French Pressed

Keitel grunted once. He stared for another few silent moments, then without any discernable articulation of words, turned and stalked back toward his kitchen.

Crap.

I figured that was it. I was dismissed. Time to pack in my French presses and go—until I realized Keitel hadn’t disappeared through the swinging gateway to his domain. Instead, he was holding one door open and sticking his head through it.

“Janelle!” he bellowed into the busy kitchen. “Come out here!”

An attractive, full-figured, African American woman answered the command. She wore a burgundy chef’s jacket and a flat, burgundy baker’s cap. Beneath the cap, her shoulder-length ebony hair was styled in rows of beautiful tight braids. Her skin was mocha, and her roundish thirtyish face displayed Creole features.

“What is it, Chef?” she called, wiping her hands on the white towel that was thrown over her shoulder.

Keitel held the door open for her. “Come with me, please,” he said, his voice softer and much more polite as she moved toward him.

“Janelle, this is Ms. Clare Cosi,” he said, leading her to our table. “Ms. Cosi is Joy Allegro’s mother. She also happens to manage a coffeehouse downtown, and she’s proposing a contract with us to supply gourmet coffee.”

Janelle’s face immediately brightened. “Are you asking my opinion, Chef?”

“I am.”

“By all means, let’s taste what she’s brought!”

He speared me with his gaze. “Clare, I’d like you to meet Janelle Babcock, our pastry chef. If you’re proposing a dessert pairings menu with your coffee, you’d better win her over.”

I held out my hand. Janelle shook it with surprising fervor. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Ms. Cosi—”

“Please call me Clare.” I smiled at the woman, realizing this was the Janelle that Joy had mentioned to me weeks ago. She was a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and had come to Solange not from France but from the pâtissier position in a New Orleans restaurant that had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

According to Joy, Janelle had been the kindest to her of all the line cooks in Tommy’s kitchen. The woman had lost everything in the storm: her job, her home, her dream of opening her own bakery. Apparently, when Tommy Keitel had heard about her plight from a colleague, he’d gone out of his way to make a place for her on his staff. She’d started as an assistant to the existing pastry chef but quickly assumed the lead position when that chef moved along.

According to Joy, Janelle was saving up her money to move back down to Louisiana and start again. But she was beginning to get nervous, because the desserts at Solange weren’t moving—the very reason her predecessor had left.

From my own sampling of her cuisine the previous evening, I knew the quality of her confections wasn’t the issue. Her desserts were being sabotaged, it seemed to me, by the lousy, palate-poisoning coffee that the waiters had been permitted to serve with those amazing creations.

I pressed another pot of the Kenyan for Janelle. Then I pressed the Yirgacheffe as a single-origin. The brightness, floral aroma, and citrus finish blew her away. But she hadn’t tasted anything yet. Next came the Colombian, a micro-lot produced by the indigenous Guarapamba tribe.

“They live on a reservation high in the Colombian Andes,” I explained.

Janelle sampled the coffee. Dornier did, as well.

“I taste layers of vanilla in this one,” Janelle remarked, her voice betraying only the slightest traces of that syncopated New Orleans lilt. “Sweet cherry and raisin…”

“There’s a dark chocolate in the finish, as well,” Dornier added. “Very nice, Ms. Cosi.”

“The coffee’s grown from older plant varieties,” I explained, “and the tribe of fifty families that grows it uses traditional agricultural methods, planting and harvesting by the phases of the moon.”

Janelle’s long-lashed eyes widened. She faced Keitel, who’d been watching in silence, declining to taste anything more. “Chef, we have to serve this.”

Keitel rolled his eyes toward the dining room’s laughing gargoyles. “Don’t get yourself sweet-talked by some tale of ritual harvesting. The proof is in the pudding.”

“But you haven’t tasted the pudding,” Janelle pointed out.

I cleared my throat. “Chef Keitel, I’ll make you a deal,” I said, summoning the bravado of a serious salesperson. “At least try this next coffee. If it doesn’t impress you, even a little bit, I’ll pack up my things and leave you in peace.”

Keitel folded his arms. “Bring it on.”

I ground the beans coarsely and measured them into the bottom of a clean press (two tablespoons of coffee for every six ounces of water). Then I poured in the hot water (just off the boil) from my electric pot, stirred the grounds to begin the brewing process, and set my digital timer to four minutes.

“Mmmmm,” Janelle said. “I already smell something floral…”

“It’s lavender,” Keitel said.

I nodded. “You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right, Ms. Cosi. Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

A man with an ego the size of New Jersey?

I cleared my throat. “This coffee comes from a family farm in the mountains of Honduras called Finca el Puente—”

“The Bridge Farm,” Keitel abruptly translated.

“A colleague in the trade, Peter Giuliano of Counter Culture Coffee roasters, calls this coffee the Purple Princess, and it’s the perfect moniker. This coffee is elegant enough to be served to a princess, and it’s greatly desired at coffee auctions.”

My timer went off, and I pushed down the plunger, forcing the spent grounds to the bottom of the glass press. Then I began to pour out the sample cups. “It’s a testament to the savvy of our own Village Blend buyer that he’s been able to secure lots of the Purple Princess for us year after year.”

Keitel grunted. “Quite a speech. But let’s sample it, shall we?”

I nodded and zipped my lips, knowing the taste of this coffee alone would sell it for me.

“Oh, my goodness,” Janelle said after a few sips. “I didn’t know there were coffees like this.”

“It’s full-bodied, and there’s a juiciness to the finish,” Dornier described, his voice quick and excited. “But I’m especially impressed with the level of lavender aroma and flavor. It’s absolutely bursting with it…and there are other fruit flavors here, too.”

“Plum,” said Keitel. He sipped again. “And grape…”

“With a note of something else, I think,” Janelle said.

“Raspberry,” Keitel added flatly.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by Chef Keitel’s spot-on description of the underlying flavor characteristics. You don’t get to be a world-class chef without a world-class palate—and, apparently, a world-class ego.

“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