The Devil in the Kitchen (13 page)

The fact is, I had no real desire to socialize. If I could have been in the kitchen at two in the morning, that is where I would have been. The schedule at Le Manoir suited me perfectly. I would start off on the Meat section working a six-day week from January to the end of the year. There were no summer holidays for staff and no Easter breaks. Staff were only allowed to take holiday in the following January, when Le Manoir shut its doors to the public for a fortnight or so.

Somewhere along the way, it seemed, I had developed a reputation for being oblivious to bollockings. Stephen told me how Raymond had announced my arrival during his Christmas speech, “We have a new boy starting next month. His name is Marco White and he has worked for Albert Roux, Pierre Koffmann and Nico Ladenis. None of them could break him.”

Raymond was certainly not going to be the one to break me. Though gifted in many ways, he desperately lacked the authority of his Michelin-starred rivals. He was like the headmaster who was too kind to discipline the wayward miscreants in his seventeen-strong brigade.

Stephen and I (as well as the other Roux robots who had washed up at Le Manoir) took advantage of Chef ’s gentle nature. The pair of us ruled the roost. Our bond, if you like, was that we had come from the same world. And at Le Manoir, we were synchronized. If I did Fish, Stephen did Meat; if I did Meat, then Stephen did Fish. That’s all we ever did. We worked well together, were never disjointed, and we respected each other.

We also respected Raymond and were never foolish enough to be ill-prepared for service. But when the opportunity arose, we were like kids who had been let loose in the playground. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, we craved light relief, practical jokes and fun. I would answer the kitchen phone by pretending to be an answering machine. “Please leave a message after the tone,” I’d say, before letting out a high-pitched shriek to give the caller a migraine.

It was that sort of immature humor, sometimes cruel and merciless. A catering-college student arrived one day to do a bit of work experience and the all-male brigade decided—in a typically childish way—that she was the size of a bear. The poor girl was given the chore of shelling peas for a day, and as she got on with this menial task, the boys, one by one, ambled past her putting stickers on her back. After a couple of hours her back was plastered with ridiculous messages: “Do not feed the bear,” “I love Raymond,” that sort of thing. Raymond wandered into the kitchen and was horrified when he saw the sticker-covered student but he didn’t give us a bollocking. Gentleman that he is, he positioned himself next to the lass, saying something like, “Continue . . . I just want to see how you’re getting on,” while he removed the stickers, one by one, so she would never know of our wickedness. It just wouldn’t have happened at Gavroche.

Raymond tolerated our wildness, but looking back I can see that it was not what he needed at the time. His marriage to his wife, Jenny, was not flourishing like the couple’s business and they would later divorce. He must have been burdened by the preoccupations of his personal life, although it was a subject he never discussed with the staff.

There were weekly rows between Raymond, Jenny and the maître d’. Invariably, every Sunday the three of them would have an argument in front of the passe and the boys would bend down under the kitchen table and start banging the pans, egging Raymond to have a punch-up with the maître d’. “Chin him, Chef. Chin him,” we’d shout. “Hit him. Don’t take any shit.”

Raymond, it might surprise you to know, was rarely in the kitchen. Unlike my former bosses, he did not stand at the passe barking out the orders during service. He preferred instead to stay front of house, schmoozing his guests. Charming and charismatic, he was the perfect host. When he did enter the kitchen, he tended to alternate between being a genius and a comedy act.

When he was at his best, he was the finest cook I have ever worked with. Note that I didn’t say finest
chef
but finest
cook
, and there’s a big difference. Albert Roux was a chef who could manage a kitchen and its staff. Albert could drive his troops forward, while Raymond lacked that quality. He was a three-star chef who never got his three stars.

When he wasn’t being a genius cook, he was a funny, accident-prone figure—like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. He would often clumsily bang and crash into people and things before cursing at himself in his native tongue. When he came through the doors from the restaurant into the kitchen, his team could expect another installment of slapstick.

I remember him rushing into the kitchen and crashing headfirst into a waiter carrying a tray laden with glasses, sending everything soaring into the air. He also once set the grill alight when he forgot he was toasting almonds. And on another occasion he swiveled around by the kitchen stove and smashed his skull against a hanging saucepan— he had to lie down in a dark room because he was seeing stars and didn’t resurface until the following morning.

Most of the time, though, he avoided the hanging saucepans, molten jam and flying glass, and that’s when I really learned from him. He was masterful and magical. And what’s even more remarkable is that Raymond never set out to be a chef. After leaving his home near the French-Swiss border in the early seventies, he had started out as a waiter in Britain. He found himself in Oxford, cooking at a restaurant called Les Quat’Saisons, and not only cooking but cooking well enough to win two Michelin stars. He had been canny enough to buy Great Milton’s fifteenth-century manor house and had impressive plans to enlarge it. When I was at Le Manoir, it had a dozen bedrooms, but today it has thirty-two—and probably as many awards.

Although his creative influence was sporadic, it was more often than not inspired. He would get an idea for something—a vision— and then he would throw on an apron and get to work. I would watch and absorb. He showed me how to question every little part of creating a dish and taught me how to question my palate. A typical Raymond lesson would go like this, “Say you take two deciliters of chicken stock in two different pans. You reduce one down quickly, the other slowly. The taste of each stock is completely different because if you reduce something rapidly, you retain the flavor. By reducing it slowly it stews and you lose freshness and sharpness.”

Or he might say, “If you’re making a stock, taste it every fifteen minutes and try to understand what’s happening in that pan. Try to understand how the taste is developing. You’ll get to a point where it’s delicious, and if you let it cook too long, it will start to die.” When most people make a lamb stock, they throw in carrots, celery, onions and in the end it doesn’t taste of lamb. At Manoir we’d use lamb bones roasted with caramelized onions and simply cover those two ingredients with water and a generous dollop of veal jus; it allowed the flavor of the lamb to come through in the sauce.

Preciseness was the name of the game; a crucial factor in the creation of Blanc’s Michelin-standard dishes. If Raymond made a jus de pigeon, it simmered for twenty minutes exactly, rather than
about
twenty minutes.

Then there was the question of seasoning food. “Don’t just chuck in some salt and think that you’ve seasoned it,” he’d say. “Taste it, taste it, taste it. Get inside the food.”

E
ACH DAY AT
Manoir I could feel my confidence growing. “Can you make me an asparagus mousse?” Raymond asked me one lunchtime. I made the mousse and sent it through to his table in the dining room. I was smoking a Marlboro outside when Raymond suddenly came dashing through the kitchen’s back doorway, full of excitement. “The mousse,” he said to me, “it’s spectacular. How did you make it?”

“With chicken, Chef. I made it with asparagus and chicken.” He grabbed my arm and steered me back into the kitchen. “Make it again,” he said and I had to reproduce the dish in front of Raymond, who studied every detail, nodding along as he made mental notes. The traditional ingredients of an asparagus mousse are asparagus, eggs, a little bit of milk and then some cream to lighten it. I had a problem with this traditional recipe because there’s no texture or body. What I had done for Raymond was use chicken to give it the two features I felt were missing. On top of that, the chicken would provide flavor. I put asparagus, raw chicken and egg white into a liquidizer, then sieved it and added a little cream before cooking. That mousse—Chartreuse d’Asperges aux Truffes—became one of Le Manoir’s specialties.

Raymond not only encouraged me to share my knowledge and thoughts about food; he also allowed me to get away with a little cheekiness—but there were limits. If I pushed it too far, I could seriously wind him up. I remember a Saudi prince coming for lunch one day and requesting a green salad. Raymond insisted he would make it himself and scampered into the vegetable garden, returning laden with lettuces. He dressed the vegetables beautifully, but a minute or two after the plate was sent out, it came back again. “The lettuce is gritty,” explained the maître d’. Raymond had forgotten to wash it. I followed him around the kitchen, clutching the rejected plate and saying, “Chef, they’ve sent the salad back. Chef, they’ve sent the salad back.” Eventually Raymond had had enough of me. I had crossed the line. “Yes,” he snapped and then glared. “I know they’ve sent the fucking salad back.”

Impressing the royals was one thing, but Raymond was never more excited than at the prospect of cooking for his rival Albert Roux. “We have had a booking from a Monsieur Roux,” Raymond told the brigade late one afternoon. “Albert is coming to Le Manoir tomorrow.” When we all arrived for work at eight forty-five the following morning, there was a mountain of mucky pots and pans rising from the sink to the ceiling and there was Raymond, manic and grimy, grafting away as he finished off dozens of canapés and petits fours. “This is the day Albert comes,” he told us, as if we could have forgotten. I’m sorry to say that Raymond’s efforts were in vain. The Roux who arrived for lunch that day was neither Albert nor a chef.

ELEVEN

White-Balled

T
HE WHISTLE DID
not leave Raymond’s mouth. He made up for his lack of control in the kitchen on the village green as he refereed our staff football match. Chef was now Ref. He bit the whistle, sucked it and every ten seconds blew hard, piercing the blissful tranquillity of Great Milton with its high-pitched rattle. On one team were Le Manoir’s French waiters, and the other team was made up of the restaurant’s chefs, who were mostly Brits. Raymond, as you can imagine, was doing all he could to swing the game for his fellow countrymen.

It seemed like every time the kitchen brigade got the ball, Raymond’s cheeks would puff up and we’d hear the dreaded shriek of his whistle. It didn’t matter whether or not we’d fouled; Raymond would stop play to award free kicks to the waiters and wave cards at the chefs with the agility of a croupier.

“This is crazy, Chef,” I shouted a few minutes into the second half. “You’re blowing the whistle every two seconds. You’re nuts.”

He flipped. For a second or two he was speechless, perhaps pondering my impudence. Then, crimson-faced, he raised an arm and pointed toward the sidelines. I thought I was about to be sent off, but instead he yelled, “You are sacked.” I was astonished. The huddle of villagers who had gathered to watch the game started muttering. Great Milton had never known such drama.

I repeated the word back to Raymond, “Sacked?” It was all too comical for words, and when I started to snigger, Raymond looked puzzled.

“Why are you laughing at me, Marco?”

“Because when I get back to London I’ll tell Albert that I was sacked for playing football and he’s going to think you’re a lunatic.”

As I marched off the pitch, I heard him bark, “In my office at five thirty.” I got changed and contemplated my next step in catering. It would be unfair if I lost my job, but I’d been around long enough to witness many bizarre and swift departures. I tried to reflect on the match rather than my future. Although it had been billed as the English versus the French, it was something akin to Millwall (chefs) versus Chelsea (waiters). In the kitchen we’d come up with a motto, an adage that explained our tactics: “The ball might go past but never the player.” The waiters had certainly sustained a few injuries and maybe Raymond was right to be so whistle-happy.

At five thirty I went along to Raymond’s office, which was next to the kitchen. It was not what the average person would describe as an office. Barely larger than a broom cupboard, it accommodated Raymond’s tiny desk and chair, and he had to share the space with boxes of dried goods. “Come in, Marco. Close the door.” Like a rebel in the head’s office, I stood in front of Raymond’s desk. I had to stand because the carton-sized room didn’t allow space for a second chair. Would this be it? Was I to lose my job for calling him crazy on the pitch? Raymond, however, was remorseful and drained of rage. “Let’s forget about what happened in the football game,” he said and we shook hands.

I’d got my job back. In service that evening and for a few days afterward, the waiters were limping like walking wounded. Diners being greeted by black-eyed Frenchmen must have felt as though they’d stepped into the ER at Oxford General. The waiters never mentioned a rematch, though the staff at a rough hotel up the road were keen to take us on. They challenged us to a match on the village green and mistakenly assumed we were a bunch of wimps because we worked in a hotel with pink parasols in the garden. We faced each other on the pitch; they were all pristine in matching football gear while our brigade was a shambles in bits and bobs, ragged T-shirts, putrid socks and shorts. We stuck to our motto—The ball might go past but never the player—and hammered them 3–1.