“College graduate?” he asked in the tone of somebody back home. Kind. Dismissive.

But I was in New York now, free to be whatever I made of myself.

“English major.” I added, deadpan, “My faculty advisor told me it would be good preparation for any career.” I didn’t mention my MFA in creative writing, a two-year investment that had produced a handful of sentimental stories and put me more deeply in debt.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. Not a smile, but a sign that he found me amusing, at least. “And you chose . . . this.”

I hesitated, wondering how much I should tell him. Nodded.

“You think when I was training that I went home to my mother every night?” he asked. “That I asked for weekends and holidays off?”

“No, Chef.”

“I was sixteen when I dropped out of high school to work in my first kitchen,” he said. “No Le Cordon Bleu for me, no culinary degree. I begged jobs from anyone who would teach me.”

I knew all this already. I’d researched him online. Eric Bhaer, the son of an American serviceman and a German mother, had risen through the culinary ranks in Italy and France, working eighteen-hour days in two- and three-star kitchens in exchange for food and a cot. A hint of Old Europe still rolled around his voice like butter melting in a pan.

“I can learn,” I said. “I want to learn.”

I had always been a good student, having figured out early on that education was my ticket out of Bunyan. Always knowing there would be no money for college—not the kind of school I dreamed of attending—beyond what I earned or borrowed myself.

“Technique, sure.” Chef slipped his feet into handmade clogs. “You have promise, March. You don’t wait for everything to be handed to you. You show up on time, you pay attention to detail, your knife skills are improving. But the good cooks, the great chefs, they have passion, you understand? Dedication.”

Another nod. Because I did understand. I watched the other members of the kitchen team stumble in day after day, shift after shift, underpaid, overworked, sleep-deprived, sick, or hungover. Cooks, driven to cook the way writers are driven to write.

“I like to cook,” I said. Not to mention that there were way more job opportunities for inexperienced prep cooks than downsized journalists in New York.

Chef gave me a look, skewer bright and sharp, over his shoulder. “Why are we here, March?”

Not like, here, in his office. Here at Gusto. “To feed people?” I ventured.

“We feed them, yes. So simple. We take care of them, yeah? So basic. Service,” Chef said, giving the word its French pronunciation. He reached for his knife kit, gearing himself for service like a knight preparing for a tourney. “Everything is for the guest. This is our calling. To be a chef, you must love to cook. You must live to cook, yeah?”

“Yes, Chef.”

I couldn’t match his dedication to service. The way he poured out himself in every dish, on every plate, night after night, for every diner who came to his table . . . That wasn’t me. But I admired it—I admired him—so much. His integrity as a chef was one of the things that had drawn me to his kitchen, one of the reasons I liked talking about food, writing about food, sharing some of his enthusiasm, his passion.