The Hundred-Foot Journey (28 page)

Paul’s legal adviser—also at Madame Verdun’s table that night—had in the preceding months successfully convinced the widow that a lawsuit would drain her purse, be a source of continuous emotional turmoil, and would inevitably fail to produce the desired results. He instead recommended negotiating a face-saving arrangement directly with Monsieur Barthot.

We saw the outcome a week before Paul’s memorial dinner, when
Le Guide,
as we simply called it, took out full-page ads in the major papers of the country, saluting the life’s work of “our dearly departed friend, Chef Verdun.” The deal-clincher—so my gossip-gifted sister informed me—was Monsieur Barthot’s promise to deliver Chef Mafitte, who not only sang Chef Verdun’s praises in the Michelin guide’s ad, but was also at the dinner, sitting to the left of Paul’s widow and pawing her hand.

Paul would have been furious.

Anna Verdun had shunted me to table seventeen in the back of the room. As it turns out, however, the table was under one of my favorite paintings—a still life by Chardin called
Gray Partridge, Pear, and Snare on Stone Table
—and I took this as a particularly good omen. Besides, my seat next to the kitchen entrance was immensely practical—I could keep one eye firmly glued on the staff coming and going with the night’s fare—and the company at table seventeen was, I thought, far more entertaining than what was on offer at the more “elite” tables in the room.

We had, for example, my old friend from Montparnasse, Chef André Piquot, as cherubic and spherical and inoffensive as a
boule
of ice cream. Also at our table, the third-generation fishmonger Madame Elisabet. While it is true the poor woman suffered from a mild form of Tourette’s syndrome, which at times proved rather awkward, she was otherwise so very sweet, and she of course owned the formidable fish wholesaler that supplied many of the top-rated restaurants of northern France. So I was delighted to find her at our table.

To her left, meanwhile, Le Comte de Nancy Selière, my landlord on Rue Valette, so at peace with his aristocratic superiority he was beyond concerns of class and caste, and, it must be added, such a sharp-tongued curmudgeon he was not tolerated at many of the ‘finer’ tables in the room. Finally, to my left, the American expat writer James Harrison Hewitt, a food critic for
Vine & Pestle,
who, despite his decades living in Paris with his Egyptian boyfriend, was deeply distrusted by France’s culinary establishment because of his uncomfortably penetrating and well-informed insights into their insular world.

We all took our seats as a picture of a smiling Paul Verdun in toque was projected up onto screens. White jackets streamed from the kitchen: the
amuse-bouche,
a shot glass filled with a bite-sized baby octopus cooked in its “natural essence,” extra virgin olive oil from Puglia, and a single caper on a long stem. The wine—in the partisan context of French haute cuisine and endlessly commented on in the papers the following day—was considered a shot across the bow: a rare 1959 Château Musar from Lebanon.

James Hewitt was a first-rate raconteur, and the American was, like me, quietly studying the odd ménage of characters at Madame Verdun’s head table.

“You know she had to drop the lawsuit,” he said softly. “All sorts of saucy details would have emerged had she persisted.”

“Saucy details?” I replied. “Like what?”

“Paul was overextended. Poor man. His empire was about to collapse.”

It was a preposterous suggestion. Paul had been an entrepreneurial tour de force. He was, for example, the first three-star chef ever to list his holding company, Verdun et Cie, on the Paris
bourse,
and to use the eleven million euros of his initial public offering to completely renovate his country inn and create a string of fashionable bistros under the name Les Verdunières. It was well known he had a ten-year contract with Nestlé, creating a series of soups and dinners for the Swiss food giant’s Findus label. That contract alone was reportedly worth five million euros a year and resulted in Paul’s beaming face plastered all across the billboards and TV screens of Europe. Then there was the small fortune he earned as a consultant to Air France, plus the steady stream of fees that came from the manufacturers of linen, jams, pots and pans, cutlery, crystal, herbs, wine, oils, vinegars, kitchen cabinets, and chocolates, all of which had been eager to pay the famous chef large sums of money for the right to use his name.

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.