The Hundred-Foot Journey Read online

Madame Mallory delicately spat out the pit of a stewed prune into a silver spoon and deposited it on the side of her bowl.

  “Ah, non. Do not change the subject, Hassan. It won’t work.”

  She put her bowl down. And stared.

  “Crassostrea gigas, a Japanese oyster, commonly called the Pacific oyster, became dominant in Europe during the 1970s.”

  It was a tad wintry, true, but it was still a smile.

  Later that day, however, I caught my first glimpse of what lay ahead, when down in Le Saule Pleureur’s cold kitchen, leaning over the sink, Madame Mallory spontaneously reached out and patted my cheek after I correctly identified a specific type of les creuses de Bretagne oyster solely by sipping a teaspoon of its briny juice.

  It was essentially a kind gesture meant to convey affection and approval, but in all honesty that tap-tap at my cheek, with her dry hand, so stiff, made my toes curl. And the incredible awkwardness of the moment was compounded by the fact she had ordered her chef de cuisine to demonstrate a certain oyster dish for us, and Jean-Pierre was at that moment standing at the stove glowering at me over Madame Mallory’s shoulder.

  I knew then there was trouble ahead. But powerless to shape events, I avoided Jean-Pierre’s red face and instead focused intently on his hands, how he prepared the Sauternes sabayon sauce for the oysters, swiftly and expertly combining ingredients in the shuffling hot pan, as Madame Mallory droned on, explaining in minute detail the magical transformations happening in the searing heat, entirely oblivious to the emotions she had unleashed in her chef de cuisine.

  I was slave to Le Saule Pleureur’s rhythms but still clinging to Maison Mumbai’s doorknob, and this weird transitional phase all comes vividly back to me when I remember that time, a month or two after I moved, when Madame Mallory and I went into town to the markets for our early-morning purchases and lessons.

  Madame Mallory had spent the first part of the morning tour making me smell and taste various cabbages—the savoy, chubby little cancan dancers luridly fanning their ruffled green petticoats so we could get a sneak peek at their delicately pale and parting leaves inside, and the giant red cabbage, deep in color, like a bon vivant soused in a ruby red port wine before showing up merrily on the stall’s counter.

  “The thing you need to understand, Hassan, is that kohlrabi is the bridge between the cabbage and the turnip, and it melds the flavors of both vegetables. Remember that. It’s a subtle but important distinction that will help you decide when one vegetable is an ideal side dish, but not the other.”

  Wicker baskets on both arms, leaning over to listen to my small voice in the boisterous market, Madame Mallory was, I must tell you, the very essence of patience on those trips, prepared to answer any of my questions, no matter how puerile and basic.

  “We have a preference, in this region of France, for the Early White Vienna and the Early Purple Vienna kohlrabi varieties. Now, the navet de Suede is, in contrast, a robust turnip that grew wild up in the Baltic region, before Celts brought the nutritious root south and it began proper cultivation in France. This was thousands of years ago, of course, but it is my opinion the Swedish turnip today surpasses all other turnips, because of its sweetness, a characteristic bred into the vegetable over time. We should be able to find the yellow and black navet varieties at Madame Picard’s—”

  We both looked up, to orient ourselves in the market and locate Madame Picard’s stall, and found, much to our surprise, Papa standing in front of the French widow’s operation. His feet were planted firmly apart, one hand on his hip, the other thrashing the air. He was talking with a great deal of animation, and I suspect I must have imagined it, at that distance, but I distinctly recall spittle flying like fireworks from his face.

  Meanwhile, rough-looking Madame Picard, in her army boots and the usual layers of black skirts and sweaters, and that wispy hair, she had her head back and was lustily roaring with laughter at Papa’s story, so taken with mirth she had one hand out, to steady herself on Papa’s forearm.

  I cringed when I saw the two of them like that, and immediately wanted to turn away, but Madame Mallory, perhaps sensing my instinct to bolt, put her hand on my elbow and marched us forward.

  “Bonjour, Madame Picard. Bonjour, Monsieur Haji.”

  Papa and Madame Picard had not seen us approach, were in fact still laughing, but their amusement instantly withered at the sound of that familiar voice. Papa in fact turned in a slightly defensive crouch, until he saw me, and then there was this flicker of insecurity behind the eyelids, as if he was unsure of how he should behave. But we were all like that—me in the markets accompanying Madame Mallory, and Papa with Picard on the “other side,” it was head-bending.

  “Hello, Chef Mallory,” Papa said awkwardly. “Beautiful day. And I see you have brought your most talented student with you.”

  “Hello, Papa. Bonjour, Madame Picard.”

  The Widow Picard looked me up and down in that French way.

  “Don’t you look the part, Hassan. Le petit chef. ”

  “So, how is my boy doing? Ready to take your place yet?”

  “Certainly not,” Madame Mallory said stiffly. “But he is a quick learner, I will grant him that.”

  We all stood, awkwardly, at a loss on how to proceed, until Madame Mallory pointed at a basket in the back of the stall and said, “Look there, Hassan, as I told you. But they are the white navet de Suede, not the yellow or black I was hoping to find.” She leaned forward, ignoring Papa, and said, “Do you, Madame Picard, by any chance have some of the other, less common varieties hiding somewhere?”

  There was a strange look on Papa’s face—not angry, more startled, like someone who’d just had his eyes opened as to how things would be from now on. And I will always remember how Papa, after blinking slowly a few times, taking it all in, put a hand on my shoulder, squeezed his good-bye, and then withdrew from the market without another word.

  Six months after I started my apprenticeship, after a luncheon sitting, Marcel and I were in the kitchen mopping the floor spotless as Madame Mallory insisted, finishing our duties before we could crawl back to our respective rooms for our “room hour” rest.

  There was a rap at the back door and I went to see who it was.

  It was Monsieur Iten with a box.

  “Bonjour, Hassan. Ça va?”

  After the ritualistic exchanges about the state of health of various members of our respective families, Monsieur Iten informed me he had just received a special delivery of Bretagne oysters, and he brought them immediately by Le Saule Pleureur because he knew Madame Mallory would want to serve such fresh oysters during the evening’s sitting, if she knew they were available.

  But she wasn’t at the restaurant. Neither was Jean-Pierre, Margaret, or even Monsieur Leblanc. No one of authority was around. It was just Marcel and me mopping up.

  “What do you think, Marcel?”

  Marcel shook his head vehemently, his chubby cheeks shuddering in horror at the notion we might make so crucial a decision. “Don’t do it, Hassan. She will kill us.”

  I peered into the box. “How many, Monsieur Iten?”

  “Eight dozen.”

  I poked around in the box.

  “Okay. I’ll sign for them. But subtract four.”

  “Pourquoi?”

  “Because these four are Crassostrea gigas. You know perfectly well, Monsieur Iten, Chef Mallory would never serve them to her guests. How did they get in here? She would be furious with you if she saw you trying to pass Pacific oysters off as huîtres Portuguaises Sauvages. And, besides, it’s all a jumble. The rest are all Breton oysters, true, but I see at least another six that are not the very fine La Cancale pousses en claires from around Mont Saint-Michel. Look, La Cancale have a pale beige mantle and toothed shells, like this. I would guess these ones over here are La Croisicaise, from the Grand and Petit Traict channels in the south. See, here, the signature pale yellow in the shell? And look at the varying sizes. These here are number fours, bu
t these must be number twos. Non? There is no mention of this on your bill, Monsieur Iten. So I am sorry, but you will have to adjust the bill accordingly if you want me to accept delivery.”

  Monsieur Iten removed the four offending oysters, made a note on the bill about the other details on size and quality I had noticed, before saying, “Forgive me, Hassan. An oversight. I will not let it happen again.”

  It was only when Madame Mallory promoted me to commis the next day, to personally assist her in the kitchen, that I realized the box of oysters had been a test quietly prearranged with the fishmonger. Of course, neither of them ever owned up to the fact.

  But that’s the way Chef Mallory was.

  Challenging, always challenging.

  Particularly of her staff.

  It was a busy Saturday in deepest winter. The world outside was crystalline and white, with fat icicles hanging from Le Saule Pleureur’s copper gutters like hams curing in a shed. Inside, the steamy kitchen was in full roar, pot lids rattling, flames flaring, and in this culinary fervor I was tasked with making the day’s soufflés, a lunchtime favorite made from goat cheese and pistachios.

  I pulled a set of ceramic molds from the chilly storage room in the back of the kitchen and, as was normal, lathered their white walls with soft butter, before sprinkling the dishes’ bottoms with cornmeal and finely chopped pistachios. The soufflé’s base was also executed by the book: unripened goat cheese, egg yolks, finely minced garlic, thyme, salt, and white pepper, all heated and folded, before adding, to lighten the base, a liberal dose of beaten egg whites and cream of tartar—that crusty acid scraped off the sides of wine barrels and pulverized, after purification, into the white powder that miraculously stabilizes egg whites. The final touch was, of course, the top layer of whipped egg whites, elegantly smoothed with a knife and given just a suggestion of an artistic swirl. Preparation finally complete, I put the molds in a water bath and placed the pan in the center of the oven to bake.

  A half hour later, while I was making the veal stock, Jean-Pierre cried, “Hassan! Over here!” and I dashed to his side of the range to help lift the heavy pork roasts from the ovens for the ritualistic basting in lemon juice and cognac.

  Madame Mallory, on the next counter, smothering daurade in herbs and lime, every now and then looked over at us impatiently, to see if I had gone back to my own station.

  “Hassan, keep your eye on the soufflés!” she barked.

  “Watch it! You almost dropped the pan, you idiot!”

  Margaret, the quiet sous chef, looked up from her corner in the cold kitchen—where she was making a blancmange—and we locked eyes over the hissing flames.

  Margaret’s sympathetic look, it made my heart flutter, but I could not linger, and I dashed back to my ovens to retrieve the soufflés. “Not to worry, Chef,” I called out. “Trust me. All under control.” I banged open the oven door, extracted the hot tray of soufflés, and lifted it onto the countertop above.

  All shriveled, like a biology experiment gone bad.

  “Ah, non, merde.”

  “Hassan!”

  “No. But look. I don’t understand. I have done this a dozen times before. The soufflés. They died.”

  They all came over to look.

  “Pff,” said Jean-Pierre. “Utter disaster. The boy, he’s incompetent.”

  Madame Mallory shook her head in disgust. Like I was hopeless.

  “Margaret, vite, take over for Hassan. Do the soufflés again. And you, Hassan, prepare the day’s pasta. You will do less harm there.”

  I slinked off to the corner of the kitchen to lick my wounds.

  Twenty minutes later Margaret came by my station, ostensibly to take down a dish, and as I reached up to the shelf to help her lift down the large platter, the backs of our hands touched and a jolt of electricity shot up my arm.

  “Don’t let them bully you, Hassan,” she whispered. “I made the exact same mistake once. In deep winter, the outer wall in the storage room gets intensely cold, chilling the molds on the shelves of that wall. So, when you make soufflés in winter, you must first bring the dishes out into the main kitchen at least thirty minutes earlier, so the molds have time to reach room temperature before you pour in the egg whites.”

  She smiled sweetly, turned away, and I was in love.

  This thing between Margaret and me, it all came to a head a few weeks later, when we found ourselves in the same aisle of the kitchen. Madame Mallory and Jean-Pierre were on either side of us, banging pots and yelling at the front-room staff for a pickup. Margaret and I self-consciously ignored each other, until, that is, she bent down to retrieve some tarts from the oven, and I bent down to retrieve a pan immediately adjacent to her, and our legs inadvertently touched.

  There was a shock of fire up my leg, right into my groin, and I gently leaned into it. Much to my delight, I felt her lean in from her side, and a few exquisite moments later, when I came up again with my pan, I was gasping for air and holding the pan strategically before my midriff.

  “Come see me at my flat during the break,” she whispered.

  Well, I tell you, no sooner had we finished the lunchtime service than I had my whites off and was pushing my way down Le Saule Pleureur’s raked garden and piles of snow. Finally through the stucco-and-stone wall, I broke into a run, slip-sliding down the icy back alleys to Margaret’s flat, just above the local pastry shop in the center of town.

  Margaret met me in front of her building, and we exchanged knowing glances, but still did not say a word to each other. I looked nonchalantly up and down the cobblestone street, to see if we were being observed; her hand was shaking as she put the key into her building’s frosted front door. An elderly couple entered the Bata Shoe Store down the lane; a young mother and baby carriage exited the pâtisserie; a florist was shoveling snow outside his shop. No one looked our way.

  The door swung open and we were inside, past the apartment mailboxes and radiator, taking the stone stairs two by two, laughing, charging up to her studio on the third floor. Through that door, at long last in the privacy of her flat, we were all frantic hands and open mouths and dropping garments wherever they fell.

  That afternoon I took lessons on the French interpretation of la lingua franca, and after a hot shower involving lots of giggling and large quantities of soap, we reluctantly made our way back to Le Saule Pleureur, separately, far too relaxed and carefree for the rigors of the evening’s mealtime duty.

  “Focus, Hassan. Where is your mind today?” snapped Madame Mallory.

  That’s how it started. But our growing intimacy was not without its obstacles. Sleeping in a monk’s cell, next to the ever-watchful and austere Madame Mallory, was not exactly conducive to a romantic relationship. So these snatched afternoon encounters—as stimulating as they were—they were always hurried and gasping, with no chance for Margaret and me to ever spend languid time together.

  One late afternoon, while I was dashing out the door and literally lashing tight my belt buckle as she stood in her kimono holding the door open, Margaret quietly said, “I am sorry you cannot spend more time, Hassan. Sometimes I get the impression you don’t want to know me better. C’est triste.”

  Margaret then gently eased shut the door of her flat, leaving me to flounder on the apartment building staircase like a fish hooked and hoisted onto a boat’s deck. She was like Mother. Didn’t say a lot, but when she did, my heavens, it would hit you harder than any of Papa’s tirades.

  That walk home I discovered, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to run away when a woman I liked opened the door to something deeper. Quite the opposite; I wanted to plunge through Margaret’s open gate headfirst. So, walking back to Le Saule Pleureur that afternoon through the back alleys, I muttered loudly to myself, determined to make more time available for Margaret, particularly on our one day off from work.

  This meant I had to inform the family I would no longer be regularly coming by the Dufour estate for our weekly feasts. This was, of cour
se, as dangerous and diplomatically fraught as any Middle East negotiation, but the following Monday, knowing what was at stake, I manfully marched the short distance between the two restaurants, bristling with purpose.

  My purpose evaporated the moment I crossed Maison Mumbai’s threshold. Auntie made me sit in the family’s most honored armchair, before fussing and plumping the pillow behind my back. Mehtab had, since my departure, taken over the kitchen at Maison Mumbai, and she emerged from the back of the house with a smile and a puffball pouch of crab-and-prawn paste, plus a few papri chaat, savory biscuits with curd.

  “Just to tide you over, Hassan,” my sister said. “Lunch will be ready in an hour. I made your favorite lamb trotters soup. Just for you. Now put your feet up. You must rest, poor boy.”

  I knew how much work had gone into making these delicacies, and my stomach churned with guilt. Mukhtar was on the couch opposite me, absentmindedly picking his nose while reading the newspaper comics jointly with Uncle Mayur.

  “Thank you, Mehtab. Umm . . . sorry. But I can’t stay for lunch today.”

  The room froze.

  Mukhtar and Uncle Mayur looked up from their newspaper.

  “What are you saying? Your sister and aunt have been slaving in the kitchen for you all morning.”

  This remark was of course predictable, but not from laid-back Uncle Mayur, who always outsourced such acid remarks to his wife. It underlined how serious my trespass was, and his attack shook me.

  “Umm . . . I am sorry. . . . Sorry. But I have other plans.”

  “What do you mean, other plans?” snapped Auntie. “With whom? Madame Mallory?”

  “No. With some of the restaurant’s other staff,” I said vaguely. “I should have told you earlier. Sorry. But it was decided just this morning.”

  Mehtab did not say a word. She just lifted her head high, like a great begum who had been deeply offended in her own home, and solemnly retreated to the kitchen. Auntie was furious and shook her finger at me.

  “Look how you have hurt your sister, you ungrateful beast!”

  To make matters worse, Papa’s great bulk suddenly loomed in the doorway, and his deep voice rumbled over us like a tank battalion.