The Elite by Jennifer Banash

everything. It’s a painting, not a math problem!”
    He had to admit that she probably had a point.
    Even if her work was beyond his decidedly third- grade artistic sensibilities, he knew enough about art to deduce that his mother was talented. After all, they weren’t exactly handing out 4 9

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    one- woman shows at MoMA to every Upper East Side house -
    wife with a paintbrush and a flair for color. In her twenty- year career as an artist, Allegra Van Allen had had two such shows, to be exact—not to mention countless gallery exhibitions in Eu rope, Asia, and around the world.
    Drew walked over the high- gloss cherrywood floors, for-getting, as always, to kick off his dirty Adidas running shoes, and followed the mouth watering scents into the kitchen. His dad, Robert Van Allen, stood at the huge, stainless steel Viking stove, flipping the contents of a cast- iron skillet up in the air with a practiced turn of the wrist. His dad wore a pair of jeans so faded they almost looked colorless, with a black T-shirt.
    A clean, white kitchen towel was thrown over one shoulder.
    Even though his dad was in his early fifties, he still looked the same as he had when Drew was nine—black hair shot through with gray, and a craggy face dominated by a closely clipped salt- and- pepper beard.
    Robert Van Allen had started out a kid from Bensonhurst, who wanted nothing more than to cook for one of the top restaurants in Manhattan. Self- taught, he worked his way up at Jean Georges in a meteoric rise from line cook to grill man to saucier to head chef—all in a dizzying three years. After a four- year stint as head chef at Balthazar, he made a fortune opening a series of restaurants dedicated to providing the Bistro comfort food he loved—French country classics like steak frites, Dijon chicken, and steak tartare—at unbeatable prices. Now, he considered himself mostly retired, and, when he wasn’t managing his restaurants or dreaming up new menu 5 0

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    items, he liked nothing better than to putter around in their kitchen perfecting some new culinary masterpiece.
    “The prodigal son returns!” His dad spoke without even turning around, intent on the meat sizzling away in the skillet.
    “True dat,” Drew said, opening the stainless Sub- Zero fridge and rooting around inside. Predictably, it was so ridiculously packed that you could never find anything—not that he knew what he was looking for exactly. All he knew was that he hated curry, and he was fucking starving . An iced tea bought at a deli does not a meal make , he thought, pulling out some weird leafy vegetable he didn’t recognize and zeroing in on a snowy round of goat cheese drizzled with truffle oil. Score. Now if he could just dig up some bread, he’d be in business . . .
    “I hope you’re not planning on eating that.” His dad gestured at the cheese with the black plastic spatula he held in one hand, “because I am concocting an Indian feast that would make Ghandi weep. ”
    “You know I hate curry,” Drew muttered, opening the pantry. He was on a single- minded search for bread—preferably his dad’s amazing whole grain bread. He had no time to debate the suck- value of noxious spices. Give him some stinky cheese, some crusty bread, maybe a little red wine and he’d be happy for weeks . “And besides, Ghandi was on a hunger strike—he’d probably eat anything .”
    His dad snorted loudly, turning back to the stove and poking at the chicken sizzling in the pan. “Maybe you weren’t aware of it,” he said, covering the pan with a heavy lid, “but I am redefining the entire concept of South Asian dining even 5 1

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    as we speak. A radical step forward in the world of haute cui-sine is taking place right now in this very apartment . . .” His dad pulled out a crisp baguette de campagne from a cabinet hidden beneath the im mense kitchen island and threw it down on the butcher block