Two restaurant critics learn their opposing tastes might make for a five-star relationship in the next foodie romantic comedy from the author of Sadie on a Plate.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Amanda Elliot’s Best Served Hot, which is out February 21st 2023!
By day, Julie Zimmerman works as an executive assistant. After hours, she’s @JulieZeeEatsNYC, a social media restaurant reviewer with over fifty thousand followers. As much as she loves her self-employed side gig, what Julie really wants is to be a critic at a major newspaper, like the New York Scroll. The only thing worse than the Scroll’s rejection of her application is the fact that smarmy, social-media-averse society boy Bennett Richard Macalester Wright snagged her dream job.
While at the Central Park Food Festival, Julie confronts the annoyingly handsome Bennett about his outdated opinions on social media and posts the resulting video footage. Julie’s follower count soars—and so does the Scroll’s. Julie and Bennett grudgingly agree to partner up for a few reviews to further their buzz. Online buzz, obviously.
Over tapas, burgers, and more, Julie and Bennett connect over their shared love of food. But when the competitive fire between them turns extra spicy, they’ll have to decide how much heat their relationship can take.
The next week found me at Calabaza, a new tapas place all the way downtown. Calabaza was one of those places where you didn’t need to wear a jacket to get in the door, but you probably wouldn’t feel comfortable wandering in off the streets in your cutoffs and T-shirt. Hopefully, a good middle ground between my followers and Bennett’s readers.
I came straight from work, a little overheated with my blue paisley sundress and white cardigan on top. At least I’d switched out my pinchy work flats for my sneakers, which made me feel like walking on clouds. Well, maybe not clouds. Not unless clouds were littered with literal piles of garbage, like the streets of New York. Sometimes I really loved this city, and sometimes I didn’t, and those times were usually when I was walking past a particularly pungent garbage pile. Or a man pooping on the subway floor.
The inside of the restaurant was a portrait in warm elegance, with rustic wooden furniture and wall art in various shades of sun, but I had eyes only for Bennett. Not in a romantic way, in a know-your-enemy way. I swept the room, glancing into each little nook as the host led me to my table, but he didn’t seem to have arrived yet.
“Hey,” Alice said as I approached, already seated facing the door. “I see you got the outfit memo.” She was also wearing blue paisley, though in a flowy blouse over slacks.
“You didn’t notice the camera I installed over your closet last time I was over? I wanted to make sure we matched all the time,” I said. She rolled her eyes, smirking. “Hey, do you mind switching seats? I want to be able to keep an eye on Bennett.”
I’d told him I didn’t want to have to look at him, but when I really thought about it, it seemed worse to have my back to him than my front. Better to be prepared.
She stood, obliging without a word, and let me take her spot. Which was perfect. From here, I had a clear view of the door and the rest of the space. And the tiny golden pumpkin sitting in the middle of our table, a candlewick serving as the stem.
Alice said, “We really need a good code word for him. Something that truly expresses what a dick he is. I’m thinking ‘Dick.’”
“The main thing I love about you is how subtle you are,” I said, and she snorted. “Hey, thanks for coming again, by the way. I know you’ve been seeing a lot of me lately. Some might even say too much.”
“Who would ever say that?” Alice said sarcastically, and now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t that upset about missing tonight’s work happy hour. The guys on my team have really been grating on my nerves lately.” She pursed her lips in a frown. “It’s like now that there are two of us—two women—on the team, they’re feeling threatened and they’re acting out.”
The waiter came by to deliver our menus and give us a spiel about the restaurant. I barely heard him, tensed as I was. When he finally left, I leaned in and said, in a low murmur, “What have they been doing to you?”
Alice held her hands up, palms out. “Nothing!” she said. “They’ve just been kind of annoying lately. And it’s nice, at least, that I have an ally now to face them with.” But her shifty eyes meant that she might not be telling me the whole story. “Maybe you can come with me to work trivia night or something and hang out on my turf.”
I’d definitely do that. “Just tell me when and where.” “Will do.”
The door opened, and I sat up extra straight as two people entered, the same way I sat when my doctor asked me if I’d been slouching lately. It was Bennett, his narrow face gold in the reflected light, his brown-blond hair styled into a high swoosh over his forehead. And with him? A woman around our age, short and a little chubby, with a pixie cut so glaringly pink it almost distracted from the bright orange lace of her dress. His girlfriend, maybe?
What do you care? I asked myself fiercely.
I don’t care, I answered back, just as fiercely.
He craned his neck to look throughout the restaurant; when those blue-gray eyes settled on me, they narrowed just the tiniest bit. He didn’t smile. He didn’t nod. But then again, I didn’t smile or nod at him, either. We just regarded each other in a chilly fashion, like we were opposing generals preparing to order our troops to war. When he sat, he first pulled out the chair for his companion, who fluffed up her skirts as she sat, then he took the seat facing me, placing his back to the door. Unwise move, I tried to communicate through my eye-beams. If an axe murderer runs through the door, you won’t see him, and your head is going to get chopped off.
He looked away toward his companion, lips breaking in a smile, and he said something I couldn’t hear. The pink-haired girl’s shoulders shook in what I assume was a laugh, and suddenly I felt like a creep for still staring their way. I tore my eyes off them, fixating on the menu before me. I cleared my throat. “Anything on the menu especially calling out to you?”
“I want everything patatas,” Alice said. “Especially when the patatas have been fried or smothered in cheese.” The Spanish did love their potatoes. But who didn’t love potatoes, whether their country’s or not? I loved all my potatoes equally, whether they were the french fries on my plate or the Tater Tots on Alice’s. Alice could attest. I’d nearly lost a finger to her butter knife more than once.
“Got it.”
The excellent thing about tapas was that you could or der a million different things to add up to a full dinner, and yes, it was expensive, but you also got to try a lot more than you did in a standard restaurant. So we ordered a ton of food, at least one thing from every section, and when I closed the menu, it was with such a sense of anticipation and excitement that I nearly forgot about my adversary across the room. Which, of course, made me focus on him. He was still laughing with his companion. What could possibly be so funny that they would still be laughing?
I hesitated with my fingertips on the menu, then flipped it back open. “Can I send a dish as a gift to another table?” I asked.
Maybe because it was only one dish versus many, it came out before either of our real orders. The waiter set the plate down on Bennett’s table and said something I couldn’t hear; Bennett glanced over at me. Our eyes met again; only this time, his were crinkled at the corners, unable to meet the force of my serious ones. His dropped away first, his laughter dying, which gave me a sense of victory.
Though it might have been less due to the force of my gaze than the pulpo I’d had sent to his table. I hadn’t for gotten what he’d written in his review. I don’t personally care for octopus; I find it unpleasantly squeaky against the teeth when cooked well, and even more unpleasantly rubbery when not.
He looked back up at me. I smiled wide, then mouthed, A gift for you.
He scowled. In return, I smiled wider. His companion exclaimed, her shoulders jumping, and pulled the octopus to herself. His face relaxed as he watched her enjoy the dish, which, in turn, made me scowl.
“So how is Emerson’s business coming along?” Alice asked. “Is she taking investors? Because I’m considering investing in some—”
“Not Emerson—Emerson Leigh,” I said reluctantly. “And no, I will not allow you to even joke about that. But she is planning on throwing herself a big party to celebrate her launch.” I perked up a bit. “I bet she’d let me invite you if you want to come.”
Alice perked up, too. “A room full of absurdly rich people being ridiculous? Yes, please.”
Anything else she was going to say was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, a tray on his shoulder. “Wow, that was fast,” I said, impressed, ready to take a note on my phone as soon as he walked away, except when he lowered the tray, none of the food I’d ordered was on there. Just two goblets of bloodred wine. Which we hadn’t ordered. “What’s this?”
The waiter set them on the table, then nodded toward the entrance. “They’re a gift from the gentleman over there. The one you sent the pulpo to.”
I took a deep breath. I was not going to rope the waiter into this battle. Bennett must have overheard me right be fore he confronted me, when I was talking about my distaste for wine. And what lurked beneath: the uncertainty around it. Because it wasn’t just that I didn’t like it; it was that I couldn’t tell the difference between wines. And that made me feel like a little kid who didn’t know anything. Especially given the company I kept. I stared at the goblets, my forehead growing painfully hot. He was doing this to get back at me for the octopus, to embarrass me. To rub it in that I would have no idea whether these glasses he sent were the good stuff or the cheapest stuff on the menu. Whereas he’d probably grown up with his own personal sommelier.
To make things worse, Alice was nose deep in her goblet. “Mmm, smells fancy,” she said. “Very rich and full-bodied. The kind I . . .”
She probably kept talking, but I didn’t hear her, because I’d finally looked up. Bennett was looking at me with a cheesy grin. His companion had turned around, too, and was grinning in our direction as well. Great. They were both mocking us. Should I make a big show out of drinking it? Or of ignoring it, pushing it all the way to the side of the table like I didn’t even care?
I didn’t really want to drink it. It wasn’t like he’d eaten the octopus. But I didn’t want to leave it on the table, either. Every time I looked at it, it would be like it was mocking me.
I pulled the goblet away from Alice before she could take a sip, so violently a few drops sloshed over the edge of the glass. I stood, one goblet in each hand. It looked as if I’d cut myself and bled on the table. “I’ll be right back.”
I just want you to be aware that stomping across an entire New York City restaurant is not an easy thing to do. They’re always packed with people, the tables and chairs shoved as close to one another as possible in order to fit even more profit margins into the day, and of course they’re also filled with the obstacles of restaurants everywhere: waiters carrying precarious trays of food and drink; bussers clearing off tables full of breakable porcelain and glass and sharp silver tines.
But I did it. I stomped across the whole room, not breaking my heavy stride as I twisted and squirmed be- tween tables. Waiters and bussers jumped out of my way.
And all without spilling another drop.
“I think you left these at my table,” I told them from a few feet away. That definitely sounded like more of a burn in my head. “We don’t—”
Something slammed into the back of my legs. A chair?
My knees buckled. I shrieked.
And the goblets of wine went flying. My mouth dropped open in horror, and it all played out in what seemed like slow motion. The pink-haired girl clapping her hand to her mouth, her fingernails a vibrant shade of neon green. The waiter’s howl of NOOOOOOoooooOOOOOOoooo. Bennett’s eyebrows shooting up to his hairline as he dived to the side.
All in vain. Because the wine found its mark: all over them. Splotching the pink-haired girl’s orange dress into a sunset. Drenching Bennett’s sharply creased khakis so that he looked kind of like he’d peed himself. If he had a severe kidney infection and he was peeing blood.
Oh my God. What had I done? I opened my mouth, ready to vomit apologies all over them, horrified by their wide-eyed looks of panic and . . . was that fear?
Maybe . . . I could use this.
I stood up straight, clearing my throat. “That’s what I think of your wine,” I said, and then I turned tail and ran away. Yes, ran away. I couldn’t handle their eyes on me anymore, or having them believe I’d thrown those glasses of wine on them. In theory, yes. In practice, no, because they made me feel kind of like I was going to throw up.
But the look I got from Alice when I got back to our table wasn’t any less horrified. “Why did you do that?”
“It was an accident,” I said, stumbling over my words even though it was the truth. “Somebody hit me with their chair, and I just rolled with it.”
Her shoulders relaxed slightly. “I knew you weren’t the type,” she said. “I just didn’t have a good view from over here.”
“If you knew I wasn’t the type, why’d you ask?” I said, and probably she would have answered if her mouth hadn’t fallen open like she was trying to fit a double club sandwich in there. I turned to see what she was looking at, and my mouth dropped open, too. I could’ve stuffed a double- double club in there when I noticed the pink-haired girl had climbed on top of her chair and was now addressing the entire restaurant, her voice a megaphone.
“I would like everyone in this restaurant to be aware that it was Julie Zee Eats NYC who dumped goblets of wine on us!” And like the hand of God descending from the heavens, she pointed at me. Everybody turned at once.
I felt a little bit like a pointed-at lobster in a supermarket tank, paralyzed, waiting for the hand of the seafood counter guy to pluck me up and stuff me in a bag for boiling.
But the stares only lasted for a few seconds before the first murmurs broke the silence. “Who?” “Are we supposed to know who that is?” “Is she on TV?”
“The food blogger!” added the pink-haired girl hastily, but she’d already lost the room’s attention. This was Manhattan. Once, I’d ridden the subway and not even noticed the guy next to me was Tim Gunn until somebody else asked for a selfie.
“Almost sixty thousand followers, and none of you are here? Seriously?”
I blinked, and the waiter was next to our table again, regarding me solemnly. “Ma’am, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you and your friends to leave.”
I wasn’t sure what I was most offended by in that sentence. The “ma’am,” implying I was old? Being disgracefully kicked out of the restaurant? Having it implied that Bennett and the pink-haired girl were my friends?
“You saw it was an accident, right?” I asked the waiter. “Somebody hit me with their chair.”
He regarded me impassively. You knew you were toast when a waiter got unfriendly, because it meant they were no longer worried about a tip. “You’ve all disturbed the experience for our other guests, and I’m afraid you’ll all need to leave.”
I snuck a glance over at Bennett and his friend. He was still dabbing grimly at the wine stains on his khakis, but the girl’s feet were planted firmly on the ground, and she was tossing a scarf around her neck. Getting ready to go.
Well, if they were going to go, I wouldn’t stop them. Or stay myself. “This was a disaster,” I whispered to Alice as we swept past Bennett and the pink-haired girl’s table. I was careful not to turn toward them at all, but I imagined venomous looks drilling into the back of my head as we exited. We’d been in there long enough that it was starting to get dark. The night crowd was coming out, beautiful people dressed in expensive clothes, groups of friends laughing in the windows of bars.
Alice sighed, glancing wistfully at the menu. “I really wanted my patatas.”
Great. I swallowed a lump of guilt in my throat. “Never fear. I’ll get you your patatas.”
They might not have been Spanish, but potatoes were just as good frenched.
Excerpted from Best Served Hot by Amanda Elliot Copyright © 2023 by Amanda Elliot. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
