Dessert First

The first sentence I remembered about food from childhood was, “You can’t have dessert before you eat dinner.” It was a parental conspiracy to ensure I filled up on vegetables, grains, and protein ever before I took one look at any modified, baked, refrigerated, molten form of sugar. I resented the hell out of anyone that ever said I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too.

So the plan was simple: when I turned eighteen and my parents unleashed me upon the world with a fervent passion for corn syrup, frosting, and baked goodness, I would inverse the treacherous themed culinary principle and eat my dessert first. As expected, the world never ended and I kept my sanity intact. I lacked any discipline to learn to cook myself, so more often than not I went out to eat, or ordered in. When I went out the servers gave me a judgmental side glance before ambling back to their station in order to input my request for dessert before dinner.

But the worst of it came whenever I went to eat out with friends or family. If it were my parents, if I’m being frank, then I would just eat my food in the prescribed manner that they had always taught me to so I wouldn’t receive a weird, rambling taunt-lecture from my mom and indigestion-like grunts from my dad. Generally, my friends would chuckle at the idea. It seemed absurd, I suppose. Something that a grown kid would do as they masqueraded through the adult world pretending to be one of them. “I just really like my dessert, and don’t want it to be compromised by filling up on dinner.” I explained to anyone that ever asked. Soon they stopped asking.

I started going to one particular restaurant on a regular basis: Easton’s Eatin’. They had the best chocolate ganache with raspberry swirls cake that they paired with their in-house made madagascar vanilla ice cream. The first time I had it it was an orgasmic experience, and I barely even touched my dinner. Ever since, I never go there to eat anything other than their chocolate cake. If I could eat it without going into some sort of diabetic shock and gaining an inordinate amount of weight, then I’d eat their cake every single day. I’ve gotten better. It started out as an every-other-day habit, and then once a week. But I struck a deal with the girl I was dating at the time who expressed worry over my eating habits that I would only eat Easton’s cake once a month. Though I never said explicitly that I would only get one slice, so of course I usually get two or three.

I met the pastry chef as Easton’s Eatin’ one day when she came out and introduced herself. “I think I’ve seen you in here at least three times per week.”

“That’s not counting the times I walk by the restaurant wanting to come in, but knowing I shouldn’t just eat chocolate cake for the entire week.”

We shared a laugh. Then we talked for a while longer. I learned her name was Gale and she went to a culinary school because she wanted to impress some French foreign exchange student that seemed so dreamy. She sometimes imagined a life with him and her cooking, having a nuclear experience with little genetic nugget replicates of themselves sputtering around, and even the kids would become cooks, and maybe even their grand-kids; though at that point, if she had created a multi-generational lineage of cooks, then she’d expect for at least one of them to be a television chef and have a Michelin star and one or two rivalries among other celebrity chefs. Alas, the Frenchman went back to France, and she continued to cook and tried to become imaginative and expressive in her pastry designs. But her customers just wanted something that tasted good going down. They didn’t care how many hours of prep, cooking, and plating went into any of her dishes.

“It’s a moment of crisis, I’d say, for any chef,” she said. “That time at the beginning of your career where you’ve begun to settle and get comfortable with what you’re doing. And then you get too comfortable. An existential crisis crashes through the oven door. I realized no one cared how ornate or decorative any of my food was. They just wanted to fill their bellies, go on with their day, and then maybe do it later if it was good enough.”

I felt compelled to ask her to marry me. But I composed myself and simply asked her if she wanted to grab some coffee. We made plans to get coffee together at Raindrop Cafe, which happened to be in the same shopping mall as Easton’s Eatin’, for the following Tuesday, aka her next day off.

I arrived at the cafe twenty minutes earlier than when we had said we’d be there because I was too nervous to be late and left my house a lot earlier than I needed to. Anxiety always made me a very punctual date. I ordered the smallest cup of coffee they served so I didn’t look as if I was just loitering, but could finish the warm beverage fairly quickly before Gale arrived and discovered I’d already ordered something and finished it too. For some ineffable reason it seemed rude. I would have ordered her coffee, but I didn’t want to be presumptuous and think I knew her well enough to know how she drank her coffee. It’s one of the more intimate details about a person I’ve come to learn. How a date orders their coffee often determined how long the date and relationship would last.

Gale arrived two minutes and twelve seconds before the time we had agreed upon. She apologized, I assume because she thought she was running late because I was already sitting down at a table. I lied and told her not to worry because I had just arrived moments earlier.

She ordered a black unsweetened cold brew, and I re-ordered a small cup of coffee with a splash of oat milk and two stevia. I’d never gone on a date with anyone who had ordered cold brew. It felt like new territory.

“How long have you been working as a pastry chef?” I asked.

“Almost six years. I’m hoping to one day become, you know, the head chef of a restaurant.”

“That sounds prestigious.”

“It is. I mean, it’s like running the entire heart of a restaurant. I would get to make my own menu, change it based on the season, or my own whim, and tell other chefs how to cook and customers how to eat. It’s a real power trip.”  

“What would your menu look like?”

“You know, I guess, I don’t want you to think that it’s a final draft or anything...I guess what I’m trying to say is that I might change it. This is just something I’ve been sort of twiddling with for a few years. But for appetizers I’d have dumplings with pickled carrots, cucumbers, bean sprouts and seasoned pork, and maybe a pre-main course salad that’d have peanut sauce on top of a bed of mesclun, cherry tomatoes, bean sprouts, egg, and crispy tofu, but it’d be a super small plate, and the main course would probably be a creamy-coconut curry on jasmine rice paired together with Korean BBQ pork tenderloins.”

“That all sounds amazing. I’d certainly love to try it. Do you know what you’d serve for dessert?”

“I haven’t really given that much thought.”

“Really? You’re a pastry chef and you haven’t given it much thought?” I instantly regretted saying this. I didn’t mean for it to come across as condescending, but the phrase lingered in the cafe and I kept hearing how it sounded so rude. 

“I’m open to suggestions,” she retorted. 

“I guess I’m partial to your chocolate cake.”

“Are you now? I guess it just wouldn’t really fit the theme of my menu, though. I don’t mind making chocolate cake now and then, but it seems like it would drench the Asian flavors of my menu rather than compliment them.”

“That’d be fine for me. I eat my dessert before the rest of the meal, anyway. I’d probably just have the cake and only a few of the appetizers.”

“What?” She sounded shocked with a hint of annoyance. Essentially, she went through the trouble of naming off this elegant menu filled with dishes that she’s probably been designing in her head for months, if not years, and I was this culinary dumbo with his fingers in the cookie jar saying I’d rather spoil my dinner with dessert.

It’s been a hard lesson to learn, and I’d have to say even to this day I probably haven’t learned it all that well, but first dates are never the time to be completely honest. I tried explaining it in such a way that seemed flattering to her cooking abilities and how wonderful her cake tasted. Then I tried spinning it as if my statement was a joke. But I think she saw straight through that. She now knew that all I liked about a meal was the sugary sweet end, and could never stand sitting and wading through savory protein for all that long.

Needless to say, a second date never came up. We parted ways that day, and I was too embarrassed to ever go back to Easton’s, no matter how bad my cravings for Gale’s chocolate cake. Soon I moved on to a slew of different confectionary delights, like bread pudding with burnt bourbon glazed vanilla, and then mango sticky rice potstickers, and even a bunch of different flavored frozen yogurts. None were quite as good as that chocolate cake from Easton’s Eatin’, though I’m sure one day when I go by and I see a help wanted sign posted up in their window then I’ll know I can finally go back for more.