“Coffee gets its character from thousands of aromatic chemicals,” I pointed out. “This Purple Princess is probably the best illustration I’ve ever come across for that particular notion.”
“It’s a remarkable coffee,” Janelle said. She glanced hopefully at Keitel. “Don’t you think so, Chef?”
Keitel sipped more of his coffee, said nothing.
Damn. The man was one tough sell. But I refused to go down in flames.
“These and other Village Blend coffees can be paired beautifully with items on your dessert menu,” I pointed out. “The Guarapamba tribe’s Colombian, for instance, would have paired very nicely with Janelle’s modern take on the tarte Tatin that I enjoyed last night. My dinner companion ordered the profiteroles; the Kenyan would have been delightful paired with that. Its note of black currant would have resonated magnificently with the blackberry sorbet inside the pastry and black currant flavor in the casis coulis. And, of course, you can also offer a tasting of cheese and coffee pairings. If you sold an entire table on the idea, you could move as many as four presses of coffee to go with your cheeses.”
“Excuse me? You did not just suggest that coffee and cheese go together.” Keitel shook his head. “Too bad, Cosi, and I was just beginning to give you the benefit of the doubt on your gastronomic judgment.”
“Excuse me, Chef Keitel, but when it comes to coffee, you’re out of your depth.”
Keitel’s flummoxed expression was priceless.
“Hear me out,” I quickly added. “People have been eating fresh cheese and coffee for a long time. A cup of java with a morning bagel and cream cheese is practically an institution in this city, and who eats a New York cheesecake without a hot pot of joe?”
Janelle giggled.
Dornier murmured, “She has a point.”
Keitel shot them both unhappy glances.
“Not every cheese pairs well with every coffee,” I admitted. “But like wine and beer, there are coffees that pair beautifully with certain cheeses. Given the right pairing, a cup of coffee can highlight special notes of flavor in a cheese, helping it shine like a jeweler putting a black backdrop behind a white diamond.”
Keitel said not a word. He simply stared at me like he had before. Then he turned abruptly and began striding toward his kitchen.
Dornier exchanged a disappointed glance with Janelle and sighed. Then he faced me. “Well, Ms. Cosi, I’m very sorry, but—”
“Sign her up!” Keitel bellowed over his shoulder.
Dornier’s eyes widened. He turned his head. “For how long?”
Keitel stopped at the kitchen doors and spun to face us. “Seven weeks.”
“No more?” Dornier asked.
“Seven weeks from Monday,” the chef called. “After that, who knows…”
Then Tommy Keitel pressed his back against the swinging doors and disappeared into his kitchen.
Eleven
Napoleon Dornier suggested that I come back again the next day to discuss the contract details.
“I just can’t do it now,” he told me, checking the digital schedule on his PDA. “I have a vintner coming in twenty minutes, reservations to review, specials to go over with my staff—”
“Of course, I understand how busy you are. Perhaps I can just take a look around the kitchen on my own—”
“Oh, no,” Dornier said. “Janelle here will show you around.” He turned to the pastry chef. “You don’t mind, do you, Janelle? You two will be working together soon enough anyway.”
Janelle smiled. “I’d be happy to show Ms. Cosi the ropes; she probably just saved my job.”
“Great,” I said. This is going well. Now I just need Janelle to agree to one more thing. “I’m actually looking forward to meeting the kitchen staff. You know, getting the lay of the land.”
“Of course!” Janelle said. “Just give me a moment to wrap up my pâte sucrée and get it into the fridge.”
“No problem,” I said, nodding. “Sweet pastry dough is so much easier to work when it’s cold.” That much I knew from my own trial and error—a lot of error.
As Janelle headed back into the kitchen, I slipped off my suit jacket, hung it on a chair, and began to clean up the table. Loud voices caught my attention as two men slammed through the kitchen doors and into the dining room. One was Tommy Keitel. The other I didn’t recognize. He was younger than Keitel by at least ten years. Shorter, too, but not by much. The man was fit, tanned, and far more polished than Keitel. He had thick black hair styled into a perfect coif, and his attire was obviously expensive. The charcoal gray suit appeared finely made and sharply tailored to his tall, lean form. He wore no tie, just a white dress shirt, open at the collar.
“Tell me again, Tommy,” the man was practically shouting, “because I can’t believe it!”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Anton. You may own this place, but it’s a shell without me. I run the kitchen. I hire the personnel. I make the decisions about who stays and who goes. That was the deal five years ago. That’s always been the deal!”
Anton? I thought. So this is the owner of the restaurant.
The men’s voices were loud, and they didn’t appear to care who was listening. I stepped back and stayed quiet, hoping to hear more.
“Brigitte Rouille was your second-in-command,” Anton said. “She knew every recipe. She was running your kitchen—”
“She couldn’t hack it. She was cracking under the pressure. I did her a favor and let her off the hook.”
“You fired the one person who can run your kitchen when you’re not here!”
“That’s not true,” Keitel said. “I’ve just promoted someone who’s quite capable of doing Brigitte’s job—without the drama.”
“Who?”
“Henry Tso.”
“The sauté chef?” Anton shook his head.
“Henry’s a graduate of Cordon Bleu London. He trained under Marco Pierre White, and he knows every single dish in my recipe book.”
“But aren’t there issues with Henry? He worked only eight months as executive chef for Petite Bouchée, and they let him go.”
“The only issue Henry has—and I hate to say it—is his lack of aptitude in creating new dishes. That’s really the only reason he couldn’t hack it as a chef de cuisine. But that’s not a problem here, because this is my kitchen, and all he has to do is re-create my dishes. Nobody’s better than Henry in repetition of technique. He’s the best mimic I ever met. No one will ever know I’m not in this kitchen.”
Anton sighed, ran a hand over his face. “I’d like to see him in action.”
“Then come back for dinner service. I’ll let him run the show.”
“You’re bailing again?”
“Not tonight. I’ll be here to back him up, take care of any problems. We’ll call it a trial run.”
Anton rubbed the back of his neck. “Listen, Tommy. About that other matter—”
“You know how I feel. End of story,” Keitel said, cutting him off.
“I still don’t understand your problem with it, Tommy. All of the marquee chefs are doing it. It’s the wave of the future.”
“Not my future,” Tommy replied. Then he turned on the man and strode back into his kitchen.
Anton hesitated a moment, shook his head, and followed his chef through the double doors. A second later, the doors opened again, and Janelle Babcock came out, smiling.
“So, are you ready to meet the staff, Clare?”
“First, I have a question for you.” I leaned close, dropped my voice. “Is it true what I overheard? Was Brigitte Rouille really fired?”
“Uh-huh, girl,” she whispered, her professional tone loosening for a little old-fashioned gossip. “I can’t say as I’m broken up about it, either. That woman was a holy terror. But you already know that, don’t you? I saw you in the kitchen last night, defending Joy.”