Elin Hilderbrand - Here’s to Us

Deacon Thorpe was nearly as famous for his life away from the stove as he was for his life behind it. He was married to his high school sweetheart, Laurel Thorpe, from 1982 to 1988. The couple has a son, Hayes Thorpe, 34, who works as the hotels editor at Fine Travel magazine. In 1990, Thorpe married Academy Award-winning actress Belinda Rowe; the couple’s daughter, Angela Thorpe, 26, worked for Mr. Thorpe at the Board Room in a position unique to the restaurant called the fire chief. After divorcing Rowe in 2005, Thorpe married Scarlett Oliver, causing a tabloid sensation, as Ms. Oliver had for many years served as Chef Thorpe and Ms. Rowe’s nanny. The couple has a nine-year-old daughter, Ellery Thorpe.

Mr. Thorpe’s agent and longtime friend, John Buckley, issued a statement on Friday afternoon that said, “Everyone who knew Chef Thorpe is shocked and saddened by the news of his death. The country has lost not only a culinary genius but also a cultural icon. The friends and family of Mr. Thorpe ask simply for privacy and respect during their time of mourning.”

Clams Casino Dip with Herb-Butter Baguettes (Courtesy of Deacon Thorpe)

SERVES 4 TO 6

8 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 sweet onion, diced

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

¼ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup of minced or chopped clams (fresh or canned and drained work)

2 blocks cream cheese, 8 ounces each, softened and cubed

8 ounces fontina cheese, freshly grated

4 ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, freshly grated

Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Spray a 9-inch round baking dish at least 3 inches deep with nonstick spray.

Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat and add the bacon. Cook until the bacon is completely crispy and the fat is rendered. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and place it on a paper-towel-lined plate to drain excess grease.

Keep the skillet with the bacon grease over medium-low heat and add the peppers and onions. Add in the smoked paprika and black pepper. Stir well to coat and cook until the vegetables are soft and golden, about 6 to 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic and the chopped clams and cook for another 2 minutes. Remove the vegetables and clams with a slotted spoon and add them to a large bowl. Add the cream cheese, grated cheeses, and bacon into the bowl. Use a large spatula to mix, and stir until everything is combined, distributing the cream-cheese cubes as you go. Spoon the mixture into the baking dish. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden and bubbly. Serve immediately with the herb-butter baguettes.

Herb-Butter Baguettes

1 large ciabatta baguette, sliced into ½-inch rounds

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

⅓ cup freshly chopped herbs (I used cilantro, basil, thyme, and oregano)

½ teaspoon flaked sea salt

Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Spread the softened butter on the baguettes. Cover the butter with the assorted herbs (use whatever herbs you like!). Bake until the baguettes are warm and golden and toasted, about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the flaked salt. Serve immediately.

It was her eleventh day back working as fire chief, although she tried not to think in those terms-eleven days back at work, forty-three days since Deacon had died. Instead, Angie tried to think of it as just another Friday night at the Board Room, the busiest night of the week. The world had been shocked silly by her father’s death, and so Harv, the general manager-the only one with the stones to make the tough decisions-had closed the restaurant for a month. The front windows had been sheathed in black curtains, which Harv felt was appropriate. People-customers, fans of the shows, random New Yorkers-dropped off bouquets of flowers and hand-lettered signs, poems and stuffed animals, candles and crosses. When Angie saw these offerings, her throat ached. She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. She was bone-dry.

Angie had thought that the restaurant’s popularity might wane or that it would veer off course like a ship without a captain. The Board Room was Deacon’s creation and vision-from the wild-strawberry caprese salad, which was sourced from a boutique farm upstate and which he’d put on the menu two days before he died, to the gleaming copper tables and the caviar sets made especially for the restaurant by a descendant of one of the Russian czars, to the limited-edition Robert Graham shirts he liked Dr. Disibio to wear behind the bar. But bizarrely-or maybe not; Angie wasn’t a great judge of human behavior-the frenzy for reservations had more than doubled, which hardly seemed feasible. The wait for a table was six weeks already.

Angie was grateful to be busy. Bring on the weeds, ticket after ticket piling up: the pineapple-and-habanero shrimp, the smoked maple-glazed salmon, the “sexy” scorched octopus. The Friday-night pace had just ratcheted up from screaming breakneck to white-hot roller-coaster ride when Joel came up behind Angie and whispered in her ear, “I’m telling her tonight. I’m leaving, baby.”

Angie grabbed hot tongs instead of cool ones and burned the bejesus out of her hand. She sucked the webbing between her thumb and index finger. “Can we talk about it later?” she asked.

Tiny, whose job it was to stoke and tend the cooking fire, keeping it at just the right level and heat for Angie at all times said, “Buzz off, Joel. We’re in the middle of feeding people here.”

He was telling her tonight. He was leaving.

Angie couldn’t concentrate on work; her tickets piled up until she was buried and Julio, the expediter, swore at her.

Tiny said to her sotto voce, “Are you okay, Angie? Did Joel say something to upset you?” Tiny was a gentle giant, nearly seven feet tall. He had been the one in charge of taking Angie’s emotional temperature since the restaurant reopened.

“I’m fine,” Angie whispered.

Joel had said the words Angie had been waiting to hear since they had slept together after the restaurant’s Christmas party, six months earlier. He was going to leave his wife and make his relationship with Angie official. Angie’s emotions kited all over the place, soaring, zooming, catching wind, then dipping suddenly.

The night that Deacon died had been an unseasonably warm Thursday in May, one of those spring days that make people think about the joys of summer-strolling through the park, eating alfresco. Deacon had played hooky from work. He’d told Harv he was going up to Nantucket for a few days to fish and clear his head, which Angie had thought was a good idea. Scarlett had gotten fed up with Deacon’s drinking and recreational drug use, and she flew back home to Savannah-for good, she said. She had pulled Ellery out of school and everything. Angie had reassured Deacon: they would be back. Scarlett was prone to tantrums-Angie secretly thought this was because she didn’t consume enough calories to inspire reason-and besides, she had taken only two suitcases. That wouldn’t last her more than two weeks, and it had already been ten days. Deacon had said, I messed up again, Buddy… marriage number three, and I torched it. It’s all my fault. Everyone leaving has always been my fault.

Angie had nearly said that marriage the institution seemed to have been invented in order to trip Deacon up, but she refrained. He was extremely upset, which Angie, frankly, found strange. His marriage to Scarlett wasn’t much more than a pretty shell. Every Tuesday night, when the restaurant was closed, Deacon had dinner with Angie because Scarlett went to bed at eight o’clock, and she didn’t eat anything, anyway. But when you didn’t want to spend your one night off with your wife? Well, that pretty much spoke for itself.

On that Thursday night, Joel had driven Angie home from work, as had become their routine. They’d had a drink after service with the rest of the staff, as usual, and then, as usual, Joel said good-bye first, and Angie followed five or six minutes later, meeting Joel on the corner of Sixtieth Street and Madison, where she climbed into his Lexus and they headed uptown to Angie’s apartment. They made love quickly and then, after Angie poured them each a cognac, once again more slowly.

When Joel had risen to leave on that Thursday, Angie had clung to him and begged him to stay.

“Hey now,” Joel had said. “You know I can’t.”

Joel lived in New Canaan, a place that Angie had never seen but that she imagined as hill and dale, a place where bunny rabbits nibbled the emerald grass in front of a white clapboard house with black shutters. She suspected that everyone in New Canaan was white. If Angie ever showed up at Joel’s house on Rosebrook Road-and she fantasized about this all the time-the neighbors would think she was there to clean, or to clean them out.

“Please?” Angie said. She wasn’t sure where the desperation was coming from. For twenty-six years, Angie had lived as an emotionally carefree, blissfully independent soul. She had worked in kitchens with men since she was eighteen and had slept with a few, but no one who mattered after ten o’clock the next morning. Angie had fallen in love with Joel Tersigni the instant Deacon hired him, two years earlier. Joel was handsome in a way that seemed custom tailored to Angie’s tastes-the dark hair, the goatee, the sly smile, a voice with a smoky, seductive edge. He had a commanding, charismatic presence. He knew exactly what to say to each person who walked in the door, whether it was Kim and Kanye or a school janitor from Wichita, Kansas, about to spend his life savings on dinner.

And after seven or eight cups of Dr. Disibio’s double-dare dragon punch at their Mandarin-themed holiday soiree, Joel had led Angie by the hand into the dry pantry and charmed the pants right off her.

More than four months had passed. They had their “things” now: inside jokes, catchphrases, gestures. Every Saturday, Angie paid a Jamaican woman from the prep kitchen fifty bucks to do her cornrows, and every Thursday, Angie took them out and gathered her hair in a frizzed ponytail. Joel loved the ponytail. She was exotic to him, she knew, being half-black. Joel had grown up in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; his parents had operated something called the Biblical Dinner Theater. Joel had escaped to Manhattan, which his parents thought of as a city of sinners.

“I have to go, Ange,” Joel said. She loved the way he said her name, she loved that he called her Ange. The only other person who called her Ange, was her brother, Hayes. Angie gave Joel a long, luscious kiss that made him groan but would not, she knew, make him stay.

After she closed the door behind him, she’d thought, I would give anything to make him mine.

Buck had called the very next morning.

Your father…? Buck had said. Deacon… your dad…

Angie said, Yeah, what’s up?

He went to Nantucket…, Buck said.

I know, Angie said. Harv told me. He went to fish. She had thought briefly of fresh striped-bass fillets marinated in a little olive oil and chili powder, thrown onto the hickory fire until just opaque, and then drizzled with lemon juice. Sheer perfection.

Angie, Buck said. He had a heart attack. He’s dead.

Angie hung up without a word, as though Buck were a crank caller.

Her eleventh night ended without fanfare. Or maybe there had been fanfare and Angie hadn’t noticed. The bandanna she had tied around her head felt like a crown of fire, her feet had turned to bricks in her clogs, and her stomach felt like a ball of rubber bands. She flung a salmon fillet onto the fire but was too distracted to savor the hiss, or the cloud of sweet maple smoke.

Joel was leaving. But maybe she had misheard him or misinterpreted the meaning of “leaving”?

“Are you okay?” Tiny asked.

“I’m fine,” Angie whispered.

Joel seemed edgy in the car, overhyped-he was probably coked up. He sometimes partook with Julio, the expediter, in the dry pantry, she knew, even though Harv had instituted a new, zero-tolerance drugs rule upon reopening. We’re going to clean things up around here, he said. But, as Angie knew only too well, people were going to do what they were going to do.

Joel said, “I’m telling her as soon as I walk in the door. I’m finished, we’re through, I want a divorce.”

“Yes,” Angie said. “Okay.” She tried not to think of the phrase “home wrecker.” Joel was miserable with his wife, Dory, who worked as a mergers-and-acquisitions attorney a few blocks south of the restaurant, a career that paid for everything, as Dory reminded Joel on a daily basis. Joel was ten years younger than Dory, and he had adopted her twin sons, Bodie and Dylan, who were now teenagers who played lacrosse on the manicured fields of New Canaan High School.