Kitchen Nightmare
My girlfriend and I have been together since around March 2019. I love her with all my heart—but an issue has just arisen.
Her grandfather is coming to dinner, and he is a Michelin Star cook, and said I would cook something. So, yes, I am a 21-year-old man, but look, I just cannot cook.
Sure, I can make something like very basic pasta, a boiled egg, etc. However, I absolutely cannot make anything where you have to prepare multiple ingredients. When I cook, the food is either done or it’s not done. I have no experience with “doneness.”
I do have my redeeming skills, but cooking is just not one of them. I have tried following recipes word for word, but just have had no luck.
My girlfriend and I are both rising seniors in college, and I have my own apartment near campus where we will be meeting for dinner.
When I agreed to make something, I thought I could just mess around with something because I didn’t know the details.
But then when I mentioned it to my girlfriend’s brother, who I’m friends with, he told me that their grandfather was awarded a Michelin Star some time ago.
I asked my girlfriend why she didn’t tell me, and she said she didn’t want me to freak out. I never cook in college. I’ve always just relied on dining hall/eating out/Uber Eats. I don’t even have dishes!
The only thing I can possibly think of is that I know a fair bit about vino, so I could definitely get something good on that end. I really, really don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
I feel like my options are: Push as hard as I can for eating out, or pull a Seymour and buy takeout from a steakhouse or something and pass it off as my own cooking.
I’m sorry if I sound like I’m panicking. I just love this girl so much, and I don’t want to leave a bad impression on someone she’s very close with.
I talked about it with a close friend, and we want to try a test run. If the test fails, then we’ll have to just accept that I will have to say something. So the plan we thought of would go like this:
I will invite a professor (who’d we’d let in on the plan) and a friend of his who is a foodie for dinner at my place with my friend under the guise that I just want to test my cooking.
We’ll order takeout from a top nearby steakhouse, and keep it under heat lamps so that they 1) stay warm and 2) maybe slightly decrease in quality to make it more believable. I’d also have to buy some cheap steak and just throw it on my stove to get the “smell” in the air and have dirty cooking dishes.
I’d also have to memorize the recipe for a steak, and watch some YouTube videos to understand the nuances of jargon and cooking.
Then we see if it works. I also have decent enough experience reds (though not whites) to be able to properly taste and describe without having to fake it.
If that doesn’t work, Plan B would be to straight-up tell him I’m not very experienced, and maybe ask if he can give a demonstration of some dish from his restaurant, and I’d happily pay for whatever ingredients.
He’s coming all the way from France. I’m a big fan of Kitchen Nightmares and keep imagining this is going to be like Gordon Ramsay or something like that.