The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier

by J. Michael Orenduff

Rafael was making pâté and Raoul was removing filets from a large fish and putting what was left in a pot to make fish stock. Jürgen was carving a large piece of beef into pieces that would become tafelspitz, which is as unappetizing as the name would suggest.

  Kuchen was going from station to station making comments and issuing orders.

  When I said I was willing to help, they didn’t hesitate to accept. Despite the weeks of preparation, many things had been overlooked. No one had thought to start storing ice, so all they had was what the machine held. They sent me on an ice run. I filled the back of the Bronco and Scruggs helped me carry the bags to the freezer when I returned.

  I folded napkins and filled salt shakers.

  Among all the ranks of the brigade de cuisine mentioned in Escoffier’s book, the only one missing was the communard, the person who prepares meals for the staff. I had intended for my chicken mole to be merely a treat and a thank-you for the staff on their big day, but Alain made a pot of rice to go with it, and it became the staff lunch. There was no time for one of the group lunches we had during training and no place either since the dining room was now fully dressed in its finest linen and silver. People took a leg and some rice and ate standing up or moving.

  I worked like a dog all afternoon until five when they told me to stand aside because they had a routine for the hour before opening.

  Wallace Voile had a cadre of lithe young women serving as hostesses and waitresses, and she was giving them last minute instructions. Her crew were dressed in black skirts and simple white blouses with red ascots. Wallace wore a silver-sequined dress that clung to her contours, starting from her neck, flaring slightly at the knees, continuing down to the floor and trailing her as she walked. Rafael walked up to me and said, “Wow! Get a load of that body.”

  “That dress makes her look like a mermaid,” I said.

  “Yeah. Thirty-six, twenty four, carp.”

  Kuchen came out in a freshly washed and pressed tunic. The tables were set, the lights were lowered. The castle gates were thrown open.

  The obvious chaos of the last eight hours gave way to casual competence in the dining room. In the kitchen, pandemonium continued to reign, but it was a controlled hubbub. Backstage at an opera, the costumes and sets so obviously counterfeit, the faces of the singers painted on. Yet the audience sees only glorious spectacle.

  Food was dropped, plates broken, curses uttered, but when the swinging door opened and the waiters arrived with the dishes, it seemed effortless to the diners.

  The tables were packed all night. Wine flowed, coffers filled. When the door was locked behind the last patron, champagne was uncorked – not Gruet, alas – and toasts were made. To Kuchen, to Molinero, to the staff, to Santa Fe, to food and to success, which seemed to me the most appropriate toast of all because that is what the Grand Opening had been – an overwhelming success.

  I walked back to La Fonda. When I entered the lobby, I was surprised a round of applause did not break out. I felt the whole world must surely know about Schnitzel, and I was proud to be a part of it.

  34

  The euphoria evaporated over morning coffee at the French Café.

  The headline on the review by Dagmar Mortensen, the restaurant critic for the state’s major paper read, “A Herr in my Soup.” The text was about what you would expect given the headline.

  Many of us were looking forward to a new cuisine in town. After all, Austrian restaurants are as rare in New Mexico as a rainy day. After dining at Schnitzel last night, I now understand why. I admit to being impressed upon arrival. The entry looks like Mad King Ludwig’s Bavarian Castle. The maitresse’d was welcoming and lovely in her shimmering dress. Our table setting was impressive. Indeed, everything went well until the food arrived.

  I started with the coachman’s salad, constructed from bologna, hard-boiled eggs, cucumber, and onions sliced in Cobb salad style. The dressing was a fatty mayonnaise concoction. The bologna, onion, and mayo created a taste you would expect from a county fair kiosk sponsored by Oscar Meyer and Kraft.

  The fingerling potatoes in my companion’s warm potato salad were overcooked and oily. The only things required to turn our first course into the picnic from hell would have been ants and rain.

  The entrées were worse. My Gebratener Leberkäse contained two rich meats, corned beef and bacon. I don’t know which was worse, the cloying flavor or the existential angst about which part of my anatomy the fat was going to disfigure. My companion, having taken the warning shot of her salad seriously, tried to play it safe by ordering chicken strudel, something that sounds both traditionally Austrian and light by comparison to my meatloaf. Her hopes were dashed when the chicken arrived.

  At least we assumed there was chicken in there. The salty ham and heavy layer of cheese hid the bird well. Just to make sure no chicken taste would peek through, sour cream had been liberally applied.

  I almost decided to skip dessert, which would have been a mistake. The Salzburger Nockerln and Linzer torte were good, although not good enough to justify eating what had come before.

  Judging from Schnitzel, Austrian food will not be a hit in the Land of Enchantment. It is too heavy and dark for this sunny clime. Because it relies so heavily on fat, sugar, and salt, it has a tired formulaic taste one might expect in the cafeteria of a tourist boat on the Danube. After it sank. I have decided to make Schnitzel the first restaurant I have ever awarded minus two stars.

  My mood had darkened with every word. My coffee had also grown cooler with each one because I was too engrossed to drink it. I was mortified for my colleagues, especially Rafael. I had urged him to become the garde manger at Schnitzel, and now his two salads had been viciously panned in the state’s leading paper.

  I picked up a daily from Albuquerque and warily turned each page the way a bomb defuser might remove sand from around a land mine. There was no mention of Schnitzel. Then I saw the second section. Above the fold in large print, I read, “Austrians probably glad Schnitzel chef immigrated.” The review began, “Historians looking for an explanation of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire might want to start with the food.” I couldn’t read any further.

  But that didn’t stop me from checking another Santa Fe paper where I found this gem of a headline – “Lederhosen tastier than meatloaf at Schnitzel.”

  I decided to run away from the mess. Get in the Bronco, drive back to Albuquerque and take the phone off the hook. Then I reconsidered.

  There was no reason to take the phone of the hook. No one was going to call me about Schnitzel. I was just the ‘ceramic artist’.

  But even though they were an odd lot to say the least, I knew I couldn’t abandon the people at Schnitzel in what had to be the nadir of their professional careers.

  Then I saw one of them walk into the café. Smiling, of all things.

  “I thought I might find you here,” said Jürgen as he sat down. He eyed the table. “You have already eaten?”

  “No, but I’ve lost my appetite.”

  “Ach!” he scoffed. He went to the counter and purchased two almond croissants and two fresh coffees.

  I sipped the hot coffee and felt a little better. I risked a bite of the croissant. It was warm, flaky, and sweet. I had another bite and some more coffee.

  “You’re not depressed by the reviews?”

  He waved a hand dismissively, “If we gave the newspapers bad reviews would people stop reading them?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Just so. People do not stop going to restaurants that get bad reviews. Anyway, restaurant reviews are for snobs.”

  Evidently I had a lot to learn. Jürgen’s words of experience and even keel made me feel better. I stopped worrying about Schnitzel.

  And returned to worrying about Detective Duran.

  I looked around to ascertain no one was sitting next to us. I lowered my voice. “Jürgen, are you gay?”

  “Of course! You will never see me in a bad mood. Since I left home on my sixte
enth birthday, I have traveled the world as what you Americans call a happy-go-lucky man.”

  I cleared my throat. “That’s not what I meant. I mean are you a …”

  “Homosexual?” he said when I hesitated. “Why? Do you wish to proposition me?”

  “No! I’m not gay. But someone I know thinks you might be.” This was not going at all as I intended. I felt like an idiot for bringing it up.

  He looked amused. “And why does this person you know speculate about me in this fashion?”

  I didn’t know whether I was supposed to, but I decided to tell him about my second meeting with Duran. “Detective Duran thinks you may have killed Barry Stiles.”

  He looked puzzled. “And he thinks I did this because I am gay?”

  “No, he doesn’t think you’re gay. A least I don’t think he does. I’m not sure.”

  “Then I do not understand.”

  Neither did I, and I was the one doing the explaining. “Duran says only two people had obvious access to where the body was found, you and me. Since I didn’t really know Barry, Duran assumes I had no reason to kill him.”

  “But I didn’t know him any better than you did.”

  “I know. But because you are both cooks, he thinks there might be a connection.”

  “He thinks cooks are gay?”

  “No. I was talking to a friend about it, and she was trying to help me by figuring out how Barry was killed. So she said one possibility is that when you went to the Bronco, you called him to meet you there.”

  “And I would do that because I am gay?”

  “I told her it was a ridiculous idea.”

  “I am not gay,” he stated matter of factly. “I have never wanted to be tied down by marriage. Perhaps I saw how much my mother needed marriage, and I didn’t want to be so dependent. I enjoy sex with women, but as Machlin said to me when we were discussing the subject, he loves bread, but he doesn’t want to own a bakery.”

  Oink, I said to myself since Susannah wasn’t there to say it.

  35

  The bedlam at Schnitzel Tuesday night was the same as it had been at the Grand Opening, and I was again assigned a number of unskilled tasks that no one else had time to do. I removed wax drippings from candle holders, made a trip to Whole Foods for fennel bulbs, and wrote the specials on a slate board next to the maitresse‘d station.

  Most places use a white board these days, but Schnitzel had real slate. Alain Billot gave me the list, and I used my best printing to list the items.

  In addition to the set menu, there was to be a special appetizer, entrée, and dessert – smoked trout pâté, beuschel and Apfelstrudel respectively.

  You know what Apfelstrudel is. You don’t want to know what beuschel is, but I’m going to tell you anyway – a ragout with calf lungs and heart. Yum.

  I had Jürgen proofread the list because I assumed Alain was not fluent in Austrian. I say ‘Austrian’ because when I had called it German, Kuchen told me in no uncertain terms it was Austrian. There are evidently a few differences in spelling and usage as between the U.S. and England, but Kuchen took them seriously, pointing out that whereas Germans write the word for ‘foot’ as ‘fuß’, Austrians write is as ‘fuss’.

  I immediately took the Austrian side of this weighty issue, having investigated the dreaded ß – called an eszett I now knew – after Susannah drew one for me when explaining about it being on the uniforms of some Nazis. I found a book in the library about scripts around the world. I had decided I didn’t like it. The eszett, that is. I liked the book fine, but didn’t mention it to Susannah for fear of the scolding she would give me for reading something which has neither practical application nor entertainment value.

  I made a tour of the restaurant during the few minutes immediately before opening and no one seemed worried. Perhaps they were too busy to worry. Everything was the same as it had been the night before with the exception of Kuchen who was nowhere to be seen. Molinero was also not there. His office was dark and I assumed locked.

  There was a line when the doors opened, and most of the tables had diners until eight when the crowd began to thin. The last patrons left shortly after ten, and it was after midnight when the lights were turned out and the doors locked.

  I was halfway down the block when Jürgen caught up with me and suggested we hit the bar. I told him I was too tired. I also told him he was right that people would come to Schnitzel despite the bad reviews. Then, remembering that P.T. Barnum is reputed to have said, ‘Say anything you want about me as long as you spell my name right’, I said to Jürgen that perhaps the people came because of the bad reviews.

  During this brief exchange, Rafael Pacheco walked by with Wallace Voile clinging to his arm. Deschutes was about twenty feet back, seemingly following them. Next came Maria Salazar and Helen Mure. Maria smiled at me as she passed by. Helen stared straight ahead.

  I fell in behind the strange parade and headed to La Fonda.

  36

  On Wednesday morning, I put my dirty clothes behind the back seat and headed home.

  And thought again about Barry Stiles.

  Joseph Akerman was born in Wiltshire, England, not far from Southampton where the Titanic embarked. He joined her crew as a pantryman on April 4, 1912. I suppose a pantryman is something like a garde manger. His wages were £3 15s per month. Before I returned to school to study something of interest, I earned an accounting degree at UNM, but they didn’t teach us how to convert pounds and schillings to dollars. £3 15s doesn’t sound like much, but perhaps a hundred years ago it was a living wage. Akerman never got to find out. He died in the sinking, as did his brother, Albert, who was a steward.

  Joseph and Albert Akerman were immortalized in a small way by having their pictures and obituaries published in Escoffier’s magazine. They are also on the list of the fifteen hundred people who died with them in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. I suppose most people who die are listed somewhere, but the Titanic is an A-list. People are fascinated by the story.

  Dying while an employee of Schnitzel hardly ranks up there with dying as a crewmember of the Titanic, but Stiles was just as dead as Akerman. He just wouldn’t be on an A-list of the deceased. Did it matter? I didn’t think so.

  These morose thoughts faded as I approached Old Town. After parking and unloading, I strolled over to the plaza. The air was crisp and the sun warm. The hodgepodge of adobe walls, wrought iron benches, and gallerias with their dried and splitting carved posts and lintels dispatched the last of my gloomy thoughts.

  Live in the moment. If the moment finds you in a charmed place, all the better.

  Geronimo was happy to see me. I’d had left him plenty of food and water, and he had left me a few things in the patio that I scooped up and deposited in the trash.

  The luster of my simple home had faded somewhat due to my running back and forth to Santa Fe, so I spent the day doing housework and laundry. The loud bong noise activated by the opening of the front door would alert me to customers. It bonged twice but the people who triggered it did not stay long. My straightening, dusting, waxing, and washing were done by four-fifty. And even had they not been, I would have left for Dos Hermanas at any rate.

  After the margaritas were served, Susannah started debriefing me about my time in Santa Fe. I was disappointed to hear she hadn’t seen the reviews because that meant the task of telling her Rafael’s salads were flamed by the critics now fell to me.

  “The reviews were bad,” I said.

  “How bad?”

  “Very bad.”

  “Very bad or very, very bad?”

  “Even worse.”

  “What’s worse than very, very bad?”

  “How about Dagmar Mortensen saying the coachman’s salad tasted like something from a county fair kiosk sponsored by Oscar Meyer and Kraft.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What else?”

  “She said her companion’s warm potato salad was overcooked and oily.”

  “Anything els
e?” she asked through clenched jaws.

  Might as well get it all out. “There was something along the lines of the only things required to turn the salad course into the picnic from hell would have been ants and rain.”

  “I want her to review La Placita, Hubert.”

  “Why? She delights in being negative.”

  “Yeah? Well here’s a line for her – ‘My enchiladas were laced with coyote poison from a ranch in Willard and I’m – hack, gag, choke – feeling too weak to finish this review’.”

  “Look at the bright side. She didn’t mention his name.”

  “I hate that woman, Hubert. How is Ice taking it?”

  I thought of him the night after the reviews, smiling as he walking along with Wallace Voile clinging to his arm. “It doesn’t seem to be bothering him,” I said with a straight face.

  “Just being brave on the outside, I bet.”

  “Maybe you should call him.”

  “He’s at work and won’t get off until close to midnight.”

  I thought for a while. “The first time you mentioned him to me was only a few weeks ago, and he’s been in Santa Fe for almost half of the time since.”

  “And your point is?”

  I didn’t know what my point was. I was seeking an oblique entry into murky waters. “It’s none of my business, but if I had a girlfriend in Albuquerque, I wouldn’t mind her calling me in Santa Fe late at night.”

  “You did have a girlfriend in Albuquerque when you were in Santa Fe. Did Dolly ever call you after midnight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” She picked up a chip and held it above the salsa absentmindedly.

  After an awkward silence, she said, “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “No,” I said a little too emphatically. “I’m just saying that if you feel close enough to call him late, he might appreciate it.”

  “Why? You said the bad review didn’t seem to bother him.”