by Ashly Graham
‘At the failing operation I was with, although the partners didn’t have the faintest idea how to solve their problem, they were extremely lucky to have chosen the right person in me to rescue them, for such situations are for the most part irretrievable.
‘Knowing how owners insist on meddling in even the most thriving ventures, before I agreed to take charge I insisted that I should have complete autonomy of decision-making, and hiring, because I wanted to sack everyone who worked there. And I was canny enough to demand that, in return for accepting only a very modest salary, I be given a contract including significant financial incentives contingent upon my being able to turn things around.
‘After much hesitation on their part, for it would make considerable inroads into their returns should I make good on my undertaking, the partners agreed to my terms. They had little choice, for all those who already had a name in the restaurant and hospitality business had turned them down.
‘The first thing I did was to approach the manager of one of Paris’s premier restaurants, a likeable man in his late fifties called Anatole—a descendant of the novelist and writer Anatole France, one of whose books was called La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque—and offer to hire him for the same position at my establishment. Although I could afford to offer Anatole very little in salary—really it amounted to no more than modest wages—his pension was secure and he was in the mood for a diversion, before he was ready to retire and grow organic vegetables on a smallholding he’d purchased years before in the Loire Valley. He accepted with alacrity and enthusiasm.
‘Knowing what a feather in my cap attracting Anatole to my side was, I further burdened the partners with the provision that they pay him a generous bonus if we were successful.
‘As many of you will know, together Anatole and I quickly restored that restaurant to its former glory, so that even tycoons and the doyens and doyennes of society couldn’t get a table without making a reservation a month in advance. We made an exception for royalty.
‘My manager and I got along well together, for although we were committed to lightening the wallets of our customers, we shared a mute antipathy for the poseurs and creeps who throw their money around in expensive restaurants, when they could be eating more healthily and enjoyably at home with their families. But although those dining would have emerged onto the pavement much better nourished had they been served lentil stew, there was no money in lentil stew.
‘I hated these people the moment they walked in the door, all dressed up in their evening finery, and abusing Anatole if they did not consider their table to be worthy of their positions and social status. They would never give their names, but expected him to recognize them with an effusive welcome, and grovel with gratitude that they should have condescended to patronize our eatery. And I despised the way they treated the waiters, who were in every way superior to those they were obliged to take orders from and serve.
‘For revenge, I fed my diners as much butter, heavy cream, and eggs, and clogged their arteries with as much trans-unsaturated and saturated fats and cholesterol, as I could fit on the menu and in the kitchen pans, in order to hasten their going hence to the place where there are no linen tablecloths, no silver and crystal, and where no Diners Club credit cards are accepted.
‘I suppose some might say that, at this point, my ancient love of risk reasserted itself, now that I had an opportunity to give it free rein once more, in a way that might have again doomed me to failure. But I would disagree. Although in some respects my behaviour was similar to that of Reginald Perrin, in the books by David Nobbs that inspired the television sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin—in which the perverse Reggie opens a shop called Grot, where he sells useless products like machines which did nothing, soluble umbrellas, games without instructions, square hoops, round dice, and wine made from sprouts and nettles, hoping in vain that the emporium would fail—I maintain that the examples are not analogous, for this time I was operating on a very level-headed and businesslike basis with an eye squarely on the bottom line.
‘This did not mean, however, that as I enriched myself I could not have some fun at the expense of both my partners and my clients.
‘In the matter of my restaurant’s wine cellar, for example, although I was no oenologist, neither was the man I hired to be my sommelier: a garage mechanic called Lee Dregs who couldn’t tell Coke from Pepsi, let alone a Margaux from an Haut Brion. This put Lee Dregs in the same category as my assistant chef, “Streaky” Bacon, a pig farmer with one colour-blind eye. Owing to his never before having left Devonshire, Streaky was familiar neither with the black Périgord truffle, Tuber melanosporum, nor with the white Piedmont Tuber magnatum, which I obtained very cheaply from a mushroom-shady dealer in Dieppe, who swore that his truffles were in a fungous class of their own.
‘Customers agreed, and gorged themselves on them despite the hefty supplementary price. Assistant chef “Streaky” Bacon, however, when he put his first and last triffle, as he called it, in his mouth, spat it out and said he would rather eat soap, which he did not stock at home for that reason; neither did our cunning and impudent kitchen cat, Sammy, short for Salmonella, relish the morsel any more than she had a taste for salmon.
‘It was a bad day for Sammy the cat, for later that night she lost her tail to a descendent blade on a cutting board, whereupon the jinxed Manxed—the Manx cat, from the Isle of Man, is a tailless breed—minx leaped into a ragout. As soon as the flesh had disintegrated, Streaky Bacon picked out the bones, and a waiter served the transmogrified moggy to a party of six and great acclaim, after he regretted to have to inform them that the Copper River salmon, which had a two week only season and would have been flown in fresh from Alaska had it not been obtainable tinned in the pet aisle at Tesco, was all gone.
‘Diners who sought the opinion of my sommelier, Lee Dregs, at table, lauded him for his vinous knowledge, and discussed loudly in his presence their amazement that a man of such discernment could have the accent of a guttersnipe. The man, who himself drank only draught Guinness, was most inventive in mixing his own vins de poubelle, or garbage can wine, from bottles that he obtained from Oddbins, at half price because they were past their worst, corked, and from Algeria and Hungary.
‘Lee also had a wicked sense of humour, and enjoyed matching what people drank to their character; so that, for example, after I had translated the words for him, a bishop was served Lacrima Christi, or tears of Christ; and his bimbo, Liebfraumilch, or whore’s milk. The bishop had asked Lee to pour them something appropriate, by the glass only, of which the tart took six and the bishop eight, because to order a bottle apiece would have been greedy.
‘As the fake connoisseurs at my tables swirled the liquid around their glasses, and held them up to the light to squint at the colour, and sniffed and sipped and swilled, and made their learned pronouncements, they looked down their noses at Lee—which meant putting their heads very far back, because he was six feet six in his bare feet—Lee did not wear shoes or socks—the noses that told them which slope of which vineyard had supplied the grapes for their fancy wines, instead of the easier-to-surmise which flat shelf at the same supermarket that had supplied the faux Copper River salmon.
‘Ignoring their rudeness, Lee “He’s such a character!” Dregs earned plaudits for recommending, say, at sixty quid a bottle, a vintage “Pinot Chio”, which he described as having “an ‘oaky’ and ‘egregious’ nose which won’t fuck with the flavour of the duck yer ’avin’”, from Walla Walla in eastern Washington State in North America. Lee knew this because his brother lived in Walla Walla, Washington, almost outside the State Penitentiary walls, and made the stuff in a prison crafts class; and now so did Lee, who himself had hitherto been a garagiste fixing Audi transmissions, with the aid of the wine-making kits he bought from Boots The Chemist out of the commission per gallon that I paid him.
‘If ever there was a time in my life when I desired to frequent the same milieus
as my clients, it had passed, for most of them were like the same people I had encountered at the Bentnose-Farquarson trough. I refused all their requests that I present myself at their tables, to receive their accolades and schmooze. My manager Anatole, on the other hand, was expert at fawning upon them, pandering to their self-esteem, and slathering obsequious butter over their egos.
‘Then, when the last diner had left and the front door was locked, when the workers and cleaners had been dismissed, and the receipts tallied, Anatole and I would sit at a butcher-block table in the kitchen and partake of some simple dish and a bottle of beer for our supper. The highlight for me of every evening was laughing till I cried at the anecdotes that Anatole had to tell, of our patrons’ shallow banter and conceited behaviour, and the gossip and secrets that he and the waiters had picked up, and his spot-on mimicry of their voices. “Come the Revolution, they shall be the first to go!”, he assured me.
‘The restaurant began to flourish again in a very short time, on the strength of which I negotiated further with the restaurant’s partners, for a majority equity in the business. Having been bitten once, they were amenable to reducing their shares, from which they were now reaping greater benefit than they had in the place’s heyday, and it wasn’t long thereafter that I had accumulated sufficient capital to buy them out altogether, and send them away mightily relieved.
‘As sole owner I expanded my horizons. I purchased the freehold of the building of which the restaurant was on the ground floor, renovated it, and turned the upper levels into a fashionable hotel. I started my own line of fine china and cookware, and dry ingredients, and spices. I did a thriving business selling my signature dishes, vacuum-sealed or frozen, for delivery around the world by express mail. I wrote cookery books on haute cuisine, gave master-classes, and was a regular on television and the lecture circuit.
‘I earned any number of professional accolades, and more than fulfilled my ambition to become the celebrity chef–owner of an establishment patronized by the glitterati and high society. Within three years I had establishments in six capital cities on four continents, and flew between them constantly in my private jet. All my enterprises were successful, and I received an M.B.E. for services to the food industry.
‘I catered to all tastes, religions, and dietary requirements; or said I did. I prepared, allegedly, Kosher, Hindu, and Moslem food. I titillated the palates and titivated the plates of vegans, and diabetics. I came up with gluten-free recipes, without ever using them; and was commended for my regard for the lacto-intolerant and lacto-ovo-vegetarian alike, though I regarded them not at all and did not understand the nature of their requirements. Those who wanted their meals high in fibre, or low in salt or cholesterol or purin, whatever that is, were contented, which was all that mattered. As ridiculous as I thought them, I designed menus that contained not a single carbohydrate...maybe they did, maybe they did not.
‘Whatever the fad, I was always at the forefront of catering to its hordes of clamouring devotees, and was alert for the inevitable moment when they changed their minds, and demanded what the day before they’d rejected as inedible.
‘The food critics gave me rave reviews. The most prestigious of them, The New York Times’ veteran restaurant reviewer, James Raspberry, raved that my Madison Avenue premises had furnished the finest dining experience of his fat life funded by a limitless expense account. The man’s belly was worth a fortune. Raspberry’s wife, a blowsy sow called Bunny, was allowed to accompany her husband on each gastronomic outing. Although the Raspberrys took pains to disguise themselves, to comic effect, they had as much chance of remaining anonymous as a couple of whales at a plankton masked ball. Bunny was accorded an honourable mention in each of her husband’s articles, which was only fair, because she was the one to write it the following morning while her husband was sleeping off his indulgence.
‘Anatole, in the interests of securing the best review possible in the New York Times for the restaurant, unashamedly flirted in French with Bunny, whom he referred to as Madame Lapine—had Bunny been a rabbit two millennia ago in a desert place near Bethsaida east of the River Jordan, the five thousand would have spurned the two fishes and five loaves they were offered, in favour of roasting her; titaness though she was, I fear they would have found her tough, a pièce de résistance. One night Anatole whetted Bunny’s own appetite so much with his description of what the chef was stuffing into a capon that he ended up tickling more than her fancy, in the cold room, which Madame Lapine, who proved to be quite the lapin agile, heated up so much that they had to adjourn to the wine cellar.
‘Like every true artist, in creating my dishes I let instinct be my guide. In memory of my beloved grandfather, Pappy Bulstrode, I invented an eclectic range of exotic culinary “masterpieces”. Food, after all, is an international language that is relished upon every tongue, and I delighted in devising new recipes in the style of what I called “pancuisine”. What the blustering moguls at my restaurants with their trophy wives didn’t know was that my appetizers, entrées, and desserts were all based upon what I imagined Grandpa might have consumed on his travels. Pappy prided himself on having a cast-iron stomach, and, though he knew he liked the fish and chips from The Tasty Plaice round the corner from Mrs Bayliss in Margate, was indifferent to what he ate, so long as it didn’t put up too much of a struggle on the plate.
‘But my customers were excited about the novel choices available, and would earnestly enquire of the waiters, who at my urging on health grounds refrained from sampling anything themselves, what selections they would recommend; and of the sommelier what wines would best compliment them.
‘I amused myself by proving how the most outrageous creations can become fashionable, simply because they sounded unique, and in order to impress others in their circle who were so not up to the minute that they had not yet tried them.
‘Anatole and I were revolted by how highly our customers rated preparations that a starving man would recoil from. A typical orgy might commence with an amuse-gueule of terrapin turds, which I called fumettes de turepé; or civet consommé. Malabar tree toad was a favourite, as was the rufous hummingbird tongue pâté. Certain of my guests were partial to a rare kind of bee rolled in brown sugar, grilled, and dipped in caviar sauce. The skunk tart, which was the one item that wasn’t to Bunny Raspberry’s taste because we disagreed on the right amount of cumin, ran out every night…literally, once, because the last skunk, which we had in mind to keep as a kitchen pet in place of Sammy the cat, got loose from its cage.
‘Although my suppliers of road kill, a Burke and Hare pair of convicts whom I paid a tenner a tail, worked round the clock to keep pace with demand, if the zoos hadn’t been willing to supply me with diseased and expired specimens for nothing; and if certain overseas government departments had not been willing, at a price, to be zealous in their culling of certain species that they agreed were too prolific—a miniature cousin to the giant panda comes to mind—I would have been limited indeed in my repertoire of dishes.
‘As it was, my entrées featured such delicacies as macula of giraffe in prune jelly; intestine of boa constrictor; blackened zebra fillet, and markhor brisket garnished with stinking camomile. The curried Komodo dragon had to be ordered two weeks ahead, because of the time it took to have the export licence from the Lesser Sunda Islands forged. Amongst the house specials, my braised koala keister on a bed of algae was a perennial favourite, as was the antelope scrotum stuffed with kumquats. The shellfish Dubiouse, a medley of mussels, clams, and prawns, overcome with red-tide dressing, was much remarked upon, though nobody was known to have consumed it twice.
‘Other staples were roasted aardvark, electric eel calamari, best end of raccoon, and poached escalope of poached duck-billed platypus. The faux dodo sold better than it would have done as herring gull.
‘And Bunny loved my green mamba mousse served with, of course, raspberries.
My personal favourite, though according to my policy I never tasted it
, was marinated mandrill à la sauce Merdique. The mandrills required hanging for five days to break down the fleshy fibres, and were one of the most expensive items on the menu, even before application of the three hundred pound supplement…or dollar- or euro-equivalent thereof, depending on which of my restaurants chunks of it were being microwave-defrosted at. Half of this surcharge went as a bribe to the Gabon government, which was also raking in large contributions from the World Wildlife Fund for protecting the dwindling numbers of mandrill.
‘The Chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, who was a frequent patron of both of my Paris premises, one on the Left Bank and one on the Right, assured me that he had no reason to report me to the authorities. He was paid to be an executive, he said, not an inspector; and besides, by the time Mr or Mrs or Master or Miss Mandrill appeared before him the animal was long past saving, no reprieve possible, right?; unlike the dormice that the chairman avoided on principle because they were flambéd live at the table.
‘Rivalling the mandrill in popularity was the equally scarce Ja slit-faced bat, Nycteris major, which was prepared as a forcemeat baked in phyllo pastry with a side dish of julienned carrots. I instructed the waiters and sommelier to suggest that the latter be accompanied by a foxglove salad drizzled with termite juice, and washed down with a bottle of Donjon Urinoise 2012.
‘I recall a vivid and recurring nightmare I had about a conclusion to my celebrated career, which, being no more outlandish than the stunts I pulled, could easily have come true. One day when I was in the kitchen at the London restaurant eating spam sandwiches with Heinz Mayonnaise, my European manager, and Smith’s salt and vinegar crisps, a luncheon party of four comprising a jealous rival chef come to check out the menu, and his naturalist boyfriend, and a bearded Johnny who worked for the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey, and his Royal Horticultural Society wife, who was a professional acquaintance of the naturalist, came into the restaurant; and, having reviewed what was on offer, started making loud allegations accusing me of importing rare or threatened, endangered, and vulnerable species—apparently there were gradations of severity—of mammal, reptile, amphibian, fish, bird, and plant.