“When was Brigitte let go?”
“I’m not sure. Tommy and Nappy got into a hell of a row about her. Dornier was defending her. Why? I don’t know. But it’s Chef Keitel’s kitchen, and he made that clear. He must have called her late last night or pretty early this morning to tell her she was fired, because Brigitte, she hasn’t been back since she ran out of here last night.”
Janelle held the kitchen door open for me, and I walked through. Savory scents enveloped me as I moved around the high service counter: simmering wine reductions, freshly cut vegetables and herbs, yeast breads baking in the oven.
Four Latino men in white aprons were moving quickly around the banks of heavy gas stoves and metal prep tables, yelling in Spanish to one another. They carried trays of chopped vegetables, pots of sauces and extractions, delivering them to the various cook stations that needed stocking or replenishment.
I recognized a short, squat man directing the Hispanic workers. It was Ramon, the gracious swing cook who’d filled in for Joy the previous night while she’d spoken to me in the break room.
“These guys are the prep crew,” Janelle explained. “They come early in the morning, and most of them will be gone by the time we open for dinner, usually to shift jobs at other restaurants and cafés. Ramon here is our prep supervisor, swing cook, and unofficial translator.”
“Hello,” he said.
“Ramon. Nice to see you again.” I smiled. “Don’t you ever go home?”
He laughed, revealing a gold tooth. “If I ever left this place, it would fall down around all of their ears. That would be sad, because then I’d have to get a job with Robbie Gray.”
Seeing the way Ramon ran his staff, I had no doubt what he told me was absolutely true.
Next, Janelle led me over to a commercial sausage machine and pointed to a line of black plastic ring binders on the shelf above it. All the volumes were dated and covered a six-month period from the day Solange opened to the present. I counted ten of them.
“These binders hold the daily menus and recipes for every dish ever served at Solange,” Janelle explained.
I was shocked. “You mean the recipes Tommy spent years perfecting are just sitting out here, where anyone can take them?”
“The line cooks need to be able to prepare what the chef wants on a given day. When in doubt, they look it up.”
“But someone could steal these so easily.”
Janelle shrugged. “What would they do with them if they did? Tommy would sue the pants off anyone who stole his signature dishes and tried to pass them off as his own”—she laughed—“if he didn’t kill them first.”
Next she led me to a slight, pale man in his late twenties with adorable dark curls peeking out beneath a flat-topped cook’s cap. He was furiously stirring two pots at once.
“Yves Blanchard, this is Clare Cosi. Starting next week, Clare’s going to bring premium coffees to the menu here at Solange.”
The man glanced over his shoulder at me, his lips lifting into a smile. “Good,” he said in a very discernable French accent. “Something better than that merde they provide for the staff.”
“You’re a man after my own heart, Monsieur Blanchard,” I said.
“Yves, if you haven’t guessed, is our saucier,” Janelle said. “And we better let him get back to it.”
We moved deeper into the kitchen, past the prep tables and the refrigerators. Suddenly I heard a loud voice.
“Don’t be afraid to use your knife! It’s just a piece of meat, for God’s sake. Stab first, really cut deep into the flesh. Then start to slice. Otherwise you’ll make a total mess of it.”
I stepped forward, observed a table-sized cutting board, a pile of small hens piled on one side. Beside the birds, an intense Asian man in his late thirties circled around a young man who was clutching a silver-handled chef’s knife.
“You’re really making a mess of it, dude,” the Asian man said, a note of exasperation in his voice.
“Sorry, Chef Tso,” the young man replied, dropping the bird.
“Don’t be sorry. Just do it right.”
So this was Henry Tso, I realized, the man who’d just been promoted to executive sous-chef, the second-in-command of Solange, the man Tommy himself picked to replace Brigitte Rouille.
Joy had talked about Chef Tso, always with a little awe. She said he was the best chef on the entire line. That was important because, unlike the roasting chef, the vegetable chef, or the saucier, who had the luxury of preparing many of their courses in advance, the sauté chef prepared dishes that were made to order. He had to be on top of his game all the time and possess the ability to juggle two, three, or even four tasks at once.
Joy also said that Henry had the best technique she’d ever seen. And it appeared I was about to see a demonstration.
“Watch closely,” Chef Tso said. He took the eight-inch blade from his young apprentice, pushed the mangled bird to the side. Then he reached for a fresh chicken from the pile. He slapped the fowl onto the board, belly side down.
“Remove the spine first, cutting here and here,” he said, flicking the blade twice. “Cut on both sides, as close to the bone as possible.”
With quick, smooth motions, Henry Tso sliced through the pink flesh on either side of the spine, extracting the bones so fast I barely followed his moves.
His movements were sure, economical, and precise. In under a minute, Chef Tso removed all of the bones except the tips of the legs and wings. At one point he flipped the knife in the air, caught it blade up, and used the handle to break a joint for easy extraction. When he was finished, he placed the perfectly deboned chicken on its belly and set the knife down.
“Think you can do that?” he asked the apprentice.
Gamely, the young man lifted the knife and tried again.
“Chef Tso,” Janelle interrupted. “I’d like you to meet Clare Cosi. Clare is going to help us add premium coffee to our menu.”
Henry Tso faced me. Under his high chef’s hat his hair was shaved so short I could see his scalp. He was a lot taller than I, but his hands were small, his fingers long and delicate. His brown eyes scrutinized me with intensity, and he moved with a contained energy that reminded me of Chef Keitel. Something else reminded me of Tommy Keiteclass="underline" Henry Tso’s ego and a radiated confidence that bordered on arrogance.
“Coffee, huh,” Henry finally said. “Sorry, I prefer tea.”
“No worries,” I replied.
Henry suddenly noticed another transgression by the new young apprentice and cried out. “Cut the meat; don’t rip it!” he said. “If I served that bird, I’d look like an asshole!”
The apprentice quailed.
“Is that your job description?” Henry asked, getting into the young man’s face. “Make Chef Tso look bad?”
“Yes, Chef…I mean, n-no, Chef,” the apprentice stammered.
Janelle touched my arm, tilted her head, and we moved on.
“Is he always like that?” I asked when we were out of earshot.
“Like what?” Janelle asked. “An arrogant, superior perfectionist who’d do anything to get ahead?”
I blinked.
“Let’s just say that if you get between Henry and his ambition, you’ll probably end up like one of those chickens.” Janelle froze, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “God. I shouldn’t have said that, not after what happened to poor Vinny.”
“It’s okay,” I said, and we continued moving through the kitchen. “Janelle, since you’ve brought it up, did Henry and Vinny get along okay? I mean, did you ever notice any hostility between them? Or maybe there was something else in play. Did they have an especially close friendship by any chance?”
“That’s funny,” said Janelle. “The police basically asked me the same thing this morning.”
“It’s a pretty standard question when someone’s found murdered. The detectives want to know if that person had any enemies…or intense relationships.”