Cooking as Fast as I Can (15 page)

Every graduate at the Culinary who aspired to be an executive chef in a good restaurant was encouraged to do a
stage
(the French pronunciation has a soft
a
and rhymes with
collage
), an unpaid internship in a French kitchen. The French invented restaurants, and before the advent of the modern cooking school, young aspiring chefs learned their trade through the
ancient tradition of apprenticeship. In modern times, it gives a cook the chance to hone his—and most of the time it is a
he—
skills out there in the real fine-dining world, where every dish that leaves the kitchen is expected to be perfect.

My first choice was Paul Bocuse's L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges in Lyon. He turned me down with such speed I doubt he even opened the envelope. I also tried Frédy Girardet, a Swiss chef whose self-named three-star restaurant near Lausanne is one of the best in the world; pretty much everyone who can make a decent roux considers Girardet to be one of the greatest chefs of the twentieth century. He, too, said
non, merci
. No women allowed in his kitchen, either, and no apologies for the blatant sexist attitude. That's just the way it was.

I turned twenty-eight in April of that year and was getting powerfully cranky in the face of all these roadblocks. What if every French chef I'd approached said no? I could apply for internships in Italy, Spain, or Germany, but it wasn't the same. In the mid-nineties, it was France or don't waste your time and money.

Then my luck changed. One day I received two acceptances in the mail—one from Georges Blanc, who owned the restaurant that carried his name, in Vonnas, and the other from Roger Vergé in Mougins. After years of grilling, sautéing, chopping, mincing, grinding; of working, networking, hoping, and dreaming, it was finally happening. I said yes to both, without giving a single thought to how exactly I was going to afford it.

Aside from a single meal a day, my
stages
at Georges Blanc and at Roger Vergé's restaurant, Le Moulin de Mougins, would be on my own dime. Even if I succeeded in deluding myself that I could work hard and live on one meal a day, I'd still have to contend with the matters of lodging, airfare to France,
train fare from Vonnas to Moulins, and all the incidentals I would need during the six months I would be abroad. In all my grand dreaming, I had a habit of forgetting about basics like shampoo, toothpaste, money for laundry, and the occasional beer I might want to grab at the end of a long day.

I borrowed a little money from my parents, and my grandmom insisted on pulling some out of her savings. I took extra shifts at work, did some catering on the side. I drew up a budget so tight I already felt dizzy with hunger. Still, I could make it work. Six weeks after I'd received my acceptance letter and two weeks after I graduated from the Culinary, in March 1995, I was on a plane to France.

I flew to Lyon and was met at the airport by Achille and Stavri, old Greek friends of Taki and Maria, my godparents. They were a modern European couple who lived separately during the week. Achille was quiet, a gynecologist with a practice in the city, and he stayed in their apartment in Lyon. Stavri was a professor and intellectual who preferred the country, and stayed in their beautiful stone farmhouse in the hills of San Belle, a small village not far from Lyon. She was small and feisty, with an easy laugh. They were opposites who enjoyed one another's company, but also had, I'd heard, “arrangements.”

I struggled to stay awake as they drove, filling me in on the details of their farmhouse's restoration, the challenges of finding a good stonemason, and the rest I've forgotten, because I may have lost the battle and fallen asleep. The next morning they drove me to the village of Vonnas, an hour north, toward the Swiss border.

We drove through Vonnas proper on our way to my accommodations. Vonnas is Georges Blanc land. In the early nineties
he bought the village bakery and grocery store. Then in a move straight out of Monopoly, he purchased seventeen of the ancient houses surrounding his restaurant, creating a
village gourmand
of shops, cafes, and hostelries. The little village was romantic and pristine, the style uniformly Alpine. I was beginning to feel the same stirrings of panic and homesickness I'd experienced during my first stint at the Culinary, but the quaint beauty calmed me. I could live here for three months, couldn't I?

Except I wasn't going to be living in the cozy, charming, well-lit center of Vonnas. Achille continued through the village and up a steep hill into a neighborhood that was as dreary as the
village gourmand
was charming.

My new home was a squat, three-story concrete building that looked like some kind of asylum for the criminally insane. I thought maybe it was just me, jet-lagged, anxious, nervous, but then I saw Achille and Stavri exchange worried looks. Giving me a sidelong glance, Achille saw my face, the downturned corners of my mouth, and leapt out of the car, hustled my suitcase out of the trunk of the Peugeot, and assured me that this place would grow on me in a few weeks' time.

They helped me carry my luggage to the second floor. I wasn't surprised to see that my cell was similar to that found in a white-collar prison (at least according to
Law & Order
). We said our good-byes, and my last connection to home and my old life hopped into their blue Peugeot and drove back down the hill.

After I unpacked my suitcase I decided I would feel better if I had something to eat. The thought cheered me up just a bit. I was here because of my love of food, and food would help me appreciate being here. With a new sense of purpose
I trudged back down the hill to the village in the drizzle. But it was Sunday, and I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that in most European towns and villages, shops are closed on Sunday. Everything in Vonnas was closed. By the time I'd circled the village in search of something, anything to eat, I was soaked to the bone, my teeth chattering.

My resolve was fragile. I came upon a phone booth. Inside it was warmer and smelled only slightly of BO and urine. I used my calling card to call home. My mom answered on the first ring, as if she'd been expecting me. The sound of her voice reminded me just how far away from home I was.

“I think I may have made a mistake,” I cried.

“Don't worry, honey,” she said. “You did not make a mistake. You just need to settle in.”

“How do you know?” I pleaded.

“Because it's your dream,” she said.

As much as I could see myself repacking my suitcase, paying all the money I'd so carefully saved to a taxi driver to take me back to Lyon, where I would buy a ticket for the next flight home to Jackson, I couldn't imagine telling Georges Blanc I was wussing out. However terrible I felt in this moment, I'd come too far. And I felt angry at myself for not being made of sterner stuff.

By the time I hiked back up the hill it was dark. My stomach squawked with hunger, but I put on three layers of clothes to stay warm, then climbed into bed. All night long I heard talking, moaning, and the occasional scream coming from the floor above me. Later I would learn that the top floor served as the village's residential psychiatric treatment facility, a polite way of saying Vonnas's mental institution. Not far from what I'd guessed.

Things did look better in the morning. On my first day in
the kitchen of a world-renowned Michelin three-star restaurant, excitement overrode my nerves. It had been a day since I'd eaten and my head was pounding for lack of coffee. I set off on the twenty-minute walk down the hill, along the slick cobblestone streets that lead to restaurant Georges Blanc, arriving a little before 7:00 a.m.

I'd imagined that cooks would just be arriving, sleepy-eyed and beginning their prep, but the kitchen was in full swing, with pots clanging, cooks issuing orders to the
commis
, the junior chefs, in French. A quick glance around the kitchen confirmed what I'd suspected: that even though Georges Blanc had accepted me, he ran an almost exclusively male kitchen. That morning I saw no women at work, but later I would meet Greta, whose buzz cut and big shoulders gave her a bad-ass military mien, and Kimiko, one of a team of highly trained Japanese chefs there to learn nouvelle cuisine.

The introductions were short and in French. I spoke only what I'd learned at the Culinary. It was alarmingly obvious that I was going to have to get up to speed
tout de suite
. For now, I relied on the international language of cooking—pointing, nodding, and eyebrow waggling. When no one barked or threw anything, I assumed I got it right.

The pastry chef, Marco, who worked directly under Georges Blanc, permitted me to grab a croissant and
café crème
before reporting to the
chef garde manger
, the chef in charge of cold dishes—appetizers, salads, pâtés, terrines.

He assigned me to asparagus peeling. No problem. At the Culinary I'd developed a serious affection for the vegetable and knew I could do the best peeling job in the history of Georges Blanc. I took up my position at a long counter beside a
commis
who seemed no older than twelve. He looked like a child dressed up as a chef for Halloween, in his baggy checked
pants, white jacket, and white pleated toque that was half as tall as he was.

Despite the rise of the cooking school, the old apprenticeship system is still alive and well in the great kitchens of France. Many families still send their sons off to be trained before they're old enough to shave. One
commis
at Georges Blanc had already worked in three kitchens by the time he was thirteen.

The twelve-year-old
commis
and I were about the same size. In a small, crowded kitchen with hot stoves, big steaming pots, and knives, being small and compact was an advantage. I picked up an asparagus spear and set to work with a vegetable peeler, depositing the curls of the fibrous outer layer in a tidy pile. The asparagus was going to be used in a black truffle asparagus salad. I felt a weird surge of pride: my peeled asparagus contributing to the one of the world's best restaurant's signature dishes.

Beside me the
commis
was working his way through a big stainless steel bowl of chives. One of the marks of a three-star kitchen is that every step is executed with perfection. His cuts needed to be uniform and precise, but also executed quickly. He was rushing through the job, tossing some of the ends into the trash instead of setting them aside to be made into oil. In any kitchen wasting food is tantamount to stealing money from the register, but at a place like Georges Blanc that kind of shortcut is high treason. It's not just the waste that offends, but also the mediocre technique that leads to it.

The executive chef was an older guy of perhaps fifty, Jean-Claude. He had a face that looked as if it had been lifted straight from an old French painting: beaky nose, small eyes, and crumpled mouth. He was strolling around the kitchen with his arms crossed, overseeing our work. I was focused on
my peeling, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Jean-Claude approach, then slowly lean over and peer into the garbage can that stood between the boy and me. He reached into the can and pulled out a handful of chive ends.

Suddenly, Jean-Claude hurled the chive ends to the floor, grabbed the boy by the scruff of his neck, smacked him hard across the face, and threw him down beside the scattered pile of offending ends. His toque went flying. He cheek was blazing red. The quarters were so close. The boy lay sobbing at my feet. Jean-Claude berated him until spit formed at the corners of his mouth. I looked around the kitchen, waiting for someone to step in on behalf of this child—his tender ego had been crushed like a wildflower beneath a hiking boot—but everyone peeled, chopped, skinned, stirred, and grated like nothing out of the ordinary was going on. In that moment I realized that nothing out of the ordinary
was
going on.

I bleated an
excusez-moi
, then in English said, “I need a minute” to the
chef garde manger,
and without waiting for a response, walked out the side door and into the chilly morning. It was cold enough to see my breath. I started to hyperventilate, bent over, and put my hands on my knees. The cobblestones started to spin. Less than an hour into my
stage
I was about to faint.

What had I gotten myself into? That kid sobbing on the kitchen floor in front of the rest of the brigade? That was going to be me. One poorly peeled asparagus spear stood between me and what would be considered felony assault at home. I felt stranded and alone. My family didn't have an address for me, much less an easy way to reach me. I had no cell phone. I may have had an email account, but I certainly didn't have a laptop. Social media, a handy way to let people know you haven't died, was years in the future. My only contact with people
who cared about me was the pay phone in a tiny village in which I had yet to see a single shop or cafe open.