Hotel

"It's natural no one wants to hurry it himself." It was no great secret that the comptroller's cool astringency grated at times on the normally good-natured chief.

"I haven't met our new sous-chef," Jakubiec: said. "I guess he's been keeping his nose in the kitchen."

Royall Edwards' eyes went down to his barely touched plate. "If he has, it must be a remarkably insensitive organ.

As the comptroller spoke, the kitchen door swung open once more. A busboy, about to pass through, stood back deferentially as Max the head waiter emerged. He preceded, by several measured paces, a tall slim figure in starched whites, with high chef's hat and, beneath it, a facial expression of abject misery.

"Gentlemen," Peter announced to the executives' table, "in case you haven't met, this is Chef Andre Lemieux."

"Messieurs!" The young Frenchman halted, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "To 'ave this happen ... I am desolate." His voice was choked.

Peter McDermott had encountered the new sous-chef several times since the latter's arrival at the St. Gregory six weeks earlier. At each meeting Peter found himself liking the newcomer more.

Andre Lemieux's appointment had followed the abrupt departure of his predecessor. The former sous-chef, after months of frustrations and inward seething, had erupted in an angry outburst against his superior, the aging M. Hebrand. In the ordinary way nothing might have happened after the scene, since emotional outbursts among chefs and cooks occurred - as in any large kitchen - with predictable frequency. What marked the occasion as different was the late sous-chef's action in hurling a tureen of soup at the chef de cuisine. Fortunately the soup was Vichyssoise, or consequences might have been even more serious. In a memorable scene the chef de cuisine, shrouded in liquid white and dripping messily, escorted his late assistant to the street staff door and there - with surprising energy for an old man - had thrown him through it. A week later Andre Lemieux was hired.

His qualifications were excellent. He had trained in Paris, worked in London - at Prunier's and the Savoy then briefly at New York's Le Pavillon before attaining the more senior post in New Orleans. But already in his short time at the St. Gregory, Peter suspected, the young sous-chef had encountered the same frustration which demented his predecessor. This was the adamant refusal of M. Hebrand to allow procedural changes in the kitchen, despite the chef de cuisine's own frequent absences from duty, leaving his sous-chef in charge. In many ways, Peter thought sympathetically, the situation paralleled his own relationship with Warren Trent.

Peter indicated a vacant seat at the executives' table. "Won't you join us?"

"Thank you, monsieur." The young Frenchman seated himself gravely as the head waiter held out a chair.

His arrival was followed by the table waiter who, without bothering with instructions, had amended all four luncheon orders to Veal Scallopini. He removed the two offending portions of chicken, which a hovering busboy banished hastily to the kitchen. All four executives received the substitute meal, the sous-chef ordering merely a black coffee.

"That's more like it," Sam Jakubiec said approvingly.

"Have you discovered," Peter asked, "what caused the trouble?"

The sous-chef glanced unhappily toward the kitchen. "The troubles they have many causes. In this, the fault was frying fat badly tasting. But it is I who must blame myself - that the fat was not changed, as I believed. And I, Andre Lemieux, I allowed such food to leave the kitchen." He shook his head unbelievingly.

"It's hard for one person to be everywhere," the chief engineer said. "All of us who ha' departments know that."

Royall Edwards voiced the thought which had occurred first to Peter.

"Unfortunately we'll never know how many didn't complain about what they had, but won't come back again.

Andre Lemieux nodded glumly. He put down his coffee cup. "Messieurs, you will excuse me. Monsieur McDermott, when you 'ave finished, perhaps we could talk together, yes?"

Fifteen minutes later Peter entered the kitchen through the dining-room door. Andre Lemieux hurried forward to meet him.

"It is good of you to come, monsieur."

Peter shook his head. "I enjoy kitchens." Looking around, he observed that the activity of lunchtime was tapering off. A few meals were still going out, past the two middle-aged women checkers seated primly, like suspicious schoolmistresses, at elevated billing registers. But more dishes were coming in from the dining room as busboys and waiters cleared tables while the assemblage of guests thinned out. At the big dishwashing station at the rear of the kitchen, where chrome countertops and waste containers resembled a cafeteria in reverse, six rubber-aproned kitchen helpers worked concertedly, barely keeping pace with the flow of dishes arriving from the hotel's several restaurants and the convention floor above. As usual, Peter noticed, an extra helper was intercepting unused butter, scraping it into a large chrome container. Later, as happened in most commercial kitchens - though few admitted to it - the retrieved butter would be used for cooking.

"I wished to speak with you alone, monsieur. With others present, you understand, there are things that are hard to say."

Peter said thoughtfully, "There's one point I'm not clear about. Did I understand that you gave instructions for the deep fryer fat to be changed, but that it was not?"

"That is true."

"Just what happened?"

The young chef's face was troubled. "This morning I give the order. My nose it informed me the fat is not good. But M. Herbrand - without telling - he countermanded. Then M. Herbrand he has gone 'ome and I am left, without knowing, 'olding the bad fat."

Involuntarily Peter smiled. "What was the reason for changing the order?"

"Fat is high cost - very 'igh; that I agree with M. Herbrand. Lately we have changed it many times. Too many."

"Have you tried to find the reason for that?"

Andre Lemieux raised his hands in a despairing gesture. "I have proposed, each day, a chemical test - for free fatty acid. It could be done in a laboratory, even here. Then, intelligently, we would look for the cause the fat has failed. M. Herbrand does not agree - with that or other things."

"You believe there's a good deal wrong here?"

"Many things." It was a short, almost sullen answer, and for a moment it appeared as if the discussion would end. Then abruptly, as if a dam had burst, words tumbled out. "Monsieur McDermott, I tell you there is much wrong. This is not a kitchen to work with pride. It is a how-yousay . . . 'odge-podge-poor food, some old ways that are bad, some new ways that are bad, and all around much waste. I am a good chef, others would tell you. But it must be that a good chef is happy at what he does or he is no longer good. Yes, monsieur, I would make changes, many changes, better for the hotel, for Mr. Herbrand, for others. But I am told - as if an infant - to change nothing."

"It's possible," Peter said, "there maybe large changes around here generally. Quite soon."

Andre Lemieux drew himself up haughtily. "If you refer to Monsieur O'Keefe, whatever changes he may make, I shall not be 'ere to see. I have no intent to be an instant cook for a chain 'otel."

Peter asked curiously, "If the St. Gregory stayed independent, what kind of changes would you have in mind?"

They had strolled almost the length of the kitchen - an elongated rectangle extending the entire width of the hotel. At each side of the rectangle, like outlets from a control center, doorways gave access to the several hotel restaurants, service elevators and food preparation rooms on the same floor and below. Skirting a double line of soup cauldrons, bubbling like monstrous crucibles, they approached the glass paneled office where, in theory, the two principal chefs - the chef de cuisine and the sous-chef - divided their responsibilities. Nearby, Peter observed, was the big quadruple - unit deep fryer, cause of today's dissatisfaction. A kitchen helper was draining the entire assembly of fat; considering the quantity, it was easy to see why too frequent replacement would be costly. They stopped as Andre Lemieux considered Peter's question.

"What changes, you say, monsieur? Most important it is the food. For some who prepare food, the facade, how a dish looks, it is more important than how it tastes. In this hotel we waste much money on the decor. The parsley, it is all around. But not enough in the sauce. The watercress it is on the plate, when more is needed in the soup. And those arrangements of color in gelatine!" Young Lemieux threw both arms upward in despair. Peter smiled sympathetically.

"As for the wines, monsieur! Dieu merci, the wines they are not my province."

"Yes," Peter said. He had been critical himself of the St. Gregory's inadequately stocked wine bins.

"In a word, monsieur, all the horrors of a low-grade table d'hote. Such disrespect colossal for food, such abandon of money for the appearance, it is to make one weep. Weep, monsieur!" He paused, shrugged, and continued. "With less throw-away we could have a cuisine that invites the taste and honors the palate. Now it is dull, extravagantly ordinary."

Peter wondered if Andre Lemieux was being sufficiently realistic where the St. Gregory was concerned. As if sensing this doubt, the sous-chef insisted, "It is true that a hotel it has special problems. Here it is not a gourmet house. It cannot be. We must cook fast many meals, serve many people who are too much in an American hurry. But in these limitations there can be excellence of a kind. Of a kind one can live with. Yet, Monsieur Herbrand, he tells me that my ideas they are too 'igh cost. It is not so, as I 'ave proved."

"How have you proved?"

"Come, please."

The young Frenchman led the way into the glass-paneled office. It was a small, crowded cubicle with two desks, file cabinets, and cupboards tightly packed around three walls. Andre Lemieux went to the smaller desk. Opening a drawer he took out a large Manila envelope and, from this, a folder. He handed it to Peter. "You ask what changes. It is all here."

Peter McDermott opened the folder curiously. There were many pages, each filled with a fine, precise handwriting. Several larger, folded sheets proved to be charts, hand-drawn and lettered in the same careful style.

It was, he realized, a master catering plan for the entire hotel. On successive pages were estimated costs, menus, a plan of quality control and an outlined staff reorganization. Merely leafing through quickly, the entire concept and its author's grasp of detail were impressive.

Peter looked up, catching his companion's eyes upon him. "If I may, I'd like to study this."

"Take it. There is no haste." The young sous-chef smiled dourly. "I am told it is unlikely any of my 'orses will come home.

"The thing that surprises me is how you could develop something like this so quickly."

Andre Lemieux shrugged. "To perceive what is wrong, it does not take long."

"Maybe we could apply the same idea in finding what went wrong with the deep fryer."

There was a responsive gleam of humor, then chagrin. "Touche! It is true - I had eyes for this, but not the hot fat under my nose."

"No," Peter objected. "From what you've told me, you did detect the bad fat but it wasn't changed as you instructed."