The Food of Love (4 page)

developed, sensitive palates.

It is also important not to let yourself down with your choice of paper or writing implement. To write in ballpoint, for example,

rather than with a fountain pen, suggests that you are not really treating your application seriously. To use machine-cut paper

might be all right - Monsieur Dufrais is not averse to simplicity but the paper you choose had better be expensive as well as simple.

On the subject of money, however, do not under any circumstances fall into the trap of enclosing a hundred-euro note with

your letter. Many people do so, and to see the icy contempt which flickers across the maitre d’s face when the notes flutter from the envelopes is a chilling sight. The bills are handed to another

waiter, to be added to the tips pool, but the letter always goes straight into the rubbish bag without another glance. Alain

Lmfrais is famously unconcerned with money, an attitude that

permeates his whole establishment, which is why the menus have

no prices and dinner for two will set you back anywhere between

five hundred and a thousand euros.

By the time the reservations had been sorted it was nearly noon, and the front-of-house staff took their places around the dining room to await the first guests and make final checks of glassware, silverware and placement. It was Alain’s proud boast that the waiters at Templi always outnumbered the customers by at least two to

one. To reach for a bottle at Templi was to find it floating as if by magic towards your glass; if you dropped a fork, it would be

caught before it reached the ground, and just as swiftly replaced with a clean one.

At twelve-fifteen precisely Alain Dufrais himself made his daily tour of the dining room. You would never have guessed that he

had been in his kitchen for nearly six hours: his whites were

immaculate, untouched by a single drop of food. A tall, thin man of few words, he made a circuit of the empty tables like a senior commander inspecting his troops. Occasionally he picked up a

glass and held it to the light, or pushed a fork a few millimetres to the left. On these occasions he said nothing, but Franciscus

instantly pounced on the offending object, handing it to a waiter to be replaced. Then Alain returned to his inner sanctum, the

kitchen. The double doors swung shut; the noise and hubbub of

the morning subsided. There were no last-minute preparations,

for the simple reason that everything was prepared and ready. Like an army that knows it has manned a perfect defensive position, the staff of Templi waited in silence for the first customer to show himself at their door.

By half-past two the kitchen was humming like a well-oiled machine, pushing out intricate assemblies of haute cuisine in great gusts of fire and steam. The cooks worked like demons, their fingers dancing

gracefully over the ingredients in a blur of dicing and stripping and mixing. Despite the extreme pressure they were under, and the urgency with which they worked, there was no yelling or swearing, and with the exception of the head chef, who called out the orders as the waiters brought them in, they rarely spoke. Alain’s goal was consistent perfection, time after time, and no hint of chaos or

temper was allowed to disturb the concentration of the dozens of craftsmen who toiled to realise his vision. Only once, when a commis cropped a saucepan, did the great man pause, turn to his head chef, and murmur something in his ear. No one heard what was said, but they all knew that the commis would be gone by the end of service.

lo work at Templi was a privilege. Staff came from as far afield as Australia, France and America for the opportunity to learn from the master. It was not an honour that could be squandered on incompetents.

Alain

Dufrais ran his kitchen the traditional way, with a brigade

made up of five distinct levels. At its apex was himself, the chef de cuisine, with a head chef, Karl, as his deputy. Karl ran the service, which was to say that he called out individual orders to the next levels in the hierarchy - the sous chefs and the chefs de partie. While the sous chefsworked the pass, putting the food on to plates, saucing, garnishing and checking it, the chefs de partie were each responsible for a different part of the kitchen. The saucier was responsible for meat, the entre metier for vegetables, the garde manger for cold dishes, and the patissier for desserts. Underneath these were a

number of specialist assistants or demi chefs. Then, finally, there were the lowest of the low - the commis, who did whatever they were told to do by whoever told them to do it. It was a hierarchy as rigid and as immutable as a medieval society, in which everyone knew their place and knew, too, that their continued existence in that place depended entirely on the patronage of the person directly above

them.

Bruno had recently been promoted to patissier. His corner of

the kitchen was away from the rest - to protect the delicate

threads of sugar and confections of raw egg from heat and busde but two or three times during service Alain Dufrais would come

over to check that here, too, all was proceeding exactly as it

should. Occasionally he dipped his finger into one of Bruno’s

saucepans to taste what was in it - he had never been known to

show pain, even when the liquid was boiling - and on several

occasions over the past week this had been followed by a curt nod of approval. These accolades had been noted by the other chefs de partie, and there was not one of them who did not wish that it had been themselves the nods were directed at.

Bruno himself had no time to consider whether he was doing

well or not. By three, when the other chefs were winding down,

he was still in a flurry of movement - caramelising, whipping,

folding, creating airy extravagances of sugar and cream and ice

that delighted the palate but magically seemed to have no substance at all as soon as they entered the stomach. His powers of

concentration were intense, and it was some time before

he realised that something unusual was going on.

Throughout the service, a greater than normal amount of noise

had been filtering through from the dining room. Occasionally, as the waiters pushed through the swing doors, a gust of raucous

laughter or a bellow of conversation came too, which Bruno only

noticed because it gradually affected the mood of the chef-something to which the kitchen brigade were as finely attuned as primates

are said to be attuned to the emotions of their dominant silverback.

To begin with, Alain Dufrais raised his head, puzzled, and listened intently before going back to his work without comment. A

few minutes later, however, a ragged cheer could be heard. Alain did not appear to react, but it was noticed that a little later he swept the delicate assembly of pigs’ trotters and truffles he was working on into the rubbish bin and started again. The chef de cuisine, despite his almost impossibly high standards, very rarely had to start over.

By now almost the entire brigade had one eye on their chef and

only one eye on their work. Mistakes, small errors of judgement

and timing, were being made. Karl rejected more than one dish as it was passed to him for approval, putting yet more pressure on the sweating cooks as a backlog of sauces and garnishes instantly built up. The huge machine faltered, and Alain Dufrais, his nerves jangling, sensed it.

A waiter came in, bringing with him another cheer from the

dining room. Dufrais stopped what he was doing and walked over

to the waiter. ‘What is that?’ he said quietly.

The waiter did not need to ask what Alain was referring to.

‘Table two. A birthday party.’

‘How many people?’

‘Twelve.’

Alain started to walk away. Then, as another waiter entered, followed by another bellow of raucous conversation, he abruptly

changed his mind.

Straightening his hat, he marched out into the restaurant.

In the dining room, the birthday party had fallen silent - not

because they were aware of the approaching storm, but because

one of their number had just tapped on the table with his knife. As the hubbub subsided, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and got

to his feet, grinning from ear to ear. A burst of applause greeted this manoeuvre. Umberto, the father of Federica, whose twenty

first birthday celebration this was, intended to make a speech.

‘My friends,’ he began.

The Swiss chef stalked towards him, his towering height magnified still more by his immaculate chef’s hat, tall as a guardsman’s

bearskin. Umberto, not at all put out, turned to greet him.

‘Hello,’ he cried happily. ‘This is fantastic, really fantastic. Isn’t it, everybody?’

Alain took in the table with a single glance. He saw the unfinished food in front of Umberto, the row of corks that testified to

too many bottles of good red wine consumed. A hush fell across

the room as the other diners waited to see what he would do.

‘You are leaving,’ he said curtly. ‘Now. All of you. Get out.’ He turned on his heel and walked back to the kitchen.

Someone laughed, thinking it was a joke, but the laughter died

on his lips when he realised that the chef was serious. A platoon of waiters, mobilised by Franciscus, was advancing courteously but

with unmistakable determination towards the offending table.

Umberto opened his mouth to protest but his daughter pulled at

his sleeve, her face pink with embarrassment.

Slowly, silently, the group rose from their places and departed, each one escorted outside by a waiter, like prisoners with their own personal jailers. Tommaso found himself next to the birthday girl, who was by now in floods of tears.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he muttered to her. ‘Chef is highly strung.’ He

patted her arm. ‘And a bit of a prick as well,’ he added truthfully.

The initial stunned surprise had worn off and the party guests

were starting to get angry. Fingers were being poked at the waiters’

chests and fists waved in their faces. Only when a crack detachment of porters was despatched from the restaurant as reinforcements did the would-be customers finally get into their cars and leave.

The disruption meant that the lunchtime service rolled straight

over into the evening one. All afternoon the chefs sliced and

chopped and stirred and seasoned without a break, desperately

trying to restore the kitchen - and the mood of their chef-to its normal equilibrium. By eight o’clock, calm once again reigned at Templi. The first diners of the evening were eating their amusegueules and sipping mur royale as they perused the menu in an

atmosphere of studious rapture, trying to choose between roti of quail stuffed with wild mushrooms, potato strings au jus with

truffles, or rib-eye of lamb en persillade with a cassoulet of pole beans and thyme-infused olive oil.

It did not help, therefore, when a mobile phone somewhere

began to play the 1970s Deep Purple anthem ‘Smoke on the

Water’.

The moment he heard it, Tommaso knew that it was his. Even

in Italy there are not so many Deep Purple fans that a ‘Smoke on the Water’ ringtone could belong to two people in the same

restaurant. In addition, he now remembered that he had been so

busy thinking about the American girl that he had not, in fact,

turned off his telefonino upon entering the premises, in accordance with the standing instruction to all staff. Failure to comply

with this rule was cause for instant dismissal.

The ringing was coming from the staff coat cupboard.

Tommaso had to act quickly. Hurling himself into its depths, he

pulled his phone from the jacket where he had left it and pressed Answer’. ‘One moment,’ he whispered into it. Simultaneously, he

patted the coat pockets until he located another telefonino, one that had been switched off. Slipping his own phone into his

pocket, he emerged from the cupboard with the second phone

held triumphantly aloft.

‘This is the one,’ he said to Franciscus. As the maitre d’ took

the phone, placed it on the floor and calmly ground it under his heel, Tommaso slipped away into the garden.

‘Sz’?’ he said as soon as he was alone.

‘Hello,’ a girl’s voice said hesitantly on the other end.

Tommaso’s heart leaped. It was the American. ‘It’s Laura

Patterson - we met earlier? In the delicatessen.’

‘Of course. How are you, Laura?’

‘Well, I’m fine, but I’m not so certain about the hare sauce. I’m not sure I quite understood what you told me.’

In fact, Laura was at that very moment staring at a mound of

steaming yellow pappardelle, perched on top of which was a

whole, almost raw, baby hare. She had managed to skin and gut it, which had not been easy for either her or the hare, although it had to be said that of the two of them the hare seemed to have come

off worst in the encounter.

“I guess I’m having a bad hare day,’ she joked nervously.

‘What?’

‘Urn - never mind. Terrible joke. Is there anything I can do?’

‘Did you remember the pancettaV Tommaso said sternly.

‘Pancetta! Oh. I don’t think so.’

‘And how long did you cook it for?’

‘Urn - about twenty minutes.’

Tommaso scratched his head. Passing on a recipe was one

thing, but rescuing a recipe gone wrong was way beyond his limited culinary skills. He began to walk rapidly towards the kitchen.

Bruno would know what to do.

He would have handed the phone over to his friend but for the

sudden recollection that his chances of seducing Laura depended on maintaining the pretence that he could cook. Tugging Bruno’s

sleeve, he pulled him into the most hidden recesses of the patissier’s corner and pointed to the mobile phone tucked against his own ear.