Best Australian Yarn 2023: The Culinarian by Cameron Rutherford

The culinarian never steps outside the dark cluttered kitchen at the back of the hole-in-the-wall restaurant. She’s forgotten what it looks like from the outside. The style of the building. The atmosphere of the street. She doesn’t need to know. She only needs to cook.

The culinarian loves to cook. That is the only thing about herself she knows to be unchangeable. She loves the satisfaction of crafting a striking cuisine. She loves when each mouthful of a meal melts into bliss on the tongue. She wants to give that feeling to others, more than anything. That’s why she locked herself in here.

She rises early each morning from her mattress under the counter, before any sunlight has even filtered through her tiny, smoke-stained hopper window, to plan and prep and cook a seven course meal for her diners. Hors d’oeuvre. Soup. Appetizer. Salad. Main course. Dessert. Mignardise.

In the evening, dinner is served. The wait staff take each meal from a serving hatch hidden from view to diners that blow in from the street, talk loudly to each other about anything but the food. The culinarian listens at the door, just in case they ever do.

Then, when the waiters have cleared away half eaten plates, to be cleaned late into the night by the culinarian, she enters the booth, a small chamber between the kitchen and the front of house. Her face is concealed in the dark, separated from the outside world by lattice, like a confessional.

Some nights, all the diners have already gone. The restaurant is never at full capacity. Often, diners barely recognise her presence, continue talking to their friends. Sometimes, she is greeted by a half-hearted applause, while others sit in heavy silence. Sometimes a night like that will thrill her, make her smile in the dark ecstatically, to know that she has done well. That maybe they will tell their friends. That maybe the next night will be different.

But often she prefers when no one is there, because at least then she can pretend that her diners left satisfied. Because she won’t have to look into their apathetic faces, or worse, the backs of their heads.

*

It is dark in the kitchen and even the most practiced of chefs make mistakes. Running on a handful of hours of sleep each night and working frantically all alone, it is no surprise that the culinarian’s hands are covered with cuts, her arms with burns. Her hair has been singed from the oven and her feet banged up from dropping her tools.

The culinarian stands on a stepping stool, reaching up to the spice rack above the stove. The previous night’s dishes were particularly stubborn — a burnt roux is mostly to blame for that — and despite exhaustion she could not sleep after finishing her work in the small hours of the morning, wracking her brain for new recipes. So she fumbles, her eyes heavy like a punch, and the glass canister smashes against her arm.

Into the bubbling pot below drips bright red blood. The culinarian pulls a shard of glass from her arm and more blood trickles into the brew from her fingers that grip it tightly.

She cleans up the broken canister, and herself. Thankfully, no glass has contaminated her work. The culinarian stirs her concoction. Perhaps she will not have to remake it. This sauce did need thickening anyway. She grabs a tasting spoon and tests it.

It tastes good enough to her, and she doesn’t have the time to make another sauce just as good. No one will notice.

*

The culinarian stands with her forehead kissing the door, staring down at the light and shadow that flickers in from the front of house.

Tears blur her vision. She can’t believe it.

They like the dish.

They won’t stop complimenting it.

When she goes into the booth that night she’s greeted with dozens of smiling faces, staring into her. They ask her about the sauce. She tells them everything they could ever wish to know, apart from which animal the blood came from.

The culinarian asks their thoughts on the other dishes. They wave her words away. It’s clear. They only loved the blood sauce.

*

The next day the culinarian stands with her arm poised over the sink, a marinade injector in one hand, needle pointed to a pulsing vein in her bicep.

Surely giving a little more wouldn’t hurt.

She pierces, draws the dark red warm thickness.

This time she uses the blood in the main, a spiced blood and barley sausage.

When she steps into the booth she is greeted with a crowd, blocking her view of the restaurant. Only ecstatic faces fill her field of view.

She steps back. They practically rattle the lattice. What is her secret? How does she do it? They love it! They love it!

She settles back into the darkness and tells them reluctantly.

“The special ingredient is me.”

In the half-light, the culinarian shows them the cuts on her fingers, shows them the injection site in her arm, bruised a beautiful shade of lilac.

They scream loudly. They love her! They love her!

Adrenaline shoots through her heart. She feels herself grin, thrilled, ecstatic. She holds her chest.

She is loved.

*

I have been attending the restaurant for a long time now. I haven’t been here since the start, of course. Barely anyone was here before the menu change.

I remember my first time dining here. The food was good, but I didn’t quite understand the excitement, until I glimpsed the culinarian behind the lattice after our empty plates were cleared away and she spoke about her method, her process.

I’ve been here every night since. I often wait outside long before opening hours, I’ll admit. I’m no conversationalist, but I listen in to the others who wait outside, to their praise and speculation. We all try to piece together what must go on behind the kitchen door. There are some very smart diners, who track the paths of grocers and delivery trucks, who find and question the wait staff after hours, who study the culinarian’s silhouette and listen closely to the kitchen door. We think the culinarian must be very beautiful.

One night I was lucky enough to be seated right by the door. Some diners were talking loudly about how delicious the blood curd soup was, about how healthy and skilled the culinarian must be for it to be such high quality.

Then there was a little cry, just a small exclamation of pain. Us diners went silent, soup spoons to lips. There was the almost imperceptible sound of blood dribbling on the floor, and feet shuffling away.

It seems even the culinarian can’t resist herself.

Although there are always those who thrive on derision and division. There is a nasty rumour that the culinarian doesn’t actually use herself in her dishes, is lying and instead uses animal parts.

It was after that rumour popped up that the culinarian began using more than just her blood.

She started with crisped skin crackling, fried in the tallow of her own cheek fat. That made for a showstopping appetizer.

Shortly after that was a personal favourite of mine, from that era of her work. Steamed dumplings filled with herbs and the soft chewy fat of her left breast.

Everyone loved that dish, except that one diner who stood up at the end of night and told the culinarian in her booth that he didn’t enjoy it very much, got a piece of gristle stuck between his teeth.

After that the culinarian’s dishes changed again.

All the diners drooled over the slow roasted shank that was presented for mains the next night, and applauded the culinarian when she rolled into the booth in her new wheelchair.

After the slow consumption of her legs over the next few weeks, us diners grew accustomed to the flavour of her rich succulent meat. How could we not?

When I’m eating a dish made by the culinarian everything else melts away. It’s like nothing else matters but the tastes, the textures. No conversation brings me greater joy than analysing her choices, discussing how the different dishes complement one another, wondering what might be brought out next, and most of all, learning more about the culinarian.

After the meat and skin and fat of her legs was inside all of us, the culinarian went back to feeding us blood dishes.

Naturally us diners were upset about this. Surely she had so much more to give, and the memory of her previous dishes would only satiate us for so long.

Once, the culinarian ran late.

I wasn’t seated by the kitchen door that night — God, what I wouldn’t give to have heard what was said there — but I’ve heard people who were there talk about what happened.

I saw the diners rattling against her door, begging her to finish the dishes. Many were worried she wouldn’t be serving that night, that perhaps something terrible had happened to her.

Apparently, she got upset. Yelled at them softly through the door. No one has ever heard her speak while not in the lattice booth before or since. Perhaps the quietness was because of something blocking the door, muffling her words, or perhaps she was trying not to cry.

Allegedly, the culinarian said we consume everything she gives us too quickly. That we leave nothing behind. Destroy her work.

Of course those at the door told her the work was meant to be consumed, picked apart. What did she expect? We love her work. We love her. That’s why we do it.

She said we couldn’t love her. We couldn’t possibly. We’ve never met. We’re strangers.

But that can’t be true. I feel like I must know her better than she knows herself. She has never dined at her own restaurant. She can’t know herself the way we know her.

I have eaten the soft fat of her left breast, the breast of a woman who has never fed a babe, but has had the joy of fattening up on her own indulgent cooking. I have bitten into the firm muscle of her right thigh, known her to be a woman that stands on her feet all day, and who favours her left leg. I have felt the texture of her skin on my tongue, known from its hue and the number of hairs plucked what corner of the Earth her family hails from.

She is inside me. I know her form better than my own. But I do admit, there is still so much to consume and I am so hungry for more.

The waiters began serving the first course, and the crowd at the door hurried off to drool over their hors d’oeuvres.

That night the culinarian did not appear behind the lattice, and the next we were served her tender tongue, braised in red wine. The culinarian cannot speak when she appears in her booth anymore, but she appears every night for us to appreciate her graceful silhouette.

That isn’t enough for some. The restaurant has had to hire extra security now. The wait staff could handle the diners trying to break into the kitchen easily enough, but when the culinarian is sitting there, behind the lattice, half in view, barely out of reach, it can be hard to resist.

Many have run up, tried to break through the lattice, take a bite of her. I admit that I have attempted it. But that’s understandable isn’t it? I love her so much it’s unbearable, especially when I can feel her so close. She would forgive me, wouldn’t she? She’s the one sharing herself with the world. Surely she appreciates being wanted. Surely she understands that we need her.

Nothing else brings me so much joy. Nothing else matters.

*

Tonight is rumoured to be the culinarian’s biggest feast yet. There’s been theories floating between tables, between those who wait outside the restaurant.

The culinarian has been limiting us to mere blood dishes for weeks now. It’s been unbearable, but it may be well worth the wait, if it’s true that the culinarian has been regaining her strength for a spectacle.

Miraculously, I have scored a seat near the lattice booth. I waited outside the restaurant since close last night to secure it, and gnashed my teeth at a few other diners that dared try to take it from me.

I’m not the only one visibly shaking with anticipation. The wait staff pour into the packed room and the scent practically stops my heart. We roar with delight.

Hors d’oeuvres are served first. Liver pâté and devilled kidneys on toasted ciabatta. The soup is a blood stew, the appetizer a whole torso of ribs, unfurling like a blooming flower. Brain salad comes next. The glorious main dish is a beautiful haggis, stomach stuffed with chopped heart, lungs and suet. Dessert is a mouth-watering sanguinaccio dolce, blood chocolate pudding. To finish off, a mignardise of petite caramels made from human fat.

Us diners talk ecstatically, congratulate ourselves on our correct theories, beam with the knowledge that others will be filled with painful regret that they were not here tonight.

It takes a long time for us to realise what is missing. Slowly, conversations die down. Diners turn to the lattice booth, empty.

Silence befalls the restaurant.

I lean closer, peer between the latticework. Darkness.

Suddenly, chairs are being thrown back. Diners run to the kitchen door. I follow, heart in my stomach. If only I’d fought for a seat by the door.

Someone falls and we stumble over them. We bang against the door, kick, yell, crash our weight against it. The wait staff and security do not try to stop us.

Eventually the door breaks open. We burst into the dark cluttered kitchen. On the countertop and fallen to the floor is the remnants of a carcass.

Diners lunge towards it.

I wrap my hands around soft grey offal and stuff it into my mouth. I tear, bite, swallow. I gag, my body thrusting itself forward to vomit but I hold it in, reach for more. It’s disgusting but I need it.

This is the last of the culinarian. All there ever will be. How could she leave us? I need her. I love her.

I snatch a bone. An arm bone, I think. I snap it over my leg, gnaw at the marrow within.

We don’t stop until there is nothing left. Not even bone. Not even gristle.

And we are still so hungry.