The Hundred-Foot Journey Page 22

  So when Hewitt made that ridiculous suggestion that Paul’s empire was on the verge of collapse, I said, “Nonsense. Paul was a great businessman and ran a very profitable operation.”

  Hewitt smiled painfully over his glass of Château Musar.

  “Sorry, Hassan. Verdun myth. He had not a sou left. I have it on good authority Paul was leveraged up to his bald spot. Been taking out loans for years, but off the balance sheet, so none of his shareholders at the publicly traded company knew what was going on. The drop in his ranking at Gault Millau hurt—Le Coq d’Or’s bookings had been falling fast since his demotion and Air France was about to drop him as a consultant. So he was in a classic squeeze, struggling to find the cash to service his debts as his empire began to decline. No doubt about it. The loss of a Michelin star would have brought the whole thing down. I shudder even to think about it.”

  I was stunned. Speechless. But a stream of waiters suddenly emerged from the kitchen, and I had to concentrate as they brought out a simple oyster in clear broth, followed shortly by a salad of Belgian endive garnished with chunks of Norwegian smoked lamb and quails’ eggs.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Chef Mafitte leaning over to whisper in Anna Verdun’s ear; she turned girlishly in his direction, laughing, her hand lifting to touch the shellacked crust of her hair.

  I flashed to that time when my former girlfriend and I visited Maison Dada down in Provence. Toward the end of the meal, handsome Chef Mafitte came by our table to say hello. He was, in his whites, the bronzed and dazzling picture of a culinary celebrity, immensely charming, and I was instantly reduced to nothing in his presence. Perhaps it was this boyish subservience on my part that in some way emboldened him, for the entire time he and I talked shop, Chef Mafitte had his hand in Marie’s lap under the table, where she was heroically fighting off his inappropriate gropings.

  When Mafitte finally left our table, Marie said, in her blunt Parisian way, that the great chef was nothing but a chaud lapin, which sounds rather endearing but in actual fact meant she thought he was a dangerous sex maniac. Later I learned Mafitte’s voracious appetite extended to all ages and species of viande.

  I was suddenly disgusted with Anna Verdun. There was something craven and corrupt in having Paul’s artistic nemesis at her table, on this of all evenings. Where was her loyalty? But Hewitt must have read the look in my face, because he again leaned over and said, “Pity the poor woman. She’s got to get out from under the financial mess Paul has left her. I hear Chef Mafitte is considering buying Le Coq d’Or—lock, stock, and barrel—part of his expansion plans for northern France. A deal with Mafitte would certainly save whatever there is left.”

  A waiter began to take away my salad plate, and I used the interruption to wave over the head caterer and whisper in his ear that he should tell Serge in the kitchen to slow down, that he was rushing the courses a bit. When I turned my attention back to the table, Hewitt was leaning forward and peering around me, a glass of the 1989 Testuz Dezaley l’Arbalete raised in salute, saying, “Isn’t that true, Eric? Chef Verdun was in trouble. Hassan doesn’t want to believe me.”

  Americans have a remarkable gift for running roughshod over other nations’ caste systems, and Le Comte de Nancy Selière, normally never one to suffer fools gladly, simply raised his glass in return and said dryly, “To our dearly departed Chef Verdun. A train wreck that was, sadly, just waiting to happen.”

  The poached halibut in champagne sauce was served with a 1976 Montrachet Grand Cru, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. André Piquot and I discussed our personnel problems; he was having trouble finding a “cold kitchen” sous chef he could rely on, and I was having trouble with a waiter who seemed to be deliberately slowing down the speed with which he executed his assignments, in order, we suspected, to clock up overtime—the costly bane of the restaurateur’s existence since France had instituted the thirty-five-hour workweek.

  Hewitt then regaled the entire table with a story about the time he and Le Comte de Nancy had been guests at a twelve-course meal at La Page, a “gastronomic temple” in Geneva. Apparently, the famous restaurant overlooking Lake Geneva was as severe as “a Calvinist church on Sunday,” full of pompous waiters and aged couples who didn’t say boo to each other. “There was absolutely no laughter in the room but the laughter coming from our table,” Hewitt recalled. “Am I right, Eric?”

  The count grunted.

  Somewhere between courses six and seven at La Page, Hewitt had a hankering for Calvados, the apple brandy from Normandy that was his preferred palate cleanser, but the La Page waiter haughtily told him that wasn’t possible. The American would have to wait until an hour or two later, after the cheeses, when a sweet brandy was appropriate. The waiter would happily bring him a liqueur then.

  “Bring him his Calvados immédiatement or I will slap your face,” snapped Le Comte de Nancy. The ashen-faced waiter raced off and returned, in record time, with the requested brandy.

  We all roared with laughter at this story, all but the count, who, reminded of this evening in Geneva, seemed to get angry all over again, and muttered, “Such impertinence. Such incredible impertinence.”

  And while I laughed, the moment wasn’t entirely carefree, because in the back of my mind I kept thinking about what Hewitt had told me about Paul’s finances and the terrible predicament my friend had been in when he ran off the cliff. The notion that even one of the best businessmen in the field of gastronomy couldn’t make a financial success of his three-star restaurant was almost too upsetting to contemplate.

  “Are you all right, Chef?” asked the sensitive Madame Elisabet, before making us all jump to attention with a “motherfuck!”

  I straightened my dessert spoon and fork on the table above my plate.

  “I was thinking of Paul. I just can’t believe the mess he was in. If it happened to him, it could happen to any of us.”

  “Now, look, Chef, don’t mope,” said Le Comte de Nancy. “Verdun lost his way. That’s the lesson in all this. He stopped growing. End of story. I was at Le Coq d’ Or six months ago, and, I tell you, the fare, it was mediocre at best. The menu was the same as it was ten years ago. Hadn’t changed a bit. In his ambition to build his empire, Verdun took his eye off his kitchen—the source of his wealth—and then, when he was so distracted by all the noise of the circus, he took his eye off the basics of the business as well. So, yes, he was running both the creative side and the business side, very admirable, but in reality, each had only his superficial attention. He was running and running but had no focus. Any businessman will tell you that is a recipe for disaster. And sure enough, he paid the price.”

  “I suppose you are right.”

  “My friends, the hardest thing, when you reach a certain level, is to stay fresh, day in and day out. The world changes very fast around us, no? So, as difficult as it is, the key to success is to embrace this constant change and move with the times,” said Chef Piquot.

  “That’s just blah blah. A cliché,” snapped Le Comte de Nancy.

  Poor André looked as if he had just been boxed in the ears. To make matters worse, Madame Elisabet unhelpfully added, “Stupid bitch fuck!”

  But Hewitt, seeing how hurt the chef was by this two-pronged attack, added, “You are right, of course, André, but I do think you have to change with the times in a way that renews your core essence, not abandons it. To change for the sake of change—without an anchor—that is mere faddishness. It will only lead you further astray.”

  “Exactement,” said Le Comte de Nancy.

  Normally an outsider fighting for a seat at the table occupied only by French insiders, I usually kept my opinions to myself, but that night, perhaps due to the strain of the performance, perhaps because of my recent turmoil, I blurted out, “I am just exhausted by all the ideologies. This school and that school, this theory and that theory. I have had enough of it. At my restaurant we are now only cooking local ingredients in their own juices, very simply, with one criteria:
Is the food good or not? Is it fresh? Does it satisfy? Everything else is immaterial.”

  Hewitt looked at me oddly, like he was seeing me for the first time, but my outburst seemed to liberate Madame Elisabet, for she added, in that sweet voice so incongruous to her blasphemous eruptions, “You are so right, Hassan. I am always reminding myself why I got into the game in the first place.” She pointed both hands, flat-palmed, out across the room. “Look at this. It’s so easy to become intoxicated by all this flimflam. Paul was seduced by the Paris bourse and all those press clips hailing him as a ‘culinary visionary.’ That is what he had to teach us—all of us—in the end. Never lose sight—”

  At that moment, however, the lights were dimmed and an expectant hush fell over the tables. Then, from the back, a simple candlelight procession, followed by a dozen young waiters holding aloft silver platters loaded down with roast partridge. The room rumbled and there was a smattering of applause.

  Paul’s Partridge in Mourning, as I named the dish, was the highlight of the evening, as the papers reported the following day. Up until that point, I was, I must confess, trying to hide my terror of performing before such a demanding audience, but the generous comments I received from my table suggested that my risky menu had paid off. In particular, I took great joy in seeing Le Comte de Nancy—who always called things as he saw them, was in fact incapable of an insincere remark—tearing a bread roll apart with great gusto before lunging in to mop up the last smears of juice.

  “The partridge is delicious,” he said, waving his bread stub at me. “I want this on the menu at Le Chien Méchant.”

  “Oui, Monsieur Le Comte.”

  The dish that famously put Chef Verdun on the culinary map thirty years earlier was his poularde Alexandre Dumas. Paul filled the chicken’s cavity with julienned leeks and carrots, then surgically perforated the bird’s outer shell so truffle slices could be delicately inserted into the bird’s skin. As the bird roasted in the oven, the truffles and chicken fat melted together, their essences seeping deliciously through the meat and leaving a uniquely earthy flavor. It was Paul’s signature, a dish always found for a princely sum of 170 euros on the menu of Le Coq d’Or.

  The night of his memorial, wanting to pay Paul an homage, I took the basic techniques of his poularde, and applied it to partridge, well known to be his personal favorite game bird. The result was a powerfully pungent bit of fowl, just this side of being feral. I stuffed the birds with glazed apricots—instead of julienned legumes—and then so blackened the fowl with black truffle slices inserted in their skin they looked like birds dressed for a Victorian funeral—hence the name Paul’s Partridge in Mourning. Of course, my sommelier then had the inspired idea to twin the partridge with the 1996 Côtes du Rhône Cuvée Romaine, a robust red redolent of dogs panting and on point in the lushness of a summer hunt.

  Several distinguished critics and restaurateurs—including one of my idols, Chef Rouët—personally came by our table later in the evening, to congratulate me on the menu and, in particular, my interpretation of Paul’s signature dish. Even Monsieur Barthot, Le Guide Michelin directeur général, descended from the Olympian heights of the head table to shake my hand and to say, rather loftily, “Excellent, Chef. Excellent,” before striding off to speak to someone of more importance. And in that moment I finally understood why Paul had orchestrated this posthumous dinner.

  I looked over to the head table, to make grateful eye contact with Anna Verdun, but Paul’s widow was at that moment looking vacantly out across the room, a smile of sorts frozen across her face, while Chef Mafitte was leaning in on her from the left, one hand under the table.

  No, I would not tell her, I decided. She had enough on her plate.

  Besides, it was enough that I knew why Paul had planned this evening.

  The memorial dinner was not for Paul, you see, but for me. With this meal my friend had signaled to France’s culinary elite that a new gardien of classic French cuisine had burst on to the scene. I was his anointed heir. And so I think it is safe to say that before that night I was a relatively faceless figure lost among the scores of competent and talented two-star chefs all across France.

  After that night, however, I was propelled to the top ranks, my good friend ensuring—even from beyond the grave—that the country’s gastronomic elite made room for a forty-two-year-old foreign-born chef he had personally chosen to protect the classic principles of France’s cuisine de campagne, which he and Madame Mallory had fought so hard to protect.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Winter drove us to the wall. The recession dragged on right through the coldest months, and fabled restaurants such as Maxim’s and La Tour d’Argent, they finally fell to the economic malaise. It was a shock, to walk down the Rue Royale and see Maxim’s windows boarded up. No one in France, not since the war, had seen such a thing. The government again repealed the 19.6 percent VAT charge, but it was too little, too late; in the end none of us were immune to the new economic climate, and my own financial problems hit with great force in late February.

  My biggest problem was a personnel issue that would not go away. The waiter Claude was tidy and pleasant-looking and had come to us, with glowing references, from Lyon. We found him quick to learn, energetic, and so unfailingly courteous and attentive with the customers that Jacques, my maître d’hôtel, wrote in his initial review that the young waiter conducted himself with the “highest professionalism.”

  But this you must know about French labor law: during the initial “trial period” we could dismiss Claude without too much difficulty; after six months on the books, however, the waiter was considered a full-time employee, with a long list of ironclad legal rights. Getting rid of him thereafter was extremely difficult and costly.

  Our honeymoon with Claude lasted precisely until the day after the young man’s six-month “trial” was over. What previously took Claude thirty minutes—polishing the silver candelabras, for example—suddenly took him an hour and a half. Or longer. Jacques, a stickler for proper deportment, coldly suggested Claude hurry up, but the nasty little fellow simply shrugged and said he was working as fast as he could. When Claude submitted his first time-and-a-half overtime work sheets, Jacques, normally coolly elegant and composed, threw the forms back in the boy’s face and called him a “connard.” But the boy had nerves of steel. He didn’t flinch. He simply picked the papers off the floor and gently left them on Jacques’ desk, knowing full well the law would protect him from us “capitalist exploiters.”

  Claude had not only calculated his overtime to the minute, but included a demand for 6.6 days in extra paid vacation to offset the fact we were violating his legal right to work only thirty-five hours a week. The restaurant business is of course all about long hours—that’s just the nature of our work—and, not surprisingly, all my other hardworking staff soon began to complain about Claude, who was not pulling his weight and forcing the more conscientious members of the staff to pick up his slack.

  This untenable situation finally came to a head when Mehtab handed me Claude’s payroll records. In the year he had been on staff, Le Chien Méchant had paid Claude seventy thousand euros in salary, plus three times that amount in various social security and pension taxes. Le Chien Méchant still owed him ten weeks’ paid vacation.

  Claude was not a waiter, but a scam artist.

  I called the Lyon restaurants, spoke to the owners, and they finally confessed Claude had done the same thing to them, and in the end they had written him glowing reviews simply to get him off their backs. So I told Jacques to fire him. And he did.

  But then the boy returned—with his union representative.

  “It’s very simple, Chef Haji. The young man’s dismissal is not legal.”

  Mehtab used all the poetic flourishes of Urdu to curse the union representative’s entire family lineage. Jacques erupted in French.

  But I held up my hand and hushed them both.

  “Explain yourself, Monsieur LeClerc. This man is
a cheat. A crook. How can this not be grounds for legal dismissal?”

  Claude looked entirely serene as usual, and wisely didn’t say a word, but let his union representative speak for him. “Your allegations are unfair and unwarranted,” LeClerc said mildly, making a steeple of his hands and thoughtfully pursing his lips. “And perhaps more to the point, completely without proof.”

  “That’s not true,” Jacques interjected. “I have documented very carefully how Claude deliberately drags his feet on assignments, how even simple tasks—like setting a table—takes him four times as long as it takes the others.”

  “Claude is not the swiftest of workers, we concede, but that is not sufficient grounds to fire him, particularly since your own records commend him as a worker of the ‘highest professionalism.’ Non, non, Monsieur Jacques. This is not right what you have done. He took so much time to execute your orders simply because of this professionalism you previously commended. Tell me, were you ever dissatisfied with the quality of his work, after he completed the assignments? Was the work somehow sloppily done? I could not find any complaints in his file about quality of execution, simply about the amount of time it took him to complete his work—”

  “Well, yes, that’s true—”