Vanilla Salt

  “This night, we full,” Annette warns Àlex when she sees him going upstairs to rest.

  “I told you, it’s all under control. You have to get the whole dining room ready though. When you see the state Graça’s left it in you’re going to have a myocardial infarction.”

  “Myo… what?”

  “Heart attack, girl. If things don’t get better, you’re going to have to take on a professional waiter in the dining room.”

  “Or waitress.” Annette is offended.

  “Well, well, well, so she wants to be politically correct on top of everything else. I’m really trembling. They’re all going to bail out anyway. Yeah, yeah, that’s fine if you prefer a cute little waitress to a man with hairs in his nose. Right, go ahead and find one who’s delectable and delicious, who’ll cheer up clients who are pissed off at the bad service.”

  Before Annette has a chance to reply, Àlex dashes out of the kitchen.

  The dining room looks like a cubist painting. The tablecloths are plonked on the tables any old how, as if Graça’s thrown them up into the air to see where they’ll land. Some tables are set with soup spoons and others with dessert spoons and forks. The glasses have joined in the fun. There are champagne glasses, beer glasses and brandy balloons, all set out in utter disarray. The chaos is truly impressive. Annette has to redo Graça’s work from scratch. She’ll have to show her the ropes with huge, total patience, but her goodwill and Frank’s boxes of fish more than make up for the hassle. Everything is important!

  She recalls her father’s words: “First of all you have to sit down and work out where you want to go.” It’s more effective to teach Graça exactly how to set a table than for Annette to do it all over again, so, drawing on her teacher’s gifts, she explains in great detail how the dining room must be readied and, like all good teachers, she leaves Frank’s wife alone to work out for herself what she has to do. Annette already has her work cut out in the kitchen. She has to make cakes and the staff dinner. Moreover, she’s starving.

  She boils the potatoes and fries some shallots in butter until they take on a lovely golden hue, after which she mashes them up with the potatoes. Then she adds cream, a splash of water, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Parmentier potatoes must be very creamy, smooth, silky, a true delight.

  Graça, Àlex and Annette are sitting at the kitchen table, spoons poised for the first mouthful when their customers start arriving. If things keep going like this, they’ll end up as thin as rakes. Annette goes out to check the state of the dining room and is relatively satisfied, even if Graça doesn’t know the difference between meat and dessert cutlery. The dining room is no longer cubist but has moved on to surrealism, with a few odd-looking tables where the napkins are folded in ways that would be impossible to reproduce and the glasses set out in strange clusters, but it’s barely noticeable at a quick glance. Since she can do nothing about it, Annette pretends she hasn’t noticed anything.

  Two pairs of women’s feet are flying, without a break, although dinner is slightly less frantic than lunchtime. The customers are enthusiastic about Roda el Món’s tasting menu: five courses, smaller servings and a more than accessible price. Better still, the system makes work in the dining room much easier.

  They close the kitchen at half-past eleven after a reasonably uneventful evening. Annette and Graça are exhausted but pleased, because there have been no mistakes. Some customers have even left tips. It takes them another hour to clean up the kitchen and dining room so they’ll be ready for lunch tomorrow. Annette invites Graça to sit down and have a bite to eat.

  “Thank you Annette, but I leave in my home the children.”

  “Of course, Graça, and you no have left restaurant all the day,” Annette says apologetically.

  “Graça,” Àlex calls from the kitchen, “do you want to take some of this lamb casserole home with you? There’s quite a bit left over and you’ll find a good use for it.”

  Graça is very pleased to accept, but Annette isn’t at all happy about Àlex’s initiative. She waits until Graça has left and she’s having dinner before raising the matter.

  “Will you come for to have dinner? You very thin and no eat good. This make you sick,” Annette warns.

  “OK, I’ll sit down for a moment. I’m tired too. What are you offering today?”

  “Potatoes Parmentier. I know you no like but they very good.”

  “You know what, I think I’ll try them. The dish looks tempting, and I must confess I like your potato story. It touches me that it was rejected for so many years and seen as so lowly that not even the humblest, poorest, hungriest people would eat it. After such a hard time I think it deserves to be given a chance, even though it’s now been more than recompensed after its tough beginnings. No other vegetable on the planet is consumed in such quantities as the potato, which, I must point out, makes it tremendously vulgar. Anyway, let’s try it.” Àlex takes a large spoonful. “Yum! That’s fantastic, Annette. It’s really smooth and silky. I’m glad I tasted it. Congratulations. But it’s one thing to taste it and quite another to eat it like other hapless mortals do. This country’s brain has shrunk because so many potatoes are consumed here.”

  Àlex seems happy. He’s made quite a long speech without swearing once or insulting anybody, apart from his sarcastic remark about the Catalan brain, which was hardly remarkable given what his tongue is capable of. Annette thinks he’s behaved well today and might even come under the heading of what she classifies as a “normal person”. She still hasn’t mentioned the lamb that Graça’s taken home with her, but she can’t ignore it either, because this is about one of his enduring bad habits. She summons up all her courage and says, “Àlex, I think it no good you gift away the food of Roda el Món.” She deliberately mentions the name of the restaurant, so that Àlex gets the idea that she’s talking about business, her business precisely. “I know Graça our friend and today she work very much but is no good you gift her food. This cost money and the workers must not to think they always can take to house restaurant’s food. If one day we have many workers, they take all lamb, whole animal to house.”

  Annette speaks slowly, measuring her words, and she’s very determined. She knows that it’s hard being the boss, but she has to make sure that Àlex accepts her authority. Part of his failure with Antic Món was due to the fact that he didn’t know how to manage a restaurant. He treated it like his home. Annette wants to run the new establishment like a proper business, so the first task is to change Àlex’s way of thinking, though she fears his reaction.

  Àlex stolidly eats his Parmentier potatoes. Anyone can see from a mile away that he’s shovelling in the potatoes so as not to spit out flames. Annette is well aware that he’s swallowing an attack of rage, making a huge effort not to blast her back to Canada on a rocket of insults. After five more spoonfuls, he has no choice but to respond, “Very well, Madame, I’ll do what you say. I won’t generously make food for our friends, or give alms to our workers, who labour away inside for hours on end without seeing the light of day, and I won’t cook anything after work as a way of saying thank you to people who give us a hand.”

  “Àlex, I only want save business and for it be serious thing. I no want for you get angry.”

  “Listen, curly carrot top, my life hasn’t been easy. I’ve been kicked out of just about everywhere – houses where I’ve lived and a lot of jobs – and now I’m close to being kicked out of my own restaurant. Let me tell you straight: this opportunity you’re giving me is my last chance and I have to do what you say because, in a nutshell, this is the only job I have. And since I’m here, I’ll also tell you that being forbidden to give away a bit of lamb to an exhausted mother with lots of kids whom she hasn’t seen all day long, and who has a husband who gives us pilfered fish, risking his job day after day, is about the least painful misfortune that’s ever happened to me.”

  11

  HARICOT BEANS

  The world is a huge pot; the heart the spoon. The foo
d coming out of the pot depends on how you stir it.

  ZEN APHORISM

  “Hallo Òscar. You very busy?” Annette asks. Òscar, who is working not far from Bigues i Riells that day, has dropped in to see Annette and Àlex.

  “God, I don’t know what’s going on in the office these days, but it’s like the end of the world is coming. We don’t have time to scratch ourselves. And what about you two? How are things here?” Òscar hopes his I’m-very-busy strategy will save him from being roped in to clean toilets again.

  “Very good. We full almost all days. Customers they so happy, but we very tired. Last three weeks I run all long day. Monday I clean a lot, do ironing and make cakes for all week.”

  “I’ve seen some great reviews on the Internet. Some of the bloggers who’ve been here speak very well of the place. Have you had a look?”

  “Òscar, I no have time for to look Internet!” Annette laments.

  “So I see. You still have the Friends of Antic Món page up and people are posting comments, but no one’s answering them. Makes you look bad, Annette, especially as they’re all positive.”

  “What they say?”

  “I don’t recall exactly. We can have a look now, if you like.”

  “I can’t,” she exclaims. “You see I make carrot cake now. I do things all the day, work all the day. I no sit never.”

  “OK, OK,” he concedes. “Anyway, they all speak very highly of you, except for one critic who says your food is all over the place with a bewildering mix of things. But don’t worry about that, because nobody else has supported that view and he’s a lone voice.”

  “Òscar, I want ask from you favour, because you say if we need help… I need you help with publicity, with social network, blogs, websites. You know very well and can do this. You help me very much with Friends of Antic Món page for the Facebook.”

  “Mmm, well, I don’t know. I’m very busy, you see.” He’s trying to wriggle out of it. “I could do it from time to time, but what you need is regular updating and I fear I can’t commit myself to that.”

  Annette’s face is a study in surprise and disappointment. She would never have expected such a negative response, and still less from the restaurant’s real owner. The more she mixes with Europeans, the stranger she finds them.

  As far as Òscar’s concerned, hobbies lose their appeal as soon as they become obligations. His gourmet activities take up a lot of his leisure time and he wants to keep things like that. He evidently writes his culinary blog for fun, and he has plenty of readers as a result. Many of his fellow bloggers have caught on that having a lot of visitors to their pages means a lucrative opportunity and are going professional. Some have even left their jobs and are now full-time bloggers financed by food-industry advertising. Òscar is critical of this, because he thinks these blogs lose freshness and independence, so when he detects that certain bloggers have taken this step he stops following them and, if he can, boycotts them. Naturally, he’ll post pieces praising Roda el Món, whenever he has the chance to sample Àlex Graupera’s latest offering. But right now Annette has only asked him to work and not to have lunch, so Òscar’s quite put out. Moreover, she still hasn’t said a word about paying him back. He decides that now is the time to broach the subject.

  “There are lots of comments online about the price, saying you’re offering imaginative food at outlet prices. They also say they’re happy to eat Àlex Graupera’s cooking again and are delighted that the price is better suited to most pockets. Ah, yes, and speaking of costs and money, what are you going to do? When are you planning to make the first repayment? I don’t want to hassle you, eh. But it looks as if things are going well and it would be a good idea for you to sort out the situation.”

  “This you say very truth, Òscar. I will try. I have pay already some suppliers and want for to finish debts.” Annette looks contrite.

  “Believe me, I don’t want to put any more pressure on you,” he lies, “but it would be good if you can combine things a bit. I don’t need the money, but I’m not giving it away either. By the way, how’s Àlex? Where is he? Before he always used to be cooking up something in the kitchen.”

  “He rest in room all the afternoons but he OK,” she whispers. “He change very much the attitude. He help more.”

  It’s true. Àlex accepts the business “norms” Annette keeps introducing in Roda el Món. They may look like small changes, but she knows they are great steps forward as far as Àlex’s behaviour is concerned, because he no longer drinks alcohol while working, agrees to the menu in advance and – the hardest thing of all for him to swallow – doesn’t interfere in the shopping for raw materials. When she comes back from the supermarket with her full basket, or brings in something she’s ordered from suppliers, who are starting to trust the restaurant again, she expects some kind of put-down from Àlex. Surprisingly, he doesn’t say a word. He’s like a meek little lamb.

  And that’s not all. After the first days of refusing to help, Àlex is now contributing towards the smooth running of the dining room.

  “Have you taken the Raimat Cabernet they’ve asked for at Table 6?”

  “Have they got bread at Table 4?”

  “No, that dessert isn’t for Table 2. They haven’t finished the duck yet!”

  All this suggests that he’s trying to make sure things are working well in the dining room. Sometimes Annette stares at him, looking for symptoms of illness, depression or some kind of covert rebellion, some sign that might explain this docility, but she can’t pinpoint anything in particular and his attitude remains positive.

  Dinner time is almost upon them and Àlex appears in the dining room.

  “Hi there, lad. Haven’t seen you for a while. Are you OK?”

  “Yes, fine thanks. What about you?”

  Òscar’s not sure how to behave with Àlex. Their relationship has changed and so has Àlex, and Òscar’s not overjoyed about the fact that Àlex has lost the crabby contrariness he used to find so amusing. He’s not wholly delighted either that Àlex should have accepted the situation and agreed to do commercial, conventional cooking, even though the restaurant’s adaptation to the tastes of the wider public has been successful.

  “I’m OK. We’ll have to chat another time. I’ve got to get moving in the kitchen. We’ve got a busy night ahead!”

  “I’m very pleased for both of you, Àlex.”

  “…and for your pocket,” Àlex mumbles to himself, now out of earshot.

  Òscar asks timidly, “Can I give you a hand in the kitchen tonight, like we used to do?”

  “You’ll have to ask Madame about that. She’s in charge of everything and I’m on a very short leash nowadays. Did you see we served tomato quiche on the lunchtime menu today? What do you have to say about that, eh? Of course I didn’t make it. It was a success. There’s almost none left.”

  “Yes, I saw that. Well, man, if it’s good, it’s not surprising that it sells.”

  Without asking Annette’s permission, Òscar goes into the kitchen and puts on an apron. He’ll do what he bloody well likes. He’s the owner. He wants to cook with Àlex and that’s that.

  Everything goes smoothly, even though almost all the tables are full. Òscar observes the interaction between Annette and Àlex, and it’s evident that something’s going on because there are too many nuances. Conclusion: they’re madly in love. Their struggle to hide the fact gives them away. Àlex is always badmouthing Annette, referring to her as “this woman”, or “that Canadian” or “Madame”. He overdoes it. Anyone can see it’s a smokescreen behind which he’s trying to hide his true feelings. Both are doing their best to act like professionals, but their emotions simmer on the surface whenever they speak, even in the brief exchanges they have in the middle of cooking and serving. If they shout at one another there’s no sign of Àlex’s former malice. If Annette makes a mistake, Àlex’s way of telling her is as smooth as his béchamel sauce.

  When the last customers leave, Òscar sits do
wn at the kitchen table. “Hey maestro, that was a great success. We’ve earned a bite to eat.”

  “Sorry Òscar, but the foodie parties are a bygone thing. When we finish work these days we toddle off to bed. The boss won’t let me invite anyone to the smallest breadcrumb. She’s Anglo-Saxon through and through and doesn’t understand how we Mediterraneans revere the table, or that we don’t sit down to stuff ourselves but to share, to please, to have fun and to love. We might have to sleep in a sleeping bag, use a bowl to wash ourselves and get around on a skateboard, but we never skimp at the table. In our culture “table” means much more than a plank of wood on four legs.

  “I remember one occasion, by the sea, where a family was having a picnic under some pine trees. It was in the middle of summer. They were half-naked, didn’t have a portable fridge or an umbrella, but they had a full table, laden with food. I walked by and the granddad raised his hand, offering me a slice of watermelon, with a bite out of it! They asked me to join them. I didn’t accept, of course, as I had to go to work, but I was grateful, not only for that, but because I saw the essence of the Mediterranean world in their offer of a wobbly table, a family and a bit of – half-eaten – watermelon. That’s what they had and that’s what they offered… to a stranger, a passer-by. Everything for everyone.

  “This story, which is trivial but also essential, would never happen in a cold place like Quebec. The weather won’t let them eat outside, they don’t have watermelon and the culture of the table doesn’t exist. The table is here in the Mediterranean and the house is there in the Atlantic. When they want to be hospitable they open the door. We put another plate on the table.”

  Although he’s facing away from the door and can’t see her, Àlex knows that Annette is standing just outside the kitchen listening to his words. She doesn’t wear perfume, and he has a faint whiff of a subtle scent he wouldn’t know how to define, the one he picked up even before being introduced to her, a fresh, lemony, tangy fragrance. Annette deliberately makes a noise, but Àlex, unperturbed, continues with his speech. However, he’s no longer addressing Òscar but Annette.