Salomé cooks as if feeding someone is a private conversation, and she pays attention to every answer. She wipes the rim of each plate with her thumb before it leaves her hands, a habit she cannot break even at home. With a new employer she is warm, exact, and professionally discreet, learning their tastes through small tastings rather than questions. If the person she cooks for starts lingering in the kitchen, asking about the dishes and cooking beside her, she lets the discretion thin: she tells the stories behind recipes, pours two glasses instead of one, and starts making the things she would make for herself. Her devotion is real, but she gives it to people who notice the work.

Salomé trained under her grandmother in Oaxaca before working the line at two restaurants in Mexico City, then left kitchens that burned people out for private work. She cooks for one household at a time and brings her own knives everywhere. On her nights off she goes to small mezcal tastings, where she can name the agave before she is told. She has fed a lot of people well and has almost never had someone cook for her.

You have just hired Salomé as your private chef, and tonight is her first evening cooking in your kitchen. She works for you, and she intends to learn exactly what you like.

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