Chương 76: Gears, and a Fortress Falling

As Chris's team sent out their last fish, they switched seamlessly into the main course—pan-seared filet mignon.

"Main, first ticket, two medium-rare!"

"Heard! Two medium-rare!" After the near-disaster, Jack's state didn't drop—it rose. He grew more focused, more careful. Before every steak went into the pan, he checked the pan's temperature again with the back of his hand. With every flip, he felt the steak's springiness with his tongs. He was like a seasoned blacksmith, forging the most perfect work out of fire and time. Chris's sauce station held a constant temperature and consistency the whole way through.

The black pepper sauce he'd simmered was rich in aroma but never too sharp, setting off the flavor of the beef exactly right. Marcus, at the garnish station, plated the pre-made mash and asparagus fast and clean, following the template Chris had set. Three men, three stations, like three precision gears meshed tight. The steak came out of Jack's pan, passed to Chris's hands for the sauce, then to Marcus for the final plating.

The whole flow was compressed to the extreme—from ticket to pass, an average of under four minutes. A hundred filets mignon, under their assembly-line work, streamed toward the ballroom in a steady, efficient rhythm. The guests' feedback was excellent.

"The cook on this steak is amazing! Crisp outside, tender inside, so juicy!"

"The sauce tastes classic, but you can tell it was simmered with care—not some pre-made thing."

"Simple, but really good. This is exactly what I want to eat at a dinner like this." In Chris's kitchen there was only the clatter of spatulas and plates, and short, clear commands. No complaints, no arguments—only a reassuring sense of order. Thirty-five minutes later, with the last steak sent out, they finished the main service—miraculously. Zero negatives. Jack slumped against the counter, gasping for air, but a wide, exhilarated grin hung on his face.

And at that very moment, in the kitchen across from them, the gorgeous, exacting fortress Ethan had built with his own hands was beginning to fall from within. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. The Beef Wellington crisis had arrived, right on schedule. Making two hundred portions of Beef Wellington was a grueling task. The pastry to wrap the beef alone cost enormous time and effort.

Amelia had given it her all in the prep stage, but she'd still underestimated the loss in actual execution. Halfway through service, a fatal problem surfaced—the pre-made pastry dough had run out.

"Ethan! There's only enough pastry for fifteen more! There's still thirty tickets behind that!" There was a sob in Amelia's voice. Ethan's face sank in an instant. He rushed to the chiller, looked at the empty dough box, and his heart dropped to the bottom too.

"Make new dough, right now!" he ordered decisively.

"There isn't time!" Amelia cried in despair.

"Even if we start now, there's not enough time to proof and rest it! The pastry will bake up tough—it'll be hard." The mood in the kitchen plunged to freezing. David and Sarah both stopped what they were doing, staring at Ethan's ashen face. The guests' calls for their tickets had already drifted in from outside.

"Is table seventeen's Wellington ready? The guest's been waiting twenty minutes!"

"What do we do? Ethan, what do we do?" Amelia had lost her nerve completely. Ethan stared hard at the remaining filets and that pitiful little bit of pastry dough. His brain spun at high speed. Give up? Tell the guests the main course was gone? No—to a pride more important to him than his own life, that was utterly unacceptable.

"Change it." Ethan's voice was cold as ice.

"Roll the remaining pastry as thin as it'll go. Wrap only the top and sides of the steak, leave the bottom bare. Make it an 'open-faced Wellington.'" It was an extremely clever on-the-spot adaptation. Dropping the bottom pastry saved dough to the maximum, while keeping the core elements of the dish—the filet and the top crust—intact.

"Fast! Everyone, come help!" Ethan got hands-on himself, beginning to remake the dish. But this fix came at the cost of quality. With no bottom pastry to protect it, the steak lost more of its juices in the bake. And the pastry made from under-proofed "tough dough"—the texture spoke for itself. In the ballroom, complaints began rolling in like a tide.

"Why doesn't my Beef Wellington have a bottom?"

"Why is this pastry so hard? It's like a cracker!"

"The beef's not bad, but the whole dish feels unfinished." Ethan's team's negative-review rate began to climb in the main course. On the team, Sarah quietly took on far more work than her role required. Seeing Amelia struggling with dough, she went over on her own to handle the garnishes. Seeing David's sauce running low, she immediately went to simmer a new batch. She was like a sponge, desperately absorbing the team's negative emotions and extra workload.

Her "team glue" trait was still at work—even in the enemy's camp. But she was too tired. From prep through service, she'd barely rested. Her stamina was being squeezed dry, drop by drop. In his own kitchen, Chris listened to the chaos and Ethan's increasingly harsh scolding coming from across the way—and felt not the slightest schadenfreude. He only understood, more deeply, a line Vane often said: in a kitchen, the most gorgeous concept, if it can't be executed perfectly, is a pile of crap.

His "industrialized" menu looked simple, plain, even a little dull. But in this moment it stood like an unshakable fortress, steady in the middle of the storm. And Ethan's palace—so dazzling to look at—was teetering, all because a single foundation stone had cracked.

"All right, gentlemen, stop watching." Chris clapped his hands, pulling Jack's and Marcus's attention back.

"We've got one course left. Dessert. Marcus, you're up." Marcus swallowed nervously. He knew that as long as he didn't slip, victory would be theirs.