French Pressed

“Oh? Joy’s never mentioned Chef Rouille.”

“Brigitte comes to us from Chantal, where she was the sauté chef. Before that, she was the sous-chef at La Belle Femme near Lincoln Center. Originally, however, Ms. Rouille was lured to New York from her native Quebec with an offer to serve as executive chef at Martinique’s downtown.”

The list of upscale eateries was impressive, but Brigitte Rouille’s work experience ran like a backward résumé. “From executive to sous to sauté chef?” I said. “Ms. Rouille’s career path seems upside down, doesn’t it?”

“Oui,” Dornier replied.

“So why was she hired?”

Dornier fidgeted with his expensive cat glasses. “Chef Keitel has known Brigitte for many years. When her life proved…how shall I say?…challenging…Tommy was magnanimous enough to offer the woman a chance to redeem her career.”

Challenging? What did that mean? I was about to ask, but we’d reached the double doors to the kitchen.

“I’m sure you’ll see, Ms. Cosi, that we run an efficient, professional shop.”

“Professional,” I repeated with a nod.

“Oui. Although our sous-chef has had her ups and downs, Brigitte Rouille is quite capable of handling the kitchen with Chef Keitel away.”

Dornier pushed one of the two swinging padded doors, holding it open so I could move through. “Please enjoy visiting your daughter. I’ll return in a few minutes to escort you out again.”

“Thank you,” I said, and stepped inside.

Even though a huge, stainless steel service counter blocked a clear view of the entire kitchen, amazing aromas immediately enveloped me. I recognized the tang of fresh-cut scallions, the piquant bite of garlic, the brightness of wine reduction.

Unfortunately, the riot of appetizing scents was quickly upstaged by the sounds of an actual riot. I heard a loud crash, as if a plate had been smashed to the floor. Someone screamed. Another plate was broken, and a woman began shouting in a pronounced French accent.

“Do you hear me?! Écoutez-moi! You are an idiot, and your technique is shit!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” a male voice calmly answered.

An echoing clang came next, as if a pan had been thrown down. “If you back talk to me again,” the woman yelled, “I will fire you!”

“You can’t fire me!” the man replied. “I’ve got a contract, just like you and Keitel. So screw you, Brigitte!”

Brigitte? I thought. The woman shouting must be Brigitte Rouille, the executive sous-chef from Quebec. Obviously, the woman was having a disagreement with her kitchen staff.

I stood by the double doors, frozen like some party guest who’d arrived early to find her married hosts at each other’s throats. What do I do? Go in anyway? Wait till things calm down? Come back later?

The shouting went quiet for a moment, and I tried to see beyond the large metal service counter, but all I could make out were some cooks moving around in their white jackets. Finally, I heard Brigitte Rouille making angry accusations to another staff member.

This time, a young woman answered in a clear, calm voice: “That’s just not true, Chef. I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken.”

The voice was Joy’s, I realized. And my daughter sounded perfectly calm and respectful. I was proud of her for keeping her cool in the face of a professional dressing-down, and I expected Chef Rouille to respond to her accordingly. But the woman’s reply was a screaming rant, laced with French obscenities.

I clenched my fists, knowing there was nothing I could do. This was Joy’s workplace, after all, and she’d be mortified to have her mommy butting in. So I just stood there, waiting for Brigitte Rouille’s tirade to finish.

But it didn’t. The French-Canadian woman continued to rage. I understood a fair amount of the French language, but the more she shouted, the less sense she seemed to be making.

Then more plates went crashing to the floor. A woman screamed, and a Latino busboy in a white smock bolted past me in a panic. I grabbed hold of his smock.

“What is going on back there?” I asked.

“She’s gone loco again!” he called to me before breaking away and punching through the dining room doors. “I’m outta here till she comes down!”

Good Lord! I thought. What kind of hell’s kitchen is my daughter working in?

Two

I hurried around the high steel service counter and finally got a good look at Solange’s kitchen. The space was a long, narrow rectangle, with a bank of stoves along the wall and prep tables opposite.

According to my daughter’s descriptions, Solange operated no differently than any other busy, upscale restaurant. It utilized the brigade system: basically, a hierarchical food assembly line that was invented in the nineteenth century by the Frenchman Escoffier.

There were supposed to be line cooks here, each one in charge of a different part of the menu (grilling and roasting, sauces, fish, soups, pastry…). But the kitchen looked suddenly abandoned, like a creepy ghost ship’s galley with pans left simmering on the fire and food still on prep tables.

So where’s Joy?! And where’s the staff?! I just heard them!

“I have had enough! Enough, do you hear!” Chef Rouille’s voice shrieked from the back of the long kitchen.

I moved around obstacles toward the sound of French obscenities, stepping carefully over shattered china, a pan emptied of its contents, and an overturned bowl of asparagus stalks.

Finally, I found my daughter. Her back was pressed against one of the stainless steel doors of the walk-in fridge. A brown sauce was splattered across the front of her white jacket—as if someone had sullied her deliberately. Her chestnut hair was slipping from its dark net. Her green eyes were wide, and her heart-shaped face was crimson with embarrassment.

An older woman was bawling her out, and I assumed this was Brigitte Rouille. She was thinner than Joy and slightly taller. About my age, maybe a few years older, with pale skin, a long nose, and straight hair that trailed down her white-jacketed back in a long ebony ponytail.

“You stupid brat!” Brigitte shouted. The woman’s face was flushed with fury. Beneath her tall chef’s hat, her forehead was beaded with sweat. “You are a clumsy moron! Vous écoutez-moi! If you bump into me one more time during service, I will filet your ass so it fits into this kitchen!”

“It’s not my fault, Chef Rouille. I know about economy of movement from school, but you kept bumping me. I was standing still.” Joy’s quiet defense seemed to further enrage the woman, and she went back to shouting in French, tendons bulging on her neck.

My fists clenched, and I looked around to see what had happened to Joy’s coworkers. Finally, I saw them. They’d fled to the dishwashing area: five male line cooks (four small Caucasian men and an Asian guy, their faces blanched as white as their chef’s jackets and flat-topped cook’s caps). There was also an older Latino swing cook, a younger Latino dishwasher, and an African American pastry chef (an attractive young woman wearing a burgundy chef’s jacket). They were all huddled close, like paralyzed swimmers watching a shark circle its chosen victim a few yards away.

Just then, Chef Rouille paused to take a breath from her venomous ranting, and Joy finally snapped out in anger: “If Tommy were here, you wouldn’t be acting like this!”