The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier (3 page)

“So who’s the Ostrich guy?”

“It isn’t a guy. I probably said it wrong. It means Austrian cuisine.”

“Which consists of what?”

“The only dish I can think of is the name of the restaurant.”

“Schnitzel. It’s a fried pork chop, right?”

“I think it’s veal.”

“Yuk. Veal should be illegal.”

“This from a rancher girl?”

“Yeah, city folks don’t know how cute little calves are. It’s mean to kill them before they have a chance to grow up.”

I decided to change the subject and find out more about her new love interest.

She signaled Angie for a second round and a new bowl of chips because I had hogged all the first ones in the hope they would soak up some of the alcohol.

“In a word,” she said, “he’s tall, dark, and handsome.”

“That’s more than a word,” I snapped.

“Here’s another word. He’s articulate and charming.”

Yeah, and named ‘Ice’ I thought to myself. “Maybe his charm is just a front. Freddie was charming at first, too.”

“I know, and look how that turned out. I tell you, Hubie, after the string of losers I’ve dated the last couple of years, I figure I’m due for a good guy.”

“The last guy, Chris, was a good guy,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, he was. Handsome too. Unfortunately, he made a pass at you rather than me, so I think we can chalk that up as another misadventure in the saga of Susannah’s love life. What about you, Hubie? How are things with Dolly Aguirre?”

“Good, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, we don’t see each other all that much. She can’t stay the night at my place because she has to be home to take care of her father, and I don’t like spending the night at her house because her father’s in the next bedroom.”

“I know you’re a man, Hubert, but there are places to spend time together other than the bedroom.”

“Sure, but where’s the fun in that?”

She took a playful swing at me from across the table.

I loaded a chip with salsa and ate it. “We do other things – lunch, take Geronimo for walks. I even gave her a lesson in pot making.”

“How did she do?”

“She didn’t like getting clay between her fingers.”

Susannah was silent for a moment, her head canted as if engaged in an internal debate. “Does it bother you that she was married?”

“Not so much as not wanting clay between her fingers.”

She laughed.

“In fact,” I said, “it doesn’t bother me at all. She’s forty two years old. I’d be more worried if she hadn’t been married. Like maybe something was wrong with her.”

“You’re even older than forty two, Hubie, and you’ve never been married.”

“Yeah, but I’m a man.”

“Oink.”

“Well, it may not be politically correct, but men are still usually the ones who propose. If a woman has never received a marriage proposal, there’s probably a reason. But if a man has never made a proposal, it’s because he has chosen not to.”

She leaned towards me slightly. “Here’s a news flash, Hubert. Women decide if and when a man will propose to them. Men are just too stupid to realize they’re being led. You guys like to be in control, so we let you think you are.”

“I have no illusions about being in control. I have no idea where my relationship with Dolly is going.”

“But you like being with her.”

“Yeah. She’s fun to be with. She likes my cooking. She even liked the chile verde popcorn I took to her house on Thursday.”

“I assume she invited you to see a film.”

“Yeah, Minority Report. I hated it.”

“That’s because you only like old movies.”

“The problem with Minority Report wasn’t its age, it was its premise.”

“You didn’t like the idea of figuring out that people were going to commit a crime and stopping them in advance?”

“Maybe the idea would have worked better if it didn’t depend on three psychics in a big hot tub rolling out a PowerBall thingy with the type of crime and perpetrator written on it. I couldn’t believe Dolly liked it.”

“Maybe she thinks Tom Cruise is hot. You should be flattered, Hubie. He’s short, handsome, and clean-shaven. Just like you.”

“Hmm. She did like Valkyrie.”

She laughed. “Critics called that one the Tom Cruise eye-patch movie. But there was another symbol that bothered me more than the patch.”

“The swastika?”

“The edelweiss.”

“The little white flower in that corny song from The Sound of Music?”

“Art historians are big on iconography, Hubie.”

“O.K., I’ll bite. What does the edelweiss stand for?”

She pulled a pencil out of her purse and wrote on a napkin. Then she rotated it so I could read it, and it looked like this: edelweiß.

“O.K.,” I admitted, “It looks a little less harmless with the weird German thing at the end, but why did it bother you?”

“Because it was on the uniform collars of the Bavarian Mountain Fighters in the Nazi army. The guy Cruise played – von Stauffenberg – was one of them.”

“So?”

“Don’t you think it’s creepy that people who wear a little white flower as a symbol could kill millions of innocent people?”

“But von Stauffenberg was one of the good guys, right? He tried to assassinate Hitler.”

“Only after he helped lead the invasion of Poland and did a lot of other really bad things.”

“I didn’t know that. Anyway, there are probably lots of military symbols that seem strange when you… Edelweiss! Of course. Maybe that’s what I should put on the chargers.”

7

On Friday afternoon, Tristan helped me load my potter’s wheel, slab roller and kiln into the Bronco, and I headed to Santa Fe. My supplies were supposed to arrive on Saturday, and I wanted to be there to receive them.

Molinero and I had reached an agreement that I would work at the restaurant to produce a glazed and fired prototype charger. Once he approved it, I would make ninety nine copies, but we would have them fired at a commercial pottery place called Feats of Clay. The cutesy name didn’t bother me. I knew they could handle the firing because it was where I had taken my first lessons. I couldn’t fire a hundred plates in my small kiln until well after the restaurant was scheduled to open, which was why Molinero had agreed to using Feats of Clay.

The order was for four hundred pounds of grolleg kaolin, a clay that fires very white and has excellent thermal shock properties. I had it shipped to Schnitzel along with some glazing chemicals.

I couldn’t get Molinero to pay my fee in advance, but he did agree to pay for the materials when they arrived. He also charged my hotel room to Schnitzel’s account and told me I could take all my meals free at the restaurant as the staff were doing.

Molinero had leased a building on Paseo de Paralta, not far from the intersection with Canyon Road. The equipment installations had been completed, and they were now in the process of testing everything from the accuracy of oven temperature settings to how best to load the delicate stemware into the commercial dishwashers.

Kuchen demanded that every recipe be prepared multiple times on the new equipment to make sure everyone knew the processes required and to find out if any adjustments needed to be made. The practice cooking produced the food for the staff. Unfortunately, Schnitzel – like most haute cuisine restaurants – would not be serving breakfast. This resulted in some odd morning meals.

I checked in to La Fonda around five and couldn’t get my mind off the fact that I was missing the cocktail hour with Susannah. I hung some clothes in the closet and put some others in the chest of drawers. I put my toiletry bag on the shelf next to the lavatory. I opened the window in the bathroom and looked out at the airshaft.

Despite the fact that I knew full well I’d be alone in a hotel room, I had forgotten to bring any reading material. I had read the Bible years ago, and I figured the Gideon version in the nightstand probably contained no new chapters. The only other book had both white and yellow pages. I used it to locate the nearest bookstore.

I walked the three blocks to Collected Works Bookstore on the corner of Galisteo and Water Street. Since I was going to be immersed in a restaurant, I figured I should learn more about them, so I bought Ma Cuisine and Memories of My Life, both by Auguste Escoffier, the famous chef who devised one of the two systems of organization and process used by restaurants. Fortunately, both books were English translations. The other widely-used restaurant system was devised by Ray Kroc. They didn’t have any books by him.

I entered Schnitzel for the first time at nine the next morning, lugging my potter’s wheel.

“We have people who do that,” shouted Kuchen when he saw me struggling under the weight. He turned to a large black man. “Schwarzer, please assist Mr. Schuze.”

Even though I know almost no German, I winced at that word. But the black guy seemed completely unruffled. He relieved me of the wheel then followed me out to the Bronco and lifted the heavy slab roller with one hand and the even heavier kiln with the other. I followed along behind him carrying the extension cord for the kiln.

“Anything else I can help you with?” he asked. He was unshaven, and dreadlocks flopped from his head in random directions.

I looked around and saw that Kuchen had moved to some other area of the restaurant. “I don’t want to stir up trouble,” I said, “but do you know what Schwarzer means?”

“You think I’m stupid?”

“No. I just, uh—”

“It means black. That’s what I am.”

“Uh…”

He stuck out a huge hand. “M’Lanta Scruggs,” he said.

“Mylanta?”

“Not ‘Mylanta’. You think my momma name me after a medicine? It’s M, apostrophe, capital L, a, n, t, a.”

“I’m Hubie Schuze,” I said and endured another hand-crushing.

“Like the things on your feet?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“And you think I got a funny name,” he growled and walked away.

Off to a great start, I thought to myself.

I began setting up my operation in the middle of what would eventually become the private dining area. Someone had put a tarp on the floor to protect it. A work table and chair had been supplied, and there were wheeled shelves along the wall for my supplies and tools. Molinero had evidently seen to my every need.

After a few minutes, Scruggs came by to tell me breakfast was being served. When I entered the main dining room, the staff were seated at a large communal table. Santiago Molinero was standing.

“I would like to introduce Hubert Schuze. Mr. Schuze is the ceramic artist I told you about. He will be making our chargers. His first task is to create a special design. That is why he will be working here in the restaurant. He needs to be inspired by what we are, by what we do. I encourage all of you to talk with him and share your ideas about Schnitzel. I want you to consider him a part of the team. If that happens, I know he will create chargers we can all be proud of.”

I suppose it was a good little speech. I didn’t like being called a ‘ceramic artist’. It made me sound like a little figurine that sits on the shelf next to the ceramic butcher, the ceramic baker, and the ceramic candle stick maker.

All eyes turned to me when Molinero sat down, so I knew I was expected to say something. “I don’t like making speeches,” I said, “but I love good food, so I’m happy to be here. I look forward to meeting you and learning about the restaurant. I look forward to your help. I look forward to breakfast.”

I sat down. There was polite applause. A thin guy with wispy hair stood up and announced that the dish being served was Gebratener Leberkäse. Scruggs, who had taken the seat on my right, leaned over and whispered to me, “meatloaf.”

I later discovered that Gebratener Leberkäse consists of corned beef, bacon and onions ground very fine and baked until it acquires a hard crust. When you first cut into it, you think it’s a piece of meat. Then you notice that beneath the crust the texture is artificially uniform. I have a good palate and nose, so I recognized black pepper, paprika, and nutmeg as the seasonings. It was tasty but a little heavy for breakfast, even for someone like me who is used to chorizo and eggs.

After we had eaten, Scruggs insisted on taking my plate and silverware to the kitchen.

“You don’t need to do that,” I protested.

“You do your job,” he said, “and let me do mine.”

8

My supplies hadn’t arrived, so I took a postprandial stroll around the premises after breakfast.

The front door was so massive you expected a moat in front of it and chains on each side for drawing up a bridge. The door was made from thick vertical planks of dark wood held together with bolts through three wrought iron cross-pieces. The extruded bolt heads were cast in the shape of the Austrian coat-of-arms. Austrian flags flew from staffs mounted at a forty-five degree angle on each side of the entrance.

The large foyer was floored in rough stone. On the left, a wooden podium for the maître d’ matched the front door and was topped with crenellated molding. A bar replete with dark wood and stained-glass was to the right.

A set of mullioned French doors separated the foyer from the main dining area which held perhaps twenty tables. Six of them had been pushed together to create the communal table where we took our meals. The staff were gathered there for some sort of meeting.

There were stations around the perimeter of the room that I assumed would eventually hold serving pieces, napkins, water, glassware, butter dishes, bread, and all the other supplies and comestibles required in a fancy restaurant.

I had no doubt diners would be impressed upon entering Schnitzel. I wondered if they would think the atmosphere justified twenty bucks for a plate of meatloaf.

The kitchen was to the left of the dining room, and I was astounded to discover it was twice as large as the main dining area. I had no idea restaurant kitchens are so large. There were four cooking areas with surface burners, ovens, and salamanders. There were a dozen smaller work stations evidently intended for chopping, dicing, slicing, kneading, mixing, grinding, and generally changing the shape, size, and texture of various ingredients.