Hope & Clint | Sunday Morning

[x-hawkeye.livejournal.com]

Hope and Clint discuss the menu for the Red-X Gala before he asks her a rather pressing question.


"Seriously..." Hope shook her head, scribbling a note on the paper in front of her. "If we suggest it has to be able to be brought out on one plate, we mean one plate and not a plate and a serving plate. No matter how tasty it might be."

She pulled over three green magnet cards and wrote down the three remaining dishes that did fit the bill, one on each of them. "Goat Cheese Royale, Beet Marmalade and Crushed Pistachios... that does sound interesting. And hey, it can be served on one plate." That done, she tucked the papers back in their files and put the green card on the board, joining the three dozen other cards in various colors on there.

"Now we just create a menu out of all of those dishes..." She studied the magnet board and picked some of her favorite choices, placing them on the empty side of the board.

Clint squinted at the board, the loudest thought in his head being, Ew, beets. His next thought was to move that option as far from Hope's range of vision as possible. "Okay, so... how many of each... course are we going for?" He hesitated a bit, not entirely sure what they were going for. His idea of a party was a pizza, some chips, soda, and ice cream. Obviously planning this thing Hope was doing was way more intense than anything he'd ever considered doing himself. "Also, I gotta ask - what's goat cheese royale?"

Hope grinned as she looked over her shoulder. "Reading the restaurants inscription, I think it's just a kind of goats cheese, just like you have Cheddar, Brie or Camembert. And thankfully not all of them have to be incorporated. We just need seven of them, one for each course.

"See..." She gestured at the various colored cards. "Each restaurant proposed a few dishes they'd like to sponsor. Each restaurant has their own color and since each one can only sponsor one dish, the color can only appear once in the menu. With the magnet board we, and later on the whole committee, can easily rearrange and change things."

"Okay," Clint said, then shook his head. "Can we put the foods in order by restaurant? Like, have them in a row and have the courses by column? I can kind of tell that some of them are different colors, but mostly they're all just gray."

She blinked for a second and then blushed a little. "I am so sorry... I didn't even think of that." Quickly she looked over the various supplies on the table nearby, considering and the quickly picked up a sheet with magnetic numbers. "This might work." Quickly she attached the numbers, "making it so that we need seven dishes picked and there can only be one of each number."

"Cool, that's perfect," Clint said, grinning. "Spinach canapes?" He tilted his head to the side, looking at all the dishes again. "We should have a variety for people - fish, chicken, beef, vegetarian - I think I only see one fish dish, so that one should definitely go on the 'yes' list."

"Spinach canapes? Not much imagination there... That is not something I would pick if I had the opportunity to promote myself. I would pick something that would really engage people's imaginations, so they want to visit your restaurant for a full meal." She mused aloud as she pulled the card of the board.

"I guess," Clint said, still smiling. "But you don't want it to be so weird that nobody actually wants to try it. Sometimes it's about showing how well you do something - or putting a new twist on it. You dunno what they put in the spinach for the canapes. Maybe it's something you've never had before. So you like. I dunno, you lure people in because you're all like, 'Hey, look, everybody else has this weird stuff they're trying to get you to eat, you should just eat me instead because how could somebody mess up spinach canapes?' And then you eat it and it's like, 'Holy crap, that's delicious, I've never tasted spinach canapes like that before!' And then they want to eat at your restaurant to see how you do everything else."

"That is one way of looking at it, but on the other hand, when you are one of seven you want to stand out. You'd want to be memorable. Like the one with the goat's cheese, beets and pistachio's. It's unusual, but I can see the combination working pretty well. A combination of sweet and tangy, smooth and crunchy and the color contrast." She paused for a sec.

"At least, that is what Ms. Dane taught me last year when we worked on how to make a menu." She pulled that one to the side, tilting her head at it. "And it's vegetarian to the boot. Hmm, separating those out might be a good idea."

"Right, but what kind of people are going to be eating at this place? I mean, I'll be honest - I'm kind of biased. I hate beets. So I wouldn't eat that particular food. But like," Clint checked the other options. "What about this tiropita? That's Greek, right? Vegetarian and if they put other stuff with it, like on the side, people can pick what they want to put on top of it."

"Thing is... there are a large group of people who are going to be paying quite a bit of money for a plate, so they would expect something a little different. The trick is going to be to balance it all..." She pulled the card with the goat cheese to the side, then moved the tiropita over there as well. "We should not put too much cheese in a vegetarian menu... Let's hope they came up with some other options as well..."

"I was wondering... would you be willing to help me out with something a little different as well?" Hope fought to stifle a small giggle. "It involves Namor."

"Well, but the whole menu's not vegetarian," Clint pointed out, then squinted at Hope just a bit. "Namor's been doing a lot better - I haven't had to throw anything at his head in almost two weeks. What'd you need, though?"

"If we get a lot of vegetarian guests, we might need some backup options though." Hope pointed out. "And it's nothing bad. Namor and I, we actually had a good conversation last week. And he did pull me out of the water..."

A shiver ran to her before she continued. "The committee asked me if I would be willing to feel out... if he would want to participate in our bachelor auction."

Clint grinned again. "Sure, I can ask him about that." Namor would either preen at the thought or be vaguely offended that people were going to objectify him. "You have a date yet?"

"Excellent!" Hope returned his smile. "I think he might be a major draw, so to speak. And it's the 28th...Oh..." Hope fell silent as what he meant came through just a little too late. "No, not yet."

"Well," Clint said, "On the 28th, would you like to go to the gala with me?"

And there her blush was back and in full force this time, but her smile widened. "Of course, I'd love to."

Grinning again, Clint said, "Awesome. Now I'm really looking forward to this."