Coe put the menu aside and studied the wine list, nodding thoughtfully. Then he returned to the menu.
“It has always been my conviction that wine is the heart of the meal and that the rest of the meal must be built up around it. Do you drink wine?”
I nodded.
“Excellent. Then I suggest we start with a half bottle of gewürztraminer. I see here that they serve a rather old one. No doubt cellar remains, but that might well be to our advantage. An old Alsace, perhaps a bit past its prime, acquires a lovely golden color and a delightfully spicy taste with a trace of honey. After that…” He passed me the wine list and pointed to a column of names in which I could find the bottle he had in mind. “After that I thought perhaps a Savigny-les-Beaunes. Out of curiosity, mainly. I wonder how it got on this list. It may have been a flash of insight, but it could equally well have been a fit of madness. Eh?”
I nodded again. I had drunk wine before, a festive glass on special occasions and sometimes, too, over the past few years, with a meal I had prepared, but I was certainly not the sophisticated drinker that Coe seemed to take me for. I had never drunk an Alsace and at the words Savigny-les-Beaunes I thought of old French nobility, the kind that had come down in the world because of exorbitant holidays in Cap d’Antibes and rash investments in Chilean copper mines.
Coe left the choice of dishes to me. I ordered, as an appetizer, a salad of breast of pigeon, lamb’s lettuce, and walnuts, and for the entrée, lamb cutlets.
“Only one appetizer?”
I had made my choice out of politeness, but nevertheless nodded confidently. Coe pursed his lips.
The waiter took our orders and not long afterward the sommelier appeared with the bottle of gewürztraminer.
Up until the main course, the evening went quite well. I drank a glass of the Alsace that indeed proved to be a spicy, deep yellow wine, and in the meantime we ate our breast of pigeon and I looked around. The room was full of middle-aged couples staring silently at each other. At the back was a round table with five men who ordered one bottle of wine after another. Every now and then someone stole a glance at us, but that only made me feel more at ease. Coe did the talking, telling me about England, the military base where he and my father had spent some time together, but I didn’t really seem to be hearing him. His words drifted across the table and dissolved in an overpowering feeling of contentment. Here I was and here was where I wanted to be. That night there wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
When the main course arrived, my disappointment must have been obvious. Coe immediately leaned across the table and asked what was the matter. I pointed to the lamb cutlets, which were buried under a thick, grayish-brown sauce, and said, a touch of indignation in my voice, “I can’t even see them.”
My table companion nodded.
“And there are only two.”
He kept on nodding.
I scraped off a bit of the sauce, found a cutlet, and tried to slice it.
“And they’ve been cooked too long. They’re gray!”
Coe waited, with bated breath, for me to take my first bite.
I put the fork in my mouth and chewed. Fried cardboard in a sauce of ground egg cartons. I laid down my silverware and shifted my gaze from Coe to his plate. He smoothed his napkin and took a sample. His eyes stared over my head, at some vague point in the distance, his mouth slowly moving. When he had swallowed his mouthful, he, too, laid down his fork.
“It’s perfectly clear,” he said. “The poor creature has been slaughtered twice: once by the butcher and again, posthumously, by the chef. What do you think of the sauce?”
The waiter appeared and asked if everything was to our liking. Coe smiled. He gave me the kind of look that teachers give their best pupils and said, “My nephew is not entirely happy.”
The waiter looked from Coe to me and from me to the swinging doors that led to the kitchen. “And what seems to be the trouble, sir?” he asked,
That was the wrong approach. I was willing to accept that some people didn’t know how to cook, but if anyone treated me like a spoiled child who was just trying to be a nuisance, I got stubborn.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked.
“I’m burning with desire.”
Coe looked around, grinning broadly. At several of the tables, the conversations flagged.
“The lamb cutlets are too well done. All you can taste is the pan they were cooked in. They’ve been buried under a typical Dutch roux: lots of butter and flour and no taste. And I don’t think the sauce was made à la minute.”
The waiter looked at Coe. “The young man is quite the little connoisseur.”
“The
