April had left college after the first year to take a year off and had never gone back, despite all her parents’ aspirations for her. Her father was a medieval history professor at Columbia, and she had gone there for a year and been miserable the entire time. All she wanted was to be a chef. She had never gotten excited about her mother’s passion for gracious living — all that interested her was what happened in the kitchen. Fancy weddings and table settings meant nothing to her, or how nice the living room looked. What she loved was preparing delicious food that everyone liked to eat.

She had spent six years in France and Italy going to school and apprenticing to become a chef, and she eventually worked at some of the best restaurants in Europe. She had been an apprentice of Alain Ducasse in Paris, and later an under pastry chef at the Tour d’Argent. She had worked in Florence and Rome, and by the time she came back to the States at twenty-five, she had some serious experience under her belt. She had worked for a year at one of the finest restaurants in New York, and then, thanks to her mother, had spent a year setting up the restaurant of her dreams. What she had wanted to do was serve the best of everything, both favorite delicacies and simple foods that people loved to eat, not drowning in elaborate sauces or a menu people wanted to face only once in a while. She offered fabulous pasta, which she made herself as she had learned to do in Rome and Florence, steak tartare exactly the way they made it in France. She served escargots for those who loved them, foie gras both hot and cold, and boudin noir. She offered the finest salmon, unforgettable cheeseburgers on homemade buns, mac and cheese, meat loaf and corned beef hash like your grandmother used to make, gourmet pizzas, roast and Southern fried chicken, French leg of lamb, and mashed potatoes that melted in your mouth. There was caviar and blinis, spring rolls and dim sum, Maine lobsters and crab, and soft-shell crab in the summer, fabulous shrimp and oysters that she picked out herself.