Player Name: Dora

AIM Contact: WsdmsPryde

Character Name: Esther Melinda Berman. As a child she insisted on being called Mindy for awhile, mostly to protest being named Esther. Once she moved past the 1980s she realized that "Mindy" really wasn't much of an improvement, and she's been Esther since.

Date & Place of Birth: 17 July 1981, Boca Raton, Florida

Character Type: Human

Character Occupation & Skills: Esther makes her living as a chef. Food and cooking are both a Big Deal for her, as she were taught that they're the tools one uses to build relationships. Everyone's gotta eat, after all. She's a graduate of the C.I.A. (Not that one -- the Culinary Institute of America. Spy Chef is not on her resume, although it does look pretty cool.) Having worked her way up the line in the restaurant business, Esther can wash dishes, prep a meal, grill meat, make sauces and basically do everything you'd expect in a restaurant but bake and tend bar. She knows what a roulade is, and the difference between baking and roasting. She is wickedly deft with kitchen knives and can perform some pretty fancy kitchen tricks with one. Don't expect that to mean that she's good with a switchblade or anything, though. Esther can turn a turnip into a flower, but she's not going to be of excessive use in a knife fight. Not unless it involves stabbing blindly at vital points, at any rate.

In addition to kitchen skills, Esther can plan a full gourmet menu in half an hour. She speaks passable but not fluent French, and to make up for that is fluent in the thoroughly filthy kitchen Spanish spoken across the country. She also speaks a smattering of Yiddish thanks to her parents and knows just enough Hebrew to say prayers.

Although she cannot and should never hold a concert, she can count as somewhere around average if plonked down on a piano bench and told to play. This was only discovered after her parents were warned to never again let their child play the violin, the flute or the trumpet. A virtuoso, Esther is not. She is highly appreciative of music despite this, and so between the kitchen and the gym, during off-hours you can find Esther at concerts or anywhere a decent band is playing. Fairly well-read, she's a sucker for mysteries and crime novels, so bookstores are another haunt. After chef, her second career choice was to be either Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe when she grew up. Sherlock Holmes was a bit beyond her.

Abilities: None outside of her ability to cook a full-course meal out of scraps, used tea bags and the contents of a non-mentholated cigarette. Menthol cigarettes are for desserts, thanks.

Appearance: Esther's most defining physical feature is her hair. It's a dark, curly riot that only stays close to her head through sheer force of will and a substantial abuse of product. She lets it grow down to the tips of her shoulder blades despite the godawful Southern heat and humidity, because short of shaving her head the only way Esther can control her hair is if it's pinned back. She looks utterly ridiculous with a chef's toque on, but tries to make it fun despite.

Height-wise Esther is quite average, around 5'5" or so. Her build is a curvy one, but she tends to fat at all the usual suspects of a woman's body. Her breasts, stomach, hips, thighs and ass are the first places to show signs of too much indulgence, and so while the woman is constantly cooking and eating rich foods, she punishes herself with equally constant exercise when she's not lifting and sweating in the kitchen. As a result, nothing beyond her arms and calves are ever likely to see serious tone. To look at Esther's hands is to look at a chef and not a woman -- her hands and forearms are a mess of healed burns and scars, tough skin having healed over the flesh.

Still, she's an attractive enough woman who leans more towards pretty than beautiful. Her skin's olive-toned but is often blotchy from work, and Esther needs some serious make-up spackle in order to cover the lines around her eyes. She checks the mirror diligently, positive that by 40 she'll be Bride of the Cryptkeeper. Like any woman, she's basically insane since her eyes are those dark, lovely things that only brunettes are capable of accomplishing. She's got a pretty smile with good cheekbones, but makes do with a prominent nose, thin mouth and has to keep whacking away at eyebrows which will quickly make Esther seem, er, hirsute. There's also the mustache she has waxed once every three weeks, the Berman womens' family gift to their latest daughter. No one is allowed to acknowledge it under pain of deep-frying.

She dresses slightly behind the times and could use fashion assistance from someone closer to her own age rather than the Aging Boca Ladies or her ragtag band of Kitchen Delinquents. On private days off you'll catch Esther in a skirt. Public functions can expect a dress. Most days, though, are either her checkered chef's pants and her whites, or jeans or Dockers and a few dated blouses. Comfortable shoes are a necessity.

Personality & History: Esther was born to a fairly well-off pair of New York Jews who retired to Boca in their early fifties, mostly to get away from their own parents. Needless to say, Esther was not a planned baby. Both Marty and Stacy were shocked when Stacy was confirmed as pregnant rather than menopausal. There was discussion of an abortion, but the reality was that their marriage was on the rocks and they'd retired and left New York City in hopes of saving it. A baby, as worrying an idea as that was, seemed like a sign directly from G-d. And so Esther was born.

Although having a little girl was an exhausting hell on wheels for the two of them, they took to their new roles quite naturally; generations of bred neuroses and their own guilt-filled upbringings made them perfect as parents. Esther was precocious and outspoken like any good only child. She was also bizarrely mature for her age -- any of them, at any point in time -- due to the fact that never was she once "spoken down" to. Every person in Esther's quickly aging family spoke to the girl as though she were holding down a job and paying taxes. It made socializing with people her own age a tad awkward. As a result, Esther had few friends despite decent if not spectacular social skills.

She hung out with a lot of little old ladies, her mother or grandmother's friends and their spouses. Esther was treated as a charming if occasionally irritating doll. Grandparents who didn't have access to their own grandkids would borrow the little girl, and so Esther grew up in a dozen different kitchens. The overall experience taught her that if you listen, people are more willing to give you what you want. Also, cooking and eating were the fastest ways to developing any kind of bond at all. Junior high and high school improved her social standing, but not by a whole helluva lot. It wasn't until Esther was of age and told her parents that she wanted to become a professional chef and go to a cooking college that her life really took off.

When Esther found herself at the C.I.A., she discovered a group of delinquents and malcontents just like herself, if not worse. Best of all, they were each and every one of them interested in the same thing. Food was the woman's passion, and it wasn't long until she learned every aspect of the industry that the C.I.A. had to teach her. She walked away from the school with improved skills, scarred hands, an address book full of people she'd eventually do business with, a newfound love for sex in the walk-in pantry and the knowledge that she'd kill herself if ever forced to wait tables again. All in all, not a bad college-level experience.

The next few years of her life were spent up north in New York City. It was one of the most important places in the world when it came to the restaurant business, and Esther honed (ha!) her skills even further, networking like a fiend. She learned above all that the world she'd insisted on being a part of was full of assholes, liars and cheats. You had to beat the ever-living hell out of your friends and enemies alike in order to make it, and chances are your kitchen would fold in six months, anyway. While not a pleasant lesson, Esther did walk away from four years in New York stronger and wiser. When a few friends of hers told her at the end of 2007 to come down to Louisiana and help rebuild New Orleans as a culinary capital, she found herself unable to say no. This was her opportunity to start her own restaurant and do things her way. What more could a chef demand?

A lot, actually. Esther is extremely demanding, of herself and those around her. Between the way she was raised and her career, she expects the best at every turn. If it can't be delivered, she'll expect a refund and a better product next time, regardless of what that product actually is. When Esther herself actually fails, she is inevitably disgusted. This woman reaches beyond the stars into different alternate galaxies. Her work ethic is intense, and there's a reason she's Head Chef of the restaurant she co-owns, D & M. (Her friends insisted on Dreams & Mysteries. Esther called them fags. They compromised on D & M.) Ten-hour days are short for Esther, and she will crack down on misbehaviors like the very hand of God Her-own-self.

The bitchy exterior is all for show. You can't be a woman in what has professionally been a male-dominated industry without growing a giant set of testicles, and that was a task Esther was more than willing to take on. She's a loving, generous woman to people who she feels have earned her affection. It took the better part of ten years working alongside chefs, sauciers and grill-men for her social tendencies to really blossom, but blossom they did. If any of her crew are in a pinch, she'll bail them out of jail. If there's been an accident, she's on the scene to help with clean-up. If something has made her and her people angry, she will seek cold, calculated vengeance. She's rough-and-tumble physically affectionate, more liable to punch someone fondly on the arm than give them a hug. The mouth on the woman is filthy, and she curses like she breathes. Unsurprisingly, she has comparatively few female friends when lined up next to her male buddies. It's not that she's not feminine, it's just that she's a little intimidating to the average woman. Esther knows that she's talented and capable, and that kind of ego usually involves testosterone.