Compliments of the Chef

So I’ve had a long time love affair with men who can cook. Who wouldn’t really?

I always thought it would be so fantastic to have a chef who would cook all the time and keep me out of the kitchen. (Which is for everyone’s benefit really.)

I’m one of those who can cook but prefers not to. Being in the kitchen is not my happy place at all and even though I have some fabulous aprons and a few killer dishes that would make anyone drool I’m just not that person who loves to be in the kitchen. I’m definitely the black sheep of the family in this area and clearly the joy of cooking skipped me because my mom and nana and great grandma all loved to cook and they were good at it! My son also loves to cook and while he needs some help in the clean up department, he’s also pretty good. So that leaves me, totally disinterested in anything that takes place in the kitchen.

I learned early on that having a chef to cook for you all the time wasn’t as great as it sounds, at least not for me. I appreciated all of the hard work he went to and loved the creativity and the passion but I was never really that impressed by the food. Many others were though, he’s won loads of awards and has been the creative force behind many successful restaurants, including a few of his own, over the years. He’s very good at his craft, I just happen to be a bag o’ salad and water with lemon kind of gal.

This man was impressive but a bit too intense for me and I was not adventurous enough in the kitchen for him so obviously our short lived tryst didn’t progress too far.

It was a stormy winter evening when we had started watching a movie but got distracted by each other and never finished it. He fell asleep in front of the fire and I sat there watching the rain and the crashing waves (he had an amazing view from his living room). I ended up getting a call from someone else to go to meet up with a group downtown and since he was asleep I just left. I didn’t think anything of it really, we weren’t serious and totally incompatible outside of the bedroom. As I gathered my things and walked to my car I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to call him the next day and I was also pretty sure he was going to be okay with that.

We did exchange a few messages over the following week but they were just formalities really. You know the “Hey how’s it going?”, “What are you up to?” and you just know the other person is always going to say they’re busy or have plans etc. We went our separate ways. There were never any drunk texts or booty calls that occasionally (always) occur after a breakup type event and we didn’t make any attempts to stay in touch. I would occasionally seen him in the newspaper or a local foodie style magazine and we even ran into each other at a few events over the years, our meetings were always friendly and sometimes flirtatious but never anything more than a few minutes long.

I recently had a ladies date night with one of my gal pals that found me sitting in this particular ex-files popular Vancouver restaurant.

I wasn’t expecting to see him and actually didn’t even know it was his restaurant until the server brought over a bottle of wine (one of my favorites) and said “Compliments of the Chef.”

My friend and I just looked at each other, neither one of us sure who knew or caught the eye of this Chef.

I turned towards the kitchen to see the man himself smiling back at us.

Not all of my past relationships are bitter and riddled with torture and heartbreak, some of them I actually remember quite fondly and occasionally even with a smile.

This week I definitely needed a little dose of sweet so it was a really nice surprise to run into this way back ex and discover a pretty decent restaurant to boot, even though the vegetarian options were pretty slim pickings, the roasted cauliflower was delish.