White Truffles in Winter (26 page)

The presentation of this dish will require the maître d'hôtel, three waiters (at the very least), and a portable stovetop. Everything must be done quickly. In the kitchen, stuff the truffles into the chicken and sauté until barely cooked. When it arrives at the table, the maître d'hôtel rapidly slices the breasts from the bone, while a waiter sautés one slice of foie gras for each plate. One immaculate slice of pullet is then placed on top of the foie gras and surrounded with truffle stuffing.

Seconds behind the presentation of the pullet must be the ortolans. There should be one per guest. The service of this bird is traditionally the provenance of royalty. No matter. Good chefs always find a way to deftly ignore any law. The small creature is the size of your thumb; it is much like a finch. It is to be captured alive, quickly force-fed, and then drowned in Armagnac. Once lifeless, they are sautéed in butter, much like the pullet. At the table, the maître d'hôtel passes the completed plate to a second waiter who tops the chicken with the ortolan and a spoonful of hot meat juice.

At this point timing is critical because it is the practice, since the French Revolution, to eat the bird in its entirety, head, organs, bones and all. While hot.

Each waiter, and the maître d'hôtel, must, with their left hand, simultaneously place the plates in front of each guest and with their right quickly cover the guest's head with a white linen napkin. There can be no compromise. This dish must be served under these exact conditions, as they are necessary to enhance the exotic taste.

The tiny ortolans must be presented on a white plate while the diner's head is covered with a white linen napkin, because this preserves the precious aromas and, of course, hides the diner from France and God.

I have eaten ortolans only once. When the napkin was placed over my head it was as if the world outside had fallen away. I felt weightless. I sat for a long time like this, in that small blank place, until the plate finally came to me. It was so white and, being surrounded by the white linen, all I could see was the tiny bird, so frail and helpless in life and now so beautiful. I felt a profound wave of shame and yet, I also felt desire as I had never before. The intensely rich roasted scent of this poor creature is like something I had never experienced. I was overcome. I could not hold back and bit off the head.

That is never done.

But the taste of the meat was so sweet. I could not stop myself. I had never known such delicacy before. Then, suddenly, there was a rush of the scalding blood. It burned my throat, and yet I would not cry out. I still chewed. I could not stop. The organs were acidic and made the burning of my mouth even more painful. But I was consumed by the experience. Each bone I ground between my teeth both shamed and delighted me. It was like making love to a woman who can never be yours, the sweetness of what is forbidden is in itself worth the fury of Hell.

And so I created this dish. If served properly, each bite of Poularde Émile Zola
will evoke the starving Zola sitting on his windowsill, sparrow in hand, overcome with guilt and desire, hiding from his own terrible gods and dreaming the dark dreams of lost souls.

D
ELPHINE'S LETTERS TO MR. BOOTS WERE TIED WITH A
simple bit of twine but that could not hide their beauty.

“A cloudburst over Paris / the road alone is darker than I can imagine.”

They were not so much letters as poems; an exchange of art for food.

“In this thin coat of skin / these silent hands / these clouded eyes / there is you. / The timbre of my voice rises and falls with thoughts of you. / In dreams you come to me as my true love, the one who completes. / And then I wake.”

Escoffier searched for bits of himself between the lines. He wasn't sure if he found them or not. He wasn't sure about anything. For the first time in his life, he had no place to cook and no home to go to. After the “disagreement” at The Savoy, Delphine made it clear that he was not welcome at La Villa Fernand.

“Apologize and go back immediately,” she wrote. “The household accounts are too low for such foolishness. I have also noticed that our Mr. Boots has not made a shipment since this misunderstanding began. What should I think of that? It wounds me.”

It wounds me.

The words burrowed into a small corner of his heart.

It was impossible, of course.
Fini.
The Board of Directors was demanding complete restitution from him—at least two years' wages, a staggering sum. And to make matters even more difficult, Ritz was threatening the Board with a series of lawsuits for wrongful dismissal—and demanded that Escoffier do the same.

“We must be united. Do not betray me.”

It all made him sleepless.

Upon his return from Southsea, Escoffier had rented a room in a nondescript hotel as far away from The Savoy as possible. The Ritz Hotel Development Company's new London venture, the Carlton, was still under construction; its opening was more than a year away. When complete, the kitchen would feature a brigade of sixty cooks who could execute a very complicated idea that he'd been thinking of—a menu à la carte. For five hundred. The hotel would be the model of efficiency, but it was still under construction.

If Escoffier wanted to stay in England, he would be forced to engage a suitable set of rooms and that would be expensive. He and Ritz's company had little money to spare. They had other management contracts but until both the Ritz and the Carlton were complete, the company could not match Escoffier's salary from The Savoy, and without The Savoy to help defray fundraising costs, the hotels might never be complete.

The Hôtel Ritz project was not going well. It was scheduled to open in June but cost overruns and delays were threatening to take the Ritz Development Company into bankruptcy. The conversion of the Vendôme and Cambon
buildings into one hotel proved to be difficult and more expensive than imagined.

“Let me see what can be done,” he told Ritz and promptly left for France. He still kept a
pied-à-terre
from his time at Le Petit Moulin Rouge. It only made sense that he should return to Paris. He'd managed construction before and hated it. But this was, at least, someplace to go and something to do. The project was small, only fifty rooms.

“A little jewel,” Marie Ritz had said.

A little nightmare,
Escoffier thought.

He spent his days standing in the cold mud appeasing creditors, builders, tradesman and local politicians. It was exhausting. And, unfortunately, he'd forgotten how small his
pied-à-terre
was. He could barely fit his belongings into it and it had no kitchen. Every night, until the early morning hours, he could be found sitting on top of his tiny bed amidst the chaos of boxes, creating menus he could not cook for a hotel that might or might not get finished at all.

Work,
he told himself,
work hard and people will forget The Savoy.

But he couldn't. He couldn't stop thinking of his kitchen there, the beauty of his staff in motion, the quiet hush of his rooms, and the women, all the beautiful women, who blushed when he kissed their hands.

In the dreary winter of his tiny room, The Savoy seemed as if it were a world scented by roses. And Sarah—Escoffier hadn't seen her since the day he was fired. He'd thought about sending a letter but she'd moved out of the hotel and, according to his friend Renée at the desk, left no forwarding address. He could send it to her home in Paris, but what could he possibly write? “There was a disagreement.” While enough of an explanation for Delphine, it would insult Sarah. She was there when it happened.

“She will find me when the moment is right,” Escoffier thought, but wasn't sure if he wanted to be found or if she would want to find him.

Whenever he thought of Sarah, he kept thinking of those last moments at The Savoy: the police taking his bags to the street and then coming for him, their hands on his exquisite dress coat. The Board was watching; Richard D'Oyly Carte was in his wheelchair. The staff was in a state of confusion. The guests were horrified. Some of the men in the kitchen drew knives to defend Escoffier's honor.

In the middle of it all, Sarah appeared, like some sort of hallucination. Her hair wound tornado-like and held in place by an outrageous concoction of bows, she was dressed in a green silk suit with that pet chameleon chained around her neck, hissing. She had just returned from Cross Zoo with her granddaughters. The crying Lysiane kept saying, “Why is he going away? Was he bad? Where are they taking him?” Simone was pale and silent. The chameleon snapped at everyone like a spoilt dragon.

It was all too much.
Much too much.

Escoffier tried to forget it but couldn't. The look of profound sorrow on Sarah's face was the first thing he thought of when he rose in the morning and the last thing when he went to bed each evening.

After a month in Paris, a letter from Ritz arrived. “Go to Maxim's. Spy. They have extended their menu beyond
pommes frites
, the specialty of the house. Find out what they are planning to serve—but be gracious and do not forget to give the owner Monsieur Cornuché my best wishes. He is a good man, after all.”

With a menu of haute cuisine, or any type of cuisine beyond fried potatoes, Maxim's could provide serious competition for the Ritz. It was, after all, the haunt of the most notorious courtesans of the
belle époque
: Jeanne and Anne de Lancy, the twins who tormented suitors by always switching places; Jeanne Derval, who carried her tiny dog in her jeweled chastity belt; and the former
Folies Bergères
dancer Liane de Pougy, who was such a startling beauty and such a bad actress that Sarah Bernhardt once advised her that when she was on stage it would be best if she just kept her “pretty mouth shut.”

Maxim's had the potential to become a legend. The café was not that established yet, but its owner, Monsieur Cornuché, was already known as a great restaurateur.

In his letter, Ritz recounted a famous anecdote: “A guest once complained that there was a beetle in his soup and Cornuché picked the bug up and ate it. ‘It is merely a raisin,' he announced. It was brilliant!”

And so Escoffier found himself waiting in the seemingly endless line outside of Maxim's. It was just a café. No reservations were accepted, but not everyone was allowed in. The head doorman Gérard, looking very much like a child's nutcracker in his royal blue pants, scarlet hat and gold monocle, was the gatekeeper. He divided guests into two categories, “goodhearts” and “choleras,” with most falling in the latter. When he saw Escoffier in the back of the line, he embraced him and called for Cornuché, who, laughing like a child with an unexpected chocolate, said, “You will come to work for us now, then? Savoy's loss will be our gain?”

“Is it true that you have two hundred thousand bottles of wine in your cellar?”

“There are one hundred twelve varieties of champagne alone.”

“Then I'd like supper.”

“Supper is a very good start. I will consider that a hopeful sign.”

It was midnight. Maxim's was filled with the post-theater crowd—those who had attended the last act, as attending only the last act was fashionable and seeing an entire play was not. Cornuché led him through the dining room past many of Escoffier's former customers—some of whom looked away when he passed their tables and some of whom merely looked though him as if he had become invisible. Cornuché took him to a small two-top near the swinging doors that hid the famed “omnibus,” the long corridor leading to the bar. The omnibus was not a room, but a tight hallway filled with tables where only the elite of Paris sat, clublike. At Maxim's it was the only place to be. Escoffier was determined that he would not sit anywhere else.

There was nothing wrong with the main dining room, of course. The band was playing a languid song by Reynaldo Hahn, a
mélodie
about infidelity. A charming choice, Escoffier thought, noticing how many of the men in the room were not with their own wives.

Maxim's was a very small place. And very red—the carpet, the curtains, and the hundreds of rose-colored lampshades warming the light that shone upon the rows of tightly packed tables and plush red banquettes. It reminded him of the first-class waiting rooms of railroad stations with the famous and near famous in their silks and tuxedoes wanting to be seen behaving the way the famous often do—badly.

A pretty young girl with painted cheeks and lips came up to Cornuché and whispered something to him. He checked his pocket watch. “Yes. Now. On the front tables,” he said and then slipped the girl some bills that she stuck in her
décolletage
. She looked like a drawing of
La Goulue
, “The Glutton,” the queen of the Moulin Rouge. She was a close facsimile, but clearly not the real thing.

“That's for both of you,” Cornuché said. “Not like the last time.”

“But of course.”

The girl kissed Cornuché on both cheeks, and then kissed him on the lips. “Here we are scandalous, no?” she said to Escoffier and returned to her table by the window.

Cornuché cleared his throat. “She and her friend will be our surprise for the evening.”

“She's very beautiful.”

“I pay her to be. One must always have beautiful women sit by the window so they can be seen from the sidewalk.”

Indeed, along the window, each table was filled with
ces dames.
They were wasp-waisted, their bare shoulders made porcelain with rice powder, and heartbreakingly elegant in their finest gowns, jewels and dream-driven hats.

The women were all so beautiful that Escoffier thought for a moment that he could sit at the offered table. The room was like a small ornate hothouse, the calla lily chandeliers, the twining flowers of the stained glass roof and of course the large murals of naked women. And then there were the women themselves—lush, ripe and waiting.

However, when Cornuché pulled out the chair for Escoffier, the great chef could not sit. “Perhaps, you should save this table for a couple,” he said. “Is there a seat nearer the bar, perhaps?” he said. “Surely you understand what I am saying?”

Cornuché smiled, slapped Escoffier on the back. “Ah! Of course! Closer to heaven,” he said and swung the doors open, and there was the omnibus in all its decadent glory. “The spectacle of
grande galanterie
!”

Escoffier agreed.

He knew many of the players. By the door there were five brothers, all Russian dukes, in full military dress with their companions in various stages of undress, sitting at a table littered with magnums of champagne. Next to them, two young girls were sitting on the lap of Caruso, feeding him oysters.
He'll need those,
Escoffier thought. And Georges Feydeau, the playwright, was scribbling away in the far corner.

Cornuché pointed him out, laughing. “He says it's the finishing touches on
La Dame de Chez Maxim
. He claims he will make us famous and finally pay his bill. Given how much he drinks, we need both of these things to happen.”

Each table in the omnibus had a delightful story unfolding and yet Cornuché walked Escoffier back to the bar itself. “The omnibus is not for you. I know how much you like the ladies,” he said and swung the doors open. Escoffier could see that the bar was even smaller than the omnibus and was filled with women only—women in black stockings with hair the color of champagne. Some of them were counting money; one was recording sums in a ledger. They all stopped talking when Cornuché led Escoffier into the room.

“Heaven, is it not?”

No,
Escoffier thought.
It is not heaven at all.
It was more like an office.

“Would you like some help?” Cornuché whispered. “I can tell you which one is A.F. or R.A.F.” Escoffier looked confused. “I make notes,” he explained. “R.A.F.
Rien à faire.
You know, ‘nothing doing.
'
”