He spent the next five minutes grilling the staff on the origin of our rice vinegar, what dessert wine paired best with Felix’s raspberry br?lée, and the correct serving temperature of the parsnip purée. An hour and a half before the first seating, he released us to finish our prep work and tend to our stations.
“Balls to the wall,” Carlo said as we shuffled en masse into the kitchen. He gave me a once-over. “Hypothetically speaking.”
“I’m going to assume you mean that as friendly workplace banter and not sexual harassment.”
Carlo backed away and toward sauté, hands up in surrender. “Listen, I don’t mean any harm. Certainly not to a pastry chef. You people make little boys go crying to their mamas.”
Felix heard the last part of our exchange and barked, “Garrett! Enough idle chatter!”
“Yes, Chef!” I broke into a run on my way over to Felix and a long night of pursuing perfection.
3
SOMETIME between the first and second seatings that night, Felix turned into Satan. I became aware of his metamorphosis as I was readying a set of twelve crusts for the rhubarb tarts with toasted almond streusel. I had finished baking the streusel, turning it exactly every four minutes, until it was golden brown, dry, and nutty. It was cooling on a rack nearby, and I had turned my attention to rolling out the dough. I peered at one section that had a pocket of fat rippling the surface. I moved to trim it but didn’t get there fast enough.
“Uniform pastry is classic pastry!” Felix pounced, one stubby finger poking the sky as he talked. “You filthy Américains and your desire for these … these fatty blobs in pastry dough! You have made pastry into a bastard child!”
I did not remember making pastry into any sort of child, much less one from an unmarried woman, but so be it. After years of servitude under Felix’s absolute monarchy, I had learned to lie low and keep my mouth of braces-straightened teeth (another peeve of Felix’s) shut until the storm blew over, which, likely as not, would not be until the following day. I trimmed the errant dough and slipped it into our rubbish bin, barely taking note of Felix’s continuing tirade. Something about George W. Bush slipped through—a nice touch, I thought—and I must have missed my cue to give a response because Felix shouted through my meandering thoughts.
“Do you hear me, Charlie Garrett?”
“Yes, Chef!” I said, though, for all I knew, I might have just agreed to petitioning the WHO to annihilate vegetable shortening.
“Everything all right, Felix?” Alain called from his perch at the pass, the spot where he sat guard and performed inspection on every dish that left the kitchen. He tilted his chin downward and looked over his reading glasses toward our side of the kitchen.
Felix stood taller in his Crocs, red-faced and momentarily silenced. “Of course, Chef.” His smile looked more like a grimace. “I am merely teaching young Garrett here how to improve her work. A lesson in craft, correct, Garrett?”
“Yes, Chef,” I said, clenching my jaw in submission.
I filled each tart shell with raw rice and loaded them into the oven for the parbake. After wiping down the counter and going over it twice with clean, dry towels, I reached into the fridge for tubs of Dutch rhubarb. I lined them up on a marble cutting board, and Felix put his nose frightfully close to the fruit and inhaled deeply. He leered at the rhubarb, revealing rows of gold fillings in his back molars.
“Ah, the Dutch have it right,” he said, stroking one stalk as if it were a newborn cat. “Crimson sceptres, so full of flavor, and such a short season. But we have them today, and we will let them dance for us.”
It was difficult not to get creeped out by Felix.
I began peeling the stalks into delicate ribbons, to be placed gently atop a piped filling after the crusts had cooled. I’d only finished about half the pile when Alain’s voice rang into our section and bounced off the tile walls.
“Fire one palet d’or! Fire one rhubarb tart!”
My eyes darted to the clock on the wall. The second seating wasn’t supposed to begin for another fifteen minutes, and Felix was happy to direct his frustration at me.
“You are working like a snail, Garrett! Those tarts should be finished.” He looked over my shoulder. When he continued speaking, loudly enough for the whole kitchen to hear, I could hear the sneer in his voice. “The rhubarb is too thick! No more than two centimeters in width! You must start again!”
I could feel my heart pound, and it took a small supernatural act on my part to keep my cool. My hands shook as I placed the cut rhubarb into a tub and under the counter, where I knew I would retrieve it later. Two centimeters wide, exactly. Felix had picked his first poison of the evening, but I knew from experience that if I could salvage the already-perfect “mistakes,” I could use them later in the evening without a peep from him.