Prix Fixe Menu
Seared Unicorn Sirloin With Lentil Salad, Butternut Squash Puree, and Cilantro Pesto (Add Featured Wine Pairing for $16)
Taste every recipe yourself, before you ever try cooking it for others: that's Chef Dave's cardinal rule, the holy writ of Zarzamora's kitchen, and Chef gets what he wants. I don’t want to do it here, Nina tells him. Not in front of everyone.
For her, Chef makes this gentle concession. He hands her a half-pound slab of unicorn meat wrapped in white butcher paper. She still has to prepare it, has to try it; but not in the busy crush of a worknight. "Cook it when Annie is at work," Chef suggests, before the package leaves his hands. Nina shrugs, and he lets go, turning away.
Chef might not have been so understanding, if he hadn't made the first batch himself.
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The raw flesh is darker than beef, lighter than horse or pegasus. On the skin side, the clinging fascia has a rainbow shimmer in the light from the window—not just birefringence, but true iridescence. There's more fat to trim than you might expect.
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Annie peers over her shoulder while she peels back the butcher paper. "It looks more like …meat than I expected."
Nina sets a pan on the stove and turns up the heat. It is meat, she reminds Annie. Of course it's just meat.
There's a shriek of evaporating water when the meat strikes the hot pan. Nina's tongue rests on her palate, taking in the seared smell through nose and mouth. Behind her in the tiny kitchen, Annie’s hips bump hers. Annie is at the sink, cleaning up the pots and pans and cutting board from the lentil salad that's chilling in the fridge. She prefers the wash-as-you-go approach; she hates when Nina doesn't wash up till the end. Nina does always wash up, though. If Annie just leaves it until the meal is over.
Over the roar of the faucet, Nina talks about the time she saw a unicorn. Chef Dave is big on sourcing ingredients, too, and she's been to farms and fish markets all over the state. The forest was different, though. Just a flash of silver, through the trees. The bottom of the steak has cooked to a beautiful Maillard brown and parts gladly from the pan. Like a dream.
"Didn't you get carsick on the bus ride back to the city?" Annie snorts, and a dirty plate burbles as she submerges it in the suds. "Sounds more like a nightmare."
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You get different effects, depending on the preparation. Restaurants across the city will be serving unicorn foams, gels, aspics. Chef Dave's recipe eschews molecular gastronomy in favor of simplicity: a seared sirloin cut, a scattering of flaked sea salt, a single narrow V of cilantro pesto bisecting the steak.
At its best and simplest, unicorn meat tastes like your last moment of perfect, complete joy.
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Annie is not allowed to wipe out the cast iron pan. "I think you love that thing more than you love me," she says, sounding like she is teasing, when mostly she is testing.
Nina smiles and sets out napkins, plates, forks, knives. The pan waits on a cool burner for her attention.
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At Zarzamora, the dishes are pristine white enamel with a silver band around the edge. These are crisscrossed with a lifetime's knife scars, the edges punctuated with chips. Still, each cut of meat is centered perfectly, bisected with the sauce, a tidy mound of lentil salad on the side. Tucked beneath, three razor-thin slices of beauty heart radish transform into flower petals.
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Annie pushes the petals to the side of her plate when Nina sets it in front of her, smudging the sauce. "Are you nervous?" she needles. About the preparation, about the forthcoming first bite, about all decisions that have brought her to this table and this moment?
No, Nina lies; she's gotten so good at lying. A deft knife-stroke parts a tender slice from her own steak. She sets it between her lips and closes her eyes.
"What do you see?" Annie is afraid too, of course, though she shows it in her own ways. "Is it—?"
Our vacation. Last spring. Nina's eyes stay closed. The hawks over the river. The bottle of Frontenac. You looked beautiful in your dress.
"Good." A scrape of knife on plate, the soft wet sounds of Annie's chewing. Then she's talking, mouth full, about what she sees too, or what she claims to see, but Nina isn't listening. The mists of an old forest gather her in, and across the distance, there is the promise of perfect silver.
© 2022 Aimee Ogden
About the Author
Aimee Ogden is an American werewolf living in the Netherlands. Her debut novella Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters was a 2021 Nebula Award finalist, and her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Analog. She also co-edits Translunar Travelers Lounge, a magazine of fun and optimistic speculative fiction.