Chapter Text
For as long as Eric Bittle could remember, Bob Zimmermann had been a huge part of his life.
He watched his cooking show with his mother every Sunday. He wore his PJ’s to bed. He read his cookbooks like bedtime stories. Because in a tiny town full of people who could never possibly understand him, baking was his solace, and if Bob Zimmermann could emerge from some tiny town in Quebec to take the culinary world by storm, then so could he. The hope he held of one day leaving this place, of realizing his dreams, of becoming something greater, was what drove him on when it seemed like there wasn’t anything else.
And after a hard day at school, when his stomach was weighed down with the heavy rock of self-doubt, he would shuffle into a kitchen he knew like the back of his hand; the creaking, water-damaged floorboards, the dents in the wall Coach would hit when he opened the cupboards, the cooking utensils worn down to the bone from years of merciless stress-baking from both Eric and his mother, and his grandmother before them.
On these days, Eric would take a slow, shaking breath, and as he let it out, he would let go of the nagging voices in his head, the ones that told him he would never make it out of this town. He would brush his fingers across the framed “Bob Zimmermann’s One-Step Method to Becoming a Professional Chef” that his mother had hung above the sink. And he would bake.
(Bob Zimmermann’s One-Step Method to Becoming a Professional Chef:
Love to cook.)
Stupid as it may seem, those three words were a proverb to Eric. After all, they were what gave him the confidence to pursue a career in culinary arts. To make it into Johnson & Wales University’s culinary school. To finally escape Madison.
They drove him to the top of his Baking and Pastry class. They drove him to (slowly but surely) emerge from the shell he'd built to survive the suffocating atmosphere of he'd always known in Madison.
And now, they'd driven him here, to a tiny shithole of an apartment in east Queens with nothing but a suitcase full of clothes and a nervous jump in his heart.
Five weeks ago, his Culinary Arts professor had let it slip that one of Bob Zimmermann’s restaurants was hiring. “It’s his smallest one.” She’d warned as the entire class practically burst into flames. “A side project, really. But still, it’s under the Zimmermann franchise. And I’ll be recommending one of you for the job. Whoever I think will be the best fit.” Eric’s heart was already thrumming in his chest, even before she announced, “They’re hiring for a pastry chef’s position.” At that, he had lost all feeling in his limbs, and the entire class had groaned in frustration and shot envious looks his way. He was certain he'd get the recommendation, and four days later, he did. Six days after that, he got the call.
And now he was here, quite painfully aware of the fact he truly was a country-boy-in-the-big-city stereotype and quite blissfully unwilling to give a shit about it.
Things were looking up for Eric.
~~~
For as long as Jack Zimmermann could remember, Bob Zimmermann had weighed over every move he made.
The clothes he wore, the places he went, the people he hung out with; everything was subject to public scrutiny. Every little move he made was compared to his father’s (“At his age, Bob was already working as a chef”, “He just seems so distant, not at all like his father”, “Is that how Bob Zimmermann would have done it?”) Even cooking, the brightest light in his life, was dimmed by the constant, nagging fear of failure. Of never being good enough to become anything more than a shadow of his father.
So Jack, in turn, worked his (marvelous) ass off. He would skip all the parties his best friend Kent went to. He’d sacrifice grades for more time in the kitchen. He withdrew into himself, desperate to prove to the world he wasn’t just Bob Zimmermann’s son. He gave up everything for cooking. His eye was on the prize, the prize being ownership of one of Bob’s most renowned restaurants, Ace. In fact, it was second only to Bob’s first restaurant, Manchot, which had crafted him into the chef he was today. It was the perfect place for Jack to prove himself. He could see so clearly; Jack Zimmermann, taking his father’s restaurant and making it his own, making a dynamic impression in the culinary world.
And so, when his father gave Ace to Kent instead, it had been a knife in the gut.
After emerging from rehab three weeks later and a thousand years older, being given La Relance only twisted the blade.
Relance was a side project, little more than an excuse to spread the franchise to Madison Avenue. Kent had been granted a feast, and Jack had been thrown the scraps.
It nearly broke him again. It would have, had he not realized that he'd been given the ultimate opportunity to prove himself. He would take a novelty, a curiosity, a little fling doomed to fizzle out, and he would turn it into something great.
And so he took La Relance. He staffed it with the greatest people he could ever hope to have on his side. And he began his slow but steady rise.
Things were looking up for Jack.