenly maria opens the card and the THANK YOU! written on the inside is crossed out and replaced with, in tess’s shit ugly handwriting WE LOVE YOU! PLEASE STAY?
and tommy says those papers maria are holding are her contract, which they want her to go over because they want to hire her at jackson, they want her to stay. tess says she already feels like family there and maria tells her she brings new life to jackson, a new energy present in the kitchen and the food now that’s all thanks to her. tommy says he’s never seen the staff, and his grumpy ass older brother, so lively. when she’s still silent, stunned and trying not to cry, joel says that it’s her decision, but he’d want no one but her by his side, in the kitchen or anywhere.
so she cries, and she signs, and she stays.
