First published in Morsels from the Chef - A Zimbell House Anthology
Head Chef Jean Vaucluse's skull throbbed with a vehemence that even two just rolled joints may not have been able to relieve.
"Ernesto, s'il vous plaît, softer and slower, yes? I cannot understand you if you shout so fast,".
"Senor Vaucluse, I cannot work with that loco Julius anymore! Why you have to put him with me? You be thinking - no one else wants him so I’ll stick him with the little Mexican, si? So then, you can say Adios to your suppliers, Jefe!"
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean? I mean, there will be no produce delivery today. Por Que? Let me tell you. I took Julius with me to the markets this morning, like you told me. Everyone we visit, he has a fight. The tomatoes on the vine are not the same size and the bell peppers are too 'bumpy". The salmon fillets are not the identical pink color and the beef comes from four different breeds of cow. So the suppliers get angry and they say they have a relationship with us for so long without complaints. But if their best products are no longer good enough, we can… Como? Si, shove our business up our back hole. So, deliveries cancelled, we get nada."
Vaucluse's head throbbed in time with his thumping heart. No produce, no deliveries, and two full covers this evening - this was a disaster. He was a pacifist from top to toe, a card-carrying member of Greenpeace, but even he would find it tough to balk today from wringing Julius' pendulous neck.
Just as soon he put out this latest fire.
"Oh for God's sake, don't overreact. I will call up the suppliers and apologize. If we are lucky, the deliveries will arrive in time. In the meantime, you and Max tally what we have in the freezer, and tell the prep staff to begin with the seafood. Comprenez?"
As Ernesto swung open the door to the Chef's office to allow his bulk ample room to exit, Vaucluse sank back into his sagging chair.
Every day. Every. Single. Day. Not one tranquil moment when he didn't get the urge to light up, to inhale, to swallow something. He raced from one raging problem to the next, skirting the edge of the precipice. One slip, that was all it took. He had toppled off too many times not to realise how catastrophic it could be.
He would have to attend a meeting today. To find the time to stand up in front of a group of strangers and confess how much he craved his old crutch. No matter how lame it sounded though, he always felt better afterwards. And now, more than ever, he needed a clear head to figure out what to do with this unbearable problem called Julius.
It had all gone to merde just a week ago. It had been a good run until then and Vaucluse was looking forward to end of shift that evening. He was taking a final walk around the kitchen, much as a pilot circled an airplane. It was gratifying to see how his team was dealing with the last few orders of the day. It had taken a while to whip them all into shape and buying into the new vision he had for the bistro for the future. They needed to unlearn bad habits, learn a few new ones, and strive together to work as a cohesive whole. Vaucluse smiled when he thought of how far they all had come.
"Excuse me, Chef, but Mr. Whitmore wants to see you in his office," said the bus boy who came looking for him.
It was not the first time and it would not be the last when the boss summoned him. But the apprehension that seized his gut on hearing the words was nothing new. It always reared up, even though the boss had never given him a reason to worry. Besides, they were having an excellent run of late, and Vaucluse was hard pressed to think of a single thing that Tony Whitmore would have to find fault with.
But one couldn’t keep old demons at bay, no matter how hard one tried. Few chefs got a second chance at making it, in New York City at that. Vaucluse knew how fortunate he was. The thought of this luck running out again was enough to make him break into a clammy sweat every time Tony Whitmore asked to see him.
For him, cooking brought back memories of the delightful years he shared with his grandmother, right from his early days. His happiest recollections were of the moments spent together in her large kitchen, with the old enamel sink, and the cast iron skillets hanging from the ceiling. The space was always redolent with the smell of dried garlic and fresh thyme and sage, and the aroma of yeasty sourdough that clung to your clothes. His childhood happiness was sunny afternoons in the garden picking crunchy radishes and succulent tomatoes, and sprigs of lavender to garnish the table.
Everything he knew about cooking and food he learnt in that kitchen. " Food is love, Cherie," Grand-Mère would say. " Preparing a meal for someone is a way of honoring their presence in your life." Stirring, mixing, blending, kneading - these were acts that took on an air of ritual, a sacred rite.
It was apparent she had gifted him her flair for it because he was a natural. Flavours called out to him, he mastered even the most complex techniques with minimal effort. By the time he was old enough to enter culinary school, there was little they could teach him he didn't already know or hadn't figured out for himself.
Fresh with ideas and burning with ambition, he borrowed money, sold family heirlooms, and launched his own restaurant, a small chic bistro in an up-and-coming part of town. His concoctions were innovative, his approach daring, and his passion infectious. Most important, though, his food was delicious.
It wasn't long before getting a reservation at Chez Vaucluse became difficult. He was the talk of all Lyon, which loved a good culinary success story. His only regret was that his beloved Grand-Mère didn't live long enough to see how far and fast he rose with all the knowledge she imparted to him.
But it was what his Grand-Mère didn't teach him that came to bear on his success. That running an establishment was about more than cooking a great meal was a lesson he learnt the hard way. There were bills to pay, assets to manage, suppliers to threaten and cajole, staff to train and motivate. He resented how much more difficult it was to work with people. Why weren't they as pliant as the vegetables on his chopping board, or the viands in his stews?
Desperate to stay at the top of his game, he took on more and more upon himself. In his quest for perfection, everything he judged wasn’t being done to his exacting standards he did himself, refusing to delegate.
It was a regular evening, like any other, when he went out back for a short smoking break in the middle of the dinner service. One of his Moroccan bus boys discovered him slumped in exhaustion on a stack of crates.
"Claude was asking if he might start on the hors d’oeuvres for the second cover, Monsieur."
Vaucluse tried to rise and found it impossible to get to his feet. He wanted to sit there forever, but that was not an option.
"Tell him to get started, I’ll finish my cigarette and come."
"Oui Monsieur." The man stood there, looking at him.
"What is it?"
"Well, Monsieur, it’s just… I mean, you look so beat. I can… um, do you want something that will help you feel less tired?"
"Are you trying to say I’m not up to the job?"
"Non, non, you are. It’s… we see how hard you are working and sometimes, everyone needs a hand, that’s all."
Vaucluse waved his cigarette at him. "This is as far as I go. I don’t do drugs."
"Oh no Monsieur. Nothing crazy. These are just pills for energy. Everyone takes them, even young students, at exam time. It helps to concentrate."
He pulled out a small vial and handed it to the protesting Vaucluse. "Just in case, eh?"
And that was how it had started. Just a simple way to get through those unending days of serving up consistent, faultless meals to a packed house night after night. A few swallows to coax more out of him since the hours in a day were never enough to finish everything piled on his plate.
Soon the pills became a habit. When they were no longer effective, he graduated to cocaine, snorting a few lines every night from the solitude of the walk in freezer.
Consistent supply wasn't a problem; the food business was rife with the stuff. Everyone in his circle used substances to survive the high-octane environment that is a restaurant kitchen. From the head chef to the bus boys, the bar staff to the sommeliers, everyone was on something. It was pervasive enough to qualify as a food group. There was no shaming; everyone looked upon it as a hazard of the job. He lumbered through the day, as did everybody else, with a grudging acknowledgement that the drugs helped, but never for a moment conceding that they could be so addictive. In his more lucid moments, he took a long hard look at himself and decided that he was not comparable to those other chefs. Unlike them, he could stop at will.
Except he couldn't. And that was when the panic set his insides into a tailspin.
The realization paralyzed him. His work ethic declined as his interest faded. He stopped caring; first about the little details and then the big ones. Skirmishes with staff and customers became common and worsened the spiral. Customers, even regulars, cancelled reservations as the word went out - Chez Vaucluse was not as great as it used to be, such a crying shame, but if you wanted an exquisite dining experience, you were better served going to Les Saisons or Chablis instead.
The downward slide continued. He greeted the loss of their liquor license with a three day bender of booze and coke, the first time he was absent from work, ever. Soon, he was on the doorstep of financial ruin. He declared bankruptcy and watched the shutters lowered on his restaurant, while the vultures circled his beloved kitchen, stripping it for parts to pay for his debts.
The next few weeks were a drug induced dream, a metronome of using and crashing and then using yet again. But under all the crushing disappointment and self-loathing, there still existed a will to take control of his wayward life once again.
His survival-instruct kicked in the night he contemplated mainlining heroin for the first time, his cocaine habit no longer supportable with his meager means. In his disheveled bedroom, he caught sight of his shriveled, tired body reflected in the mirror, with the bony arm stretched out as he tied the plastic tubing. He stared as a virgin vein popped up, a few inches from the needle poised to inject blissful oblivion into it.
Something made him stay his hand; he couldn't bring himself to do it. Ashamed at how low he'd sunk, he threw away the syringe and called one of his few remaining friends to help take him to a hospital. After the painful detox, he spent weeks in rehab, trying to get his mind off the cravings. The vicious tendrils of want came snaking into his brain at night, coiling themselves around him with promises of sweet release.
Next month was his fourth year anniversary of being clean. Four years since he crawled out of the morass of addiction. He started at the bottom rung all over again, a line cook in a cheap little dive, owned by a man who didn't care who he was or where he came from, as long as he showed up on time and did the work. After a while, he moved to another bistro, this one run by an old protégé of his. This was an exercise in the bitterest humiliation possible, but it provided an opportunity to be around food again.
It was there that Tony Whitmore came calling. He was opening a new restaurant in his home town of New York, and he was looking for a fresh face with new ideas. He wanted to differentiate his French dining experience from the hundreds of others in that city. Someone mentioned this also-ran, dead beat chef, who used to be the toast of Lyon. He had just come back to the workforce after his exile in addiction hell and was working as a line cook in one of the city’s new bistros.
Tony Whitmore stopped by the bistro and invited him to prepare a meal for him at the villa he was staying at in the countryside. Vaucluse served up a classic Provençal stew that made use of the fresh local ingredients. Mr. Whitmore looked long and hard at him.
“You’re the goods, there’s no doubt about that. That was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. But you come with a background, a worrisome history.
"Here’s the deal. I’m about to open what I believe will become the finest French dining place in New York. In New York! Can you guess how many great restaurants New York City has? Even I can't tell you, there's a ton of them. To be the best of the best won't be easy. In fact, it will be hard as hell. it will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. So I need to know - Can you handle it? Will you be able to take the pressure? ' Coz I’ll tell you right now son, I am keen to give you this shot. But there’s a bunch of people who think I’d be smarter going with someone more reliable, and more consistent. So if there' s any chance you'll screw it up, you'd best save us both a lot of bother and tell me right now."
Tony Whitmore held out distant dreams of fame and fortune, blended with an appeal to his wish for redemption. And then, emulating an expert chef, he seasoned his offer with just the right financial flavor, and garnished it with that most important of all ingredients - creative independence.
So Vaucluse packed up his favorite chef's knife and his yellowed recipe book and made the leap into culinary uncertainty once again. New York is the toughest market in the world, and for a young chef starting out, it offers both the opportunity to succeed, and scope to fail in spectacular fashion. For a has-been like him, the stakes were even higher, and the depths of failure more perilous. But he worked hard and kept true to his principle that food should be simple and flavorful. Little by little, those in the know in the fine dining universe were sitting up and taking notice of the chef at Sorbet.
"Ah Jean! Come in, won't you? Please, sit."
"You wanted I come see you?" Vaucluse sank into one of the white leather chairs in front of the large oak slab that doubled as Tony Whitmore's desk. Everything in Mr. Whitmore's world was larger than life, in keeping with the persona of the man himself, who even seated, towered over most men.
"Yes, yes I did. I wanted to talk with you. First, I want to say I am so impressed with the work you have been doing here at Sorbet. You and your vision have been what this place needed. I am hearing whispers of a rumored visit by an unnamed personage, which may bring us a 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'! Didn't I tell you we would make magic together?"
"Oui, Monsieur. I am delighted that the things, they are going well."
And they were. As they hadn't in a long time. Vaucluse’s clenched muscles relaxed.
"A star, Jean, a star! Can you imagine? You’ve come a long way, son. I have to admit I had doubts in the beginning. But you've succeeded in spectacular fashion. If we keep this up, the sky is the limit."
"Merci, Tony. I owe it all to you. If you hadn't taken a chance on me -"
"Nonsense, my boy. I allowed you room to do what you should have been doing all along, nothing more."
Vaucluse rose out of the chair. " If that’s all, I should head back to the kitchen. There is a new supplier coming in to discuss our requirements for the white truffle menu I’ve been planning for next month."
"Oh yes, I forgot. There’s something I need you to do for me."
"Oui?"
"My son, Julius? He has a, what do they call it, summer break? I'd like to see that the boy doesn't fritter it away. Lord alone knows what they are teaching him in that preppy boarding school. I want my one and only heir to get his hands down and dirty and learn the business from the ground up. So he will intern here, at Sorbet, and I want you to keep an eye on him and ensure he learns the ropes."
"Of course. No problem. It will be my pleasure."
"And I want you to treat him like everyone else. No special favors, ok? He has to make his own way in the world, and he needs to learn how to do that. Not have people kowtowing to him just 'coz he' s the boss' son."
In his defense, Vaucluse had no reason to be wary when he agreed to the benign request. He wasn't as optimistic though, as his boss, about what to expect from the youngster. He had now been in New York long enough to see these young scions strutting around in their designer apparel. They accessorized themselves with the latest trends and a strong sense of entitlement. He doubted whether any of them understood what it meant to work hard. They got everything in life with no struggle and minimal effort.
The young man would come and stand around for a few days, and either get bored or else overwhelmed. Vaucluse was willing to bet on the former, but in the unlikely event he was wrong on that front, he could guarantee the latter. A fully staffed kitchen serving capacity seating night after night was no place for the faint hearted. One needed stamina and fortitude. And cojones the size of bowling balls to make it to the other side of an evening with customers who booked weeks in advance for a culinary experience to remember and cherish.
The first sign he may have boxed himself into a corner was when he met the boy. The simple adage that every rule has an exception was clear when he espied the runt-sized lad, uncomfortable and awkward in grey jeans and a black T-shirt. So this puny specimen was Tony Whitmore's son? Sure to be a good story there, Vaucluse thought.
"You are Julius? Alors, I am Jean Vaucluse, the head chef here. Your Father, Monsieur Whitmore has told me you wish to train here at Sorbet, yes?"
The weird looking teenager stared at him with protruding eyes as he bounced from one foot to the next. Vaucluse waited a few moments - perhaps the boy was nervous, an encouraging sign. Better than someone who walked in throwing their weight around because they owned the place.
"Yes, well, ok, we will begin. First, I will show you where everything is, and then after that, you shall begin in the prep area. Follow me, s'il vous plaît."
He gave the boy a quick introductory walk around the kitchen. Then he left him in the capable hands of Dino and Franco, the young veterans of the prep area. He had tasked both of them beforehand with showing their young newcomer the ropes.
It took all of two hours before Dino edged up to him as he was putting the finishing glaze on a magnificent roast chicken.
"Per favore, Signor, but Julius, he not right in the head."
"Dino, can't you see I'm busy right now! Whatever the problem is, you deal with it, oui?
"But Signor, this is not possible. This Julius, we are aware he is Signor Whitmore's son. So we have to be gentle with him. We know this. So we start him with something easy. We say to him, 'Julius, you must peel the potatoes.' We show him how, even though it is so simple, a child can do it. Then we leave him with a bowl of potatoes and carry on with our work on the carrot and zucchini juliennes. After half an hour, I go back to see how he is doing, and I find he is just sitting there. Not one potato peeled. I ask him, 'Julius, what is the matter?' and he says the potatoes, they don't seem right. I look over them and they are fine. So I tell him, 'Julius, the potatoes are ok.' But he just says 'non'."
"What is he doing now?"
"He sits there with his eyes all funny. Something is not right with him Signor."
Vaucluse finished his glaze and walked up to the prep area at the back of the kitchen to see Julius sitting there, giving the wall a blank stare.
"Hi Julius, so Dino tells me you have a problem with the peeling of the potatoes? Why?"
"They don't look right."
"Oui, Dino told me you said so, but what do you mean?"
The odd shaped head turned towards him, the eyes protruding as the young man stared at him.
"Can't you see? They are all of different shapes and sizes."
"Naturellement, that's how potatoes are."
"And the color isn't an equal brown. Some are light brown, others are darker, and some are so patchy. I can't peel them. I can't even look at them."
He turned his face away with a resolute air that Vaucluse was loath to challenge. What an odd boy he was! He stood there with his arms crossed, staring at the lad who still had his face to the wall. Whatever did he mean?
After a few moments, Vaucluse opted to stop trying to figure out what the lad meant and be practical instead. Never mind prep, there were a hundred other things for Julius to do in the kitchen. All he needed to do was find the right one, and then stick with it for the duration of 6 weeks at the most, sooner if the queer boy quit.
The coming week soon put paid to this most reasonable plan. No matter what duty he assigned Julius to, there was always some issue that prevented the young man from completing his task. The dishwasher scalded one of his bus boy’s hands because Julius turned up the temperature of the water to a round fifty degrees. He rearranged the mise-en-prep, the arrangement of condiments and spices that every chef assembled at their workstation as per their personal habit for ease of use. According to him, they had to all be in the same order, no matter what each chef preferred. The sommelier was tearing his luxurious hair out because Julius had rearranged the entire wine cellar based on bottle size and shape. It was impossible now to locate a specific bottle based on vintage or appellation. The sous chef was threatening to resign. Just as he would eyeball each dish, as it was ready to leave the kitchen, Julius would step in and change the arrangement on the plate because the colors weren't matching. And the pastry chefs wouldn't allow him near any of their creations after he insisted that the profiteroles were lopsided. And the macaroons should all have the same chocolate cream filling.
Vaucluse soon realized that the young man suffered from a heightened case of OCD behavior. Any sympathy he might have harbored vanished when he arrived one morning to find that Julius had taken every single knife belonging to every single chef and arranged them in ascending order of size. Including his. Julius had broken the first rule of the kitchen - to mess with a chef's knives is to invite the wrath of God.
His chefs were on the warpath. His serving staff was threatening to go on strike. And Vaucluse was under pressure he had never imagined or prepared for in all his years in the food business. He now had the unenviable task of figuring out how to break the news to his patron and benefactor that Julius was an unmitigated disaster of enormous proportions. He needed to figure out how to tell the man who salvaged him from the dump of his miserable existence, who took a chance on him and gave him a one in a million opportunity to head this kitchen, that his own beloved son couldn't work there anymore.
On Saturday morning, he came into the restaurant earlier than his usual 7 a.m. At this hour, even the bus boys and most of the prep staff would be asleep in the deep slumber that a busy Friday night shift induced. His own joints creaked and moaned as he shifted weight from one foot to the next. He gazed through the glass window that overlooked the kitchen and surveyed his kingdom.
The gleaming stainless steel countertops were lying bare. In a few hours, they would overflow with many things, but at this moment, it looked as if their reflective surfaces prompted his reflective mood. He knew every nook and cranny of the place, every pipe, every tile and every pan. He knew if he were to stand 7 steps behind and to the left of the grilling station, he would get an ephemeral whiff of charred meat. And that if he had to bake a flawless soufflé, he should avoid the temperamental third oven that changed its mind more often that his first wife did.
The back doors clanged open as the prep staff arrived, ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. The kitchen filled with the sounds and aromas of them mincing garlic, de-veining prawns, grating Parmesan and filling the salt and pepper cellars. He swiveled around, trying to gather his wayward reveries, bringing his mind back to focus on the problem at hand.
And then he had it! For the first time in a whole week, a smile broke out across his face.
The evening was proceeding well. Vaucluse and his team were in top form as they raced to fill in the orders for the day’s specials. Patrons received both the pan seared scallops on a bed of shiitake mushrooms with a lemongrass and sage reduction, and the Coq Au Vin glazed with an aged port sauce with potatoes Dauphinoise on the side with enthusiasm. He told Julius to sit in his office. That way he was far away from any place he could do any lasting damage. He told him he was saving him for a special task tonight.
He glanced at his watch. It was time.
"Julius! Allez! Vite, Vite!"
The boy ambled up to the front of the restaurant where Vaucluse was waiting with two serving staff.
"Alors, Julius. Your Papa is here tonight, hosting a dinner for one of his business friends. They are sitting at his usual table. You know which one it is? Bon. I believe he is dining with his banker, Monsieur Clifton. We have prepared a special treat - my Grand-Mère’s Duck a L'Orange. I would like for you to introduce the dish to your papa and his guest. How proud that will make him."
The boy nodded in that slow way of his. Vaucluse led him out of the kitchen, the two servers carrying the dishes and Julius plodding along at the rear.
"Messieurs! Welcome to Sorbet. I trust everything has been up to satisfaction this evening? Et bien. For your dining pleasure tonight, we have here a special treat, and I will leave it to Master Julius to explain to you what it is."
At his word, the two servers lifted the gleaming domed covers and revealed the dish to both the delighted guests. Julius stepped forward and looked up at his smiling father. He opened his mouth to speak, but a queer expression seized control of his face. Sweat beads formed on his brow and he bunched his hands into tight fists at his side. After what seemed like a few interminable seconds, Vaucluse saw the fight go out of him as he succumbed to his basic nature.
"This is all wrong!" He reached for the knife placed on the right of the startled looking banker. "The potatoes should not be touching the peas, and the peas and zucchini should be side by side because they are both green. And the carrots should be at the top, so they don't swim in the sauce and get wet on one side."
He coupled his words with sharp motions of the knife on the banker’s plate. His sharp chopping actions moved the pieces around till the whole dish resembled something that had oozed up from some slimy heap.
"Enough Julius!" cried his father, horror stricken at this public display of ineptitude. He swarmed to his feet, looming over his cowering son who stared up at him with his arms frozen in the midst of dismembering the meat.
"What is wrong with you?" Tony Whitmore grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him to one side. Vaucluse pursed his lips in chagrin as his boss berated the boy in a softer voice, but it was still loud enough for everyone at the table to hear. The plan had sounded good in his head, but to see it playing out like this was painful and shameful.
"Do you realize what you have done? You have embarrassed me, yet again, in front of guests, in my own restaurant! How will you ever learn to become a smart business man and take over from me if you keep doing things like this?"
"But Father, I-"
"I don’t want to hear it. I’m sick and tired of this behavior. See what you’ve done! I thought sending you away to boarding school would help you to grow up and out of these weird tendencies of yours. I hoped you would realize your responsibilities, but it’s made no difference to you. Do you have any idea how hard people in the kitchen worked to put this dish together, to make it special? The best ingredients, the best everything! This is a hundred dollar dish. And now, look at it. See what you’ve done to it."
Julius squared his shoulders and looked up at his father. "I'm sorry Sir, that is not accurate. The poultry supplier bills us at about 30 dollars per duck. If you add to that the proportionate cost of the potatoes, peas, zucchini and carrots, it would be around 28.91. Add to that the sauce, which would be 3.98. Then the preparation and serving charge, and taxes and other add-ons, which would bring it to a total price of 62.89 dollars. So, it’s not a hundred dollar dish."
There was complete silence as Tony Whitmore buried his face in his large hands.
"Tell me Julius, are you always this good with numbers?" Mr. Clifton looked up at the young man with a thoughtful frown.
"I guess so", said Julius.
"What's 4987 times 31.22?"
"155,694.14", mumbled Julius, without a single second's hesitation.
Mr. Clifton punched in the numbers on his calculator on his phone. He stared long and hard at the screen and then turned around to glance at Tony Whitmore. The hapless father still had not extricated his face from the soft pillows of his palms.
"Tony, why don't you send the boy around to the bank come Monday morning? With his head for numbers, I'm sure we can find a good use for him. That's only if it's all right with you, Mr. Vaucluse."
In the years to follow, Jean Vaucluse could say without hesitation he spoke the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in reply.
"Mais oui, Monsieur. Who am I to stand in the way of his progress? Nothing will give me greater joy than to see Master Julius leave us here to pursue a higher calling."
He looked up to catch a shy smile bloom on the young man’s face. Strange how things had worked out, for everyone. He was ashamed at his plan to denigrate him tonight, to rid himself of the lad. Julius was just trying to get by, to get the better of his own inner demons every day. Wasn't he himself? Weren’t they all?
He sauntered back to his kitchen, whistling under his breath. He thought he could feel his Grand-Mère smiling down on him.