The fifth-best meal I have ever sat down to was at a sort of farmhouse-inn that is neither farm nor inn, in the region of New York City. The fourth-best was at the same place—on a winter evening when the Eiswein afterward was good by the fire and the snow had not stopped falling for the day. The third-best meal I’ve ever had was centered upon some smoked whiting and pale mustard sauce followed by a saltimbocca, at the same place, on a night when the air of summer was oppressive with humidity but the interior of the old building was cool and musty under a slowly turning paddle fan. When things come up so well, culinary superlatives are hard to resist, and the best and second-best meals I have ever had anywhere (including the starry citadels of rural and metropolitan France) were also under that roof—emanations of flavor expressed in pork and coriander, hazelnut breadings, smoked-roe mousses, and aïoli. The list of occasions could go deeper, and if it were complete enough it might number twenty or thirty before the scene would shift—perhaps to the fields of Les Baux or the streets of Lyons. The cook who has been responsible for such pleasure on this side of the Atlantic was trained on the other side, in kitchens in various places on the Continent, notably in Switzerland, and including Spain, where he grew up in a lavish and celebrated Andalusian hotel that was managed by his father. His father was Austrian, but his mother was English, and so, from the age of eight, he was sent to be educated in Great Britain. As a result, he is in manner, speech, and appearance irremediably English. He has an Oxbridge accent and a Debrettian flourish of names—not one of which he will allow me to divulge. His customers tend to become his friends, and I had been a friend of his for something like five years before I thought to ask him if I could sit in his kitchen and take notes. He said it would be all right, but with the condition that I not—in any piece of writing—use the name of the restaurant, or his name, or the nickname of his wife, Anne, who is not known as Anne and is always called by her nickname. We further agreed that I would not even mention the state in which they live and work, or describe in much detail the land and waterscapes around them, let alone record what is written over the door of the nearest post office, which is, as it happens, more than five miles and less than a hundred from the triangle formed by La Grenouille, Lutèce, and Le Cygne.
The man’s right knee is callused from kneeling before his stove. He would like to see his work described. He would like to be known for what he does, but in this time, in this country, his position is awkward, for he prefers being a person to becoming a personality; his wish to be acknowledged is exceeded by his wish not to be celebrated, and he could savor recognition only if he could have it without publicity. He works alone, with Anne (who makes desserts and serves as hostess, bartender, sommelière). In a great restaurant of Europe, the team in the kitchen will be led by the gros bonnet, and under him a saucier, an entremettier, a potagiste, a rôtisseur, a grillardin, a friturier, a garde-manger, and any number of commis running around with important missions, urgent things to do. Here—with Anne excepted, as la pátissière-en-chef—this one man is in himself the entire brigade de cuisine. It is his nature not just to prefer but to need to work alone, and he knows that if his property were invaded and his doors were crowded up with people who had read of him in some enamelled magazine he could not properly feed them all. “There is no way to get qualified help,” he explains. “You’d have to import kids from Switzerland. If you did, you’d lose control. The quality would go down the drain.” In the haute cuisine restaurants of New York, kitchens are often small, and, typically, “five ill-educated people will be working there under extreme pressure, and they don’t get along,” he says. “Working alone, you don’t have interaction with other people. This is a form of luxury.”
No comments:
Post a Comment