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Valentina’s Point of View
The menu hung in the same glass frame beside the door. I stood in the street and read it twice.
The tasting menu was gone. Three hundred euros a plate, gone with it. In its place, one page: schnitzel, tafelspitz, a goose promised for Martinmas. Nothing over twenty euros. Less fussy food, more feeding.
Inside, it was like walking into a mausoleum that had a party going on. The room was the room—the same long mirrors, the same brass lamps Andreas had driven to Salzburg for—but the linen was off the tables, and the wood was bare and waxed, and the extraction fans were losing a fight they had always won.
Browned butter. Breadcrumbs. Roasted bones. In my kitchen, nothing had been allowed to linger. Someone had opened the windows of my mausoleum and let the food out.