King of the Kitchen Read Online Free PDF

it.”
    “And I did, but honestly, Beck. That wasn’t a menu. It was a schoolboy love letter to farm food. It was an embarrassment. I can only imagine what your instructors from Le Cordon Bleu would say if they saw it. You’re not a bored housewife, Beck. You’re a classically trained chef. Act like it. Sarah should be e-mailing you the changes today.”
    Beck bit his tongue, trying to swallow down his impulse to snap back. No one ever won an argument with Christian King, even if they were right. Still, Beck couldn’t keep himself from responding.
    “Cooking with simple ingredients doesn’t mean the food isn’t sophisticated.”
    Christian snorted. “Pasta with butter?”
    “Homemade pumpkin pasta with a sherry brown butter, served with sage and roasted pumpkin seeds.”
    “At the end of the day, Beck, that’s still pasta and butter. People aren’t going to pay a premium to eat that.”
    “You said this was my restaurant. You wanted a wine-focused theme with a casual, upscale atmosphere, and that’s what I’ve delivered.”
    “It is your restaurant, Beck. But it’s my name on the door and my reputation on the line, and Christian King does not serve pasta with butter. Sarah will be in touch. Do make sure the menu gets to the printer by Friday. Send the final design directly to Sarah—she can sign off on it for me while I’m in Atlanta checking in on the restaurant there.”
    That job was usually relegated to Beck, trekking across the country to do audits on the dozens of restaurants in his uncle’s chain. None of them were the same concept, but all of the menus shared one thing in common: They were all overwrought, too trendy by half, and priced accordingly. In other words, everything Beck hated. He’d been busy getting Brix ready for its soft opening in three weeks, though, and Christian had him doing extra hosting shifts on King of the Kitchen to up his own personal “brand awareness,” as Christian and Lindsay and her ever-present marketing team called it, so the actual running of the empire had fallen back into Christian’s hands, at least for the moment. Beck had no doubt that as soon as Brix was up and running, he’d be resuming his old duties as well.
    Christian was obviously waiting for a response, so Beck nodded tightly.
    “Yes, sir.”
    No matter how much effort Beck put into the menu or how much backbreaking work he put into Brix, at the end of the day it was his uncle’s restaurant, not his. Beck fisted his hands at his sides as he watched Christian stride away, expertly dodging all of the camera equipment and not sparing even a second glance at any of the crew. None of them expected him to, of course. Christian was well known as a jovial, friendly personality on television, but everyone who worked with him knew he was a cold and calculating bastard most of the time.
    Not like Beck, who even in his current funk took the time to nod to the boom operator as he walked past.
    Despite wanting nothing more than to hole himself up in his office upstairs and sulk over the new menu, Beck didn’t take his anger out on the crew. It was the biggest difference between him and his uncle. Beck’s success was dependent on everyone who worked with him, from the executive producers and head chefs to the boom operators and the prep cooks who came in at six in the morning for thankless tasks like peeling garlic and chopping a metric ton of mise en place for the dinner service chefs to work with later in the day. Whether he was at the studio or at one of his uncle’s restaurants, Beck made it a point to at least have a smile and a nod for every employee he came across.
    He was almost home free when he saw a cluster of people near the door to the stairs. He sighed and made sure he was smiling as he approached them, though he wanted nothing more than to burst through the door and run up the six flights to his office. He was tense and itchy from the pent-up energy he always felt during filming.
    “Carlie,