The Food of Love (18 page)

the stove.

‘Hey, Tommaso. What’s up?’

‘We have to swap places. Carlotta’s parents are here. You

know - Dr Ferrara and his wife.’

‘Why?’ Bruno asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know. Because they think I cook here, I suppose. He

must want to get laid again.’

“I meant, why do we have to swap?’

‘Because if they see me they’ll know I’m only a waiter. And if

I just go and hide, no one will serve them. So I need to hide in here, and you need to put on my uniform and look after their

table.’

Bruno sighed. For a moment, he was tempted to tell Tommaso

to forget it. But the memory of those stolen kisses was still on his conscience. ‘All right. But I’ll have to be back at my station before the first orders for do lei come in.’

At that very moment, a group of four men was sauntering through

the front doors of the restaurant. Although they were expensively dressed, there was something about the rough-and-ready way they

walked that suggested these were not the sort of customers Teinpli usually dealt with. Their leader was a tiny man, barely five foot tall, whose well-cut suits had clearly been specially tailored to fit his diminutive frame.

A waiter hurried forward. Before he could open his mouth, the

small man said, ‘We have a reservation. Four people, in the name of Norca.’

The waiter looked at the list. Sure enough, there was a reservation.

He was not to know that the real Signor Norca, the

businessman who had originally made the booking, had that very

morning been persuaded to relinquish it in favour of some well

connected friends of friends. Initially he had resisted - he had, after all, waited three months to eat at Templi, and he was looking forward to it enormously - but a somewhat curt phone call from

his chairman in Palermo, followed shortly afterwards by another

from his most important client in Naples, had persuaded him that it would be altogether less stressful to spend his lunch hour in a small wine bar near his office, where he was even now taking a

restorative grappa to steady his nerves.

‘That seems to be in order,’ the waiter said slowly.

‘Good,’ Teodoro said, patting the waiter’s arm. ‘In that case,

you can lead us to our table.’

As they walked through the bar, one of the men casually helped

himself to a bottle of whisky. The waiter pretended not to notice.

The news that there was a group of mafiosi in the restaurant went round the waiting staff like wildfire, and from them permeated

into the kitchen. Alain Dufrais stiffened and reached for his hat. As he marched rigidly towards the doors into the dining room, however, the maitre d’ headed him off. Franciscus was an Italian and

knew how these things worked. He whispered urgently in the

chef’s ear.

For a moment it looked as though Alain was going to ignore

him. His face twitched. Then, with a mighty effort, he turned and went back to the pass.

It was a long time since Bruno had been a waiter. Moreover, each table at Templi bore a bewildering assembly of cutlery and utensils, and it was up to the waiter to pour the wine into the right

glass and ensure that the correct implement was positioned next to each plate. Soon Bruno was horribly confused. Luckily Dr Ferrara and his wife were cooing over each other like a couple of teenagers and didn’t seem to notice; at least until it came to ordering, when Dr Ferrara called him over.

‘Am I right in thinking you have a chef called Tommaso Massi

working here?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Can you tell me which dishes on the menu he would have

prepared?’

‘The dolci,’ Bruno replied.

‘In that case,’ Dr Ferrara turned to his wife, ‘we shall just have a primo and then one of Tommaso’s desserts.’

Bruno slipped away before the maitre d’ could spot him. He

was fortunate that there was such a vast crowd of waiting staff at Templi that one more went unnoticed.

Franciscus himself served Teodoro’s table. He started off by saying that the meal would of course be on the house. In addition, he

murmured, the chef’s signature dish, the confit of lamb en persillade, was particularly good at the moment.

“I’ll have pasta carbonara and a steak,’ the first man said firmly.

“I’ll have the same,’ his neighbour said.

‘We don’t actually …’ Franciscus began, then stopped.

‘Since it’s Thursday, I’ll have gnocchi,” the next man added.

‘And I’ll have gnocchi and a piccata Milanese, followed by tiramisu,” Teodoro said benevolently. He handed the menus, which none of them had opened, back to Franciscus. “I’ll leave the choice of wine up to you, since you’re paying for it.’

‘Of course,’ Franciscus said with a slight bow, hoping that the

Chateau Petrus was still in the cellar, and in good condition.

‘Two pasta carbonara. Two gnocchi. Two steaks, well done. One piccata Milanese.” Karl called the order in an appalled whisper, as if by lowering his voice the words were less likely to sully the rarefied air of Monsieur Dufrais’s kitchen. In equally hushed tones,

various chefs acknowledged that they had heard.

There was a brief pause after Karl called the tiramisu. If there was something a little strange about the patissier’s voice when he eventually did respond, nobody noticed. They were too busy wondering how on earth they were going to cook the unfamiliar

Roman dishes that had just been ordered.

Tommaso stared at the contents of the fridge. A tiramisu, he knew, was just biscotti soaked in espresso and brandy, topped with beaten egg and mascarpone. But in what proportions? What

should he do first? If only he had a recipe book.

It is sometimes said of Romans that they are terrible at organisation but brilliant at improvisation. Desperately, Tommaso pulled

some ingredients out of the fridge and prepared to improvise now.

Franciscus, opening the Petrus, froze. He was convinced he had

just seen one of the chefs, dressed in a waiter’s uniform, pouring wine into a water glass. He passed the cork of the Petrus under his nose and the rich odour of long years of cellaring, magnificent and majestic, momentarily calmed him. He poured a little wine from

one glass to another to check the quality, which was perfect, and then allowed himself a small restorative mouthful.

Bruno made it back to the patissier’s station just in time to stop Tommaso sending up to the pass a concoction so vile-looking

that he, Bruno, wouldn’t have served it to a dog. Fortunately, the head chef’s attention was elsewhere.

‘Is there no one who knows how to cook these peasant dishes?’

he roared. ‘For God’s sake, one of you Italian barbarians must

have some clue.’

‘He’s talking about gnocchi,” Tommaso whispered, pulling off

his whites and grabbing his own jacket from Bruno. ‘And piccata

Milanese.”

“I do,’ Bruno called. For a moment there was silence, then

with a collective sigh of relief the whole kitchen turned towards the patissier.

Roman gnocchi are a completely different dish to the light, fluffy gnocchi that are found in the rest of Italy. For one thing, they are made not from potatoes but from semolina, the coarse

ground flour of the durum wheat. Essentially they are a kind of

pancake.

‘You mix the milk and the semolina in a saucepan,’ Bruno was

explaining as he cooked. ‘Beat in an egg and leave it for a few minutes to cool. Then you just cut it into circles, sprinkle the cheese

on top, and bake them in the oven.’ While he talked he was also

assembling another tiramisu. He had already explained to Karl

how to make a piccata Milanese, and the head chef was busy chopping parsley and strips of parma ham.

‘Add some pork rind to that, if you can find any,’ Bruno called

over.

Meanwhile, another chef was making the sauce for the pasta.

Other orders were forgotten as the whole kitchen mobilised to

cook the unfamiliar menu.

With the secondi sorted, Bruno turned his attention to vegetables. Carciofini, zucchini, cardoons and treviso were all found and prepped. Simultaneously he began to organise the orders of the

other restaurant diners. He pulled all but a few sous chefs off

the Italian food, and still found time to supervise the cooking

of the meat.

‘You know, we have a very similar dish to this in France,’ Karl

said as he cooked the piccata. ‘But we would add black olives, and a little brandy’ He smiled nostalgically. “I haven’t tasted it since I left Provence, and this smell is bringing it all back for me.’

Bruno shrugged. ‘Black olives would fight the parsley, but

some brandy would be fine. Go ahead.’

To everyone’s surprise, the maftosi were reduced to silence by the unexpected excellence of the cooking, and the atmsophere at

Templi slowly returned to normal.

‘This is a very strange place,’ Dr Ferrara commented as he

looked around. ‘That maitre d’ is quite drunk, you know.’

‘They’re just having a good time,’ his wife said. ‘How’s your primoV

‘Fantastic. How’s yours?’

Costanza didn’t reply, but she squeezed her husband’s thigh

under the table.

After the meal, Teodoro and two of his companions sent a message via Franciscus, summoning the chef to their table.

Whatever Alain was, he was certainly no coward. He glanced

at the clock and curtlv told the maitre d’ to inform table four that he would be out in a quarter of an hour, when service was

finished.

Franciscus, who was a coward, was a little free with his translation of this message. ‘Monsieur Dufrais has just popped out and

will be with you as soon as he is back,’ he told Teodoro.

When at last Alain did deign to visit the dining room, he made

a point of touring all the tables in his customary clockwise direction, coming to the Italians’ table last. But the maftosi, soothed by

large cigars and a hundred-year-old cognac, were too relaxed to

care.

‘Your restaurant is a little fancy for my tastes, my friend,’

Teodoro told Alain, ‘but your cooking is first-rate. Just make sure you’re hospitable to any colleagues of mine and you’ll do well.’

‘And how will I know who your colleagues are?’ Alain asked

coldly.

Teodoro thought for a moment. ‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘Better

be nice to all Romans, just to be on the safe side.’ His companions laughed uproariously. Only Alain did not join in.

‘Thank you for your compliments,’ he said stiffly, moving on to

the next table.

Dr Ferrara leaned across. ‘You know, he doesn’t really do the

cooking,’ he confided to Teodoro.

‘He doesn’t?’

‘No. There’s a young Italian in the kitchen. A genius with

Roman food. His name’s Tommaso Massi. I’m trying to persuade

him to set up his own place, in the city.’

‘Tommaso Massi,’ Teodoro said thoughtfully. He nodded to

one of his companions, who made a note of the name on his

napkin.

‘Get those plates out of my sight,’ Alain ordered, marching back into the kitchen. ‘Wipe the surfaces. And get rid of all that peasant food, too.’ He swept the leftover pieces of gnocchi into the

bin and glared at Bruno. ‘Chef, your station is unmanned. And

what in God’s name are you doing?’ He was talking to Tommaso,

who was hiding in the cupboard Alain had just pulled open.

‘Finding a coat, chef.’

‘Well, hurry up. And get yourself properly dressed.’

‘Did they like their meal?’ Bruno asked.

‘Apparently.’

‘You see, I was thinking. It might be nice, for local people, if some of those dishes were available on the menu.’

Alain stared at him. For a moment a vein throbbed on his forehead.

‘Last time I looked, I was the chef de cuisine in this

restaurant,’ he said icily.

‘Of course,’ Bruno said quietly. ‘Sorry, chef.’

“I want to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Open a restaurant with Dr Ferrara. I think it’s a good idea.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Why not?’ Bruno shrugged. ‘It’s not so complicated, not compared to what we’ve been doing already. I’ll do the cooking and

you can help me.’

‘Is this to do with all the trouble at Templi?’ Tommaso said

quietly.

His friend avoided his eyes. ‘Perhaps.’

‘You’re really going to let those talentless bastards drive you

out?’

“I don’t know. Yes, perhaps. But it’s more than that. These

other dishes I’ve been cooking recently, for Laura - they’re not Alain’s, or Hugo’s, or anyone else’s. They’re mine. And if I don’t leave Templi and start cooking on my own somewhere, they’ll just be lost. Don’t you see, Tommaso? I have to give them the chance

to exist. I can’t explain it. It’s like a woman wanting to have children, or something.’

‘Except you want your children to be eaten.’

Bruno said helplessly, “I told you I couldn’t explain it.’

‘Then there’s the fact that we’d be trying to fool everybody. I

mean everybody. Customers, critics, suppliers, staff-this is serious stuff, Bruno. It’s not like a little joke to get a girl into bed. If we’re caught - when we’re caught - there’ll be hell to pay. We’d never work in this industry again.’

cMeglio un giorno da leone che cento da pecora, as your father

used to say, God rest his soul.’

‘Ah, Bruno, did I ever tell you how my father died?’ Tommaso

asked.

“I don’t think you did, no. And I didn’t like to pry.’

‘He ignored a stop sign and drove straight out in front of a

truck. He assumed the truck would slow down for him. It didn’t.’

‘Ah.’

‘Sometimes lions get killed. Particularly when they pull out in