How It All Goes Down
- Hassan hustles to prepare for dinner the night of his achievement. When dinner is well on its way, he changes to a fresh apron before nervously walking into the dining room. Slowly the dining room rises to their feet and applauds him. Everyone is there from the mayor to Christian Lacroix to Johnny Depp (no, really).
- Hassan looks at the crowd and feels the warm approval of his father at his side. We haven't really heard about Papa for a long time, but at this final achievement, Hassan thinks only of him.
- The reservations flood in, but Hassan becomes sad, remembering poor Paul and how he was so important in Hassan's own success but failed himself.
- On his walk home that night he is stopped dead in his tracks by a familiar smell. Walking through the Latin Quarter he finds a tiny Indian restaurant, and looking through the window, he sees the chef alone and exhausted, eating familiar foods.
- Hassan is absolutely overwhelmed with sadness and homesickness for everything he used to know.
- He remembers Mallory's words of advice that she gave him on one of their last days together. She told him that a snob lacks good taste, and that although she has forgotten this, she believes that he was sent to her to help her remember that true talent is not a birthright, but a gift.
- In this moment, Hassan recovers a bit of his former self and settles into his identity, balancing who he was and who he's become.