The night we ran out of saffron.

Service had been on for forty minutes when Hugo, our chef de partie that night, came to the pass with the empty saffron jar held up like evidence. The lid was on. He had screwed it back on out of habit.

The saffron rice was on the menu in three different forms that week. We had a wedding catering job in three days that called for another 14g. The jar in Hugo's hand had been three-quarters full the morning before.

Someone had ordered the wrong amount. The someone was me.

Hugo asked, kindly, what we should do. I said, with less kindness than the situation deserved, that I'd handle it.

I rang Ali, who was then our sommelier, who had grown up in a saffron-growing family in Iran before he moved to Hobart at sixteen. Ali knew the Tasmanian growers personally — better than I did. He picked up on the second ring. I gave him fifteen seconds of context.

He rang back nine minutes later. A grower he knew was driving up to Devonport the next morning. If she put the 50g jar I needed on the 6am Spirit of Tasmania, it would land in Geelong at 6pm. If I could get someone to Geelong by 7pm, the jar would be in Surry Hills by midnight.

I drove to Geelong the next afternoon. Met a woman called Tania at the ferry terminal. Paid cash for a 50g jar of red Tasmanian saffron and an explanation about wind direction at the harvest that I have repeated to every chef who has worked for us since. I was back at the kitchen at 11:40pm. Hugo was still there, cleaning down. He asked, again kindly, if we were all right.

We were all right.

The catering job went out on time. The wedding photographer's father told me, two weeks later, that he hadn't tasted saffron rice that good since his mother's funeral. I told him about Tania. He cried for a minute. I cried for a minute. Hugo, somewhere across the room, was prepping for the next service.

I keep the empty jar from that night on the shelf above my desk. The lid is still screwed on.

— Sara