The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein (23 page)

7

On Friday afternoon, Tristan helped me load my potter’s wheel, slab roller and kiln into the Bronco, and I headed to Santa Fe. My supplies were supposed to arrive on Saturday, and I wanted to be there to receive them.

Molinero and I had reached an agreement that I would work at the restaurant to produce a glazed and fired prototype charger. Once he approved it, I would make ninety nine copies, but we would have them fired at a commercial pottery place called Feats of Clay. The cutesy name didn’t bother me. I knew they could handle the firing because it was where I had taken my first lessons. I couldn’t fire a hundred plates in my small kiln until well after the restaurant was scheduled to open, which was why Molinero had agreed to using Feats of Clay.

The order was for four hundred pounds of grolleg kaolin, a clay that fires very white and has excellent thermal shock properties. I had it shipped to
Schnitzel
along with some glazing chemicals.

I couldn’t get Molinero to pay my fee in advance, but he did agree to pay for the materials when they arrived. He also charged my hotel room to
Schnitzel
’s account and told me I could take all my meals free at the restaurant as the staff were doing.

Molinero had leased a building on
Paseo de Paralta
, not far from the intersection with Canyon Road. The equipment installations had been completed, and they were now in the process of testing everything from the accuracy of oven temperature settings to how best to load the delicate stemware into the commercial dishwashers.

Kuchen demanded that every recipe be prepared multiple times on the new equipment to make sure everyone knew the processes required and to find out if any adjustments needed to be made. The practice cooking produced the food for the staff. Unfortunately,
Schnitzel
– like most
haute cuisine
restaurants – would not be serving breakfast. This resulted in some odd morning meals.

I checked in to
La Fonda
around five and couldn’t get my mind off the fact that I was missing the cocktail hour with Susannah. I hung some clothes in the closet and put some others in the chest of drawers. I put my toiletry bag on the shelf next to the lavatory. I opened the window in the bathroom and looked out at the airshaft.

Despite the fact that I knew full well I’d be alone in a hotel room, I had forgotten to bring any reading material. I had read the Bible years ago, and I figured the Gideon version in the nightstand probably contained no new chapters. The only other book had both white and yellow pages. I used it to locate the nearest bookstore.

I walked the three blocks to Collected Works Bookstore on the corner of Galisteo and Water Street. Since I was going to be immersed in a restaurant, I figured I should learn more about them, so I bought
Ma Cuisine
and
Memories of My Life
, both by Auguste Escoffier, the famous chef who devised one of the two systems of organization and process used by restaurants. Fortunately, both books were English translations. The other widely-used restaurant system was devised by Ray Kroc. They didn’t have any books by him.

I entered
Schnitzel
for the first time at nine the next morning, lugging my potter’s wheel.

“We have people who do that,” shouted Kuchen when he saw me struggling under the weight. He turned to a large black man. “
Schwarzer
, please assist Mr. Schuze.”

Even though I know almost no German, I winced at that word. But the black guy seemed completely unruffled. He relieved me of the wheel then followed me out to the Bronco and lifted the heavy slab roller with one hand and the even heavier kiln with the other. I followed along behind him carrying the extension cord for the kiln.

“Anything else I can help you with?” he asked. He was unshaven, and dreadlocks flopped from his head in random directions.

I looked around and saw that Kuchen had moved to some other area of the restaurant. “I don’t want to stir up trouble,” I said, “but do you know what
Schwarzer
means?”

“You think I’m stupid?”

“No. I just, uh—”

“It means black. That’s what I am.”

“Uh…”

He stuck out a huge hand. “M’Lanta Scruggs,” he said.

“Mylanta?”

“Not ‘Mylanta’. You think my momma name me after a medicine? It’s M, apostrophe, capital L, a, n, t, a.”

“I’m Hubie Schuze,” I said and endured another hand-crushing.

“Like the things on your feet?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“And you think I got a funny name,” he growled and walked away.

Off to a great start, I thought to myself.

I began setting up my operation in the middle of what would eventually become the private dining area. Someone had put a tarp on the floor to protect it. A work table and chair had been supplied, and there were wheeled shelves along the wall for my supplies and tools. Molinero had evidently seen to my every need.

After a few minutes, Scruggs came by to tell me breakfast was being served. When I entered the main dining room, the staff were seated at a large communal table. Santiago Molinero was standing.

“I would like to introduce Hubert Schuze. Mr. Schuze is the ceramic artist I told you about. He will be making our chargers. His first task is to create a special design. That is why he will be working here in the restaurant. He needs to be inspired by what we are, by what we do. I encourage all of you to talk with him and share your ideas about
Schnitzel
. I want you to consider him a part of the team. If that happens, I know he will create chargers we can all be proud of.”

I suppose it was a good little speech. I didn’t like being called a ‘ceramic artist’. It made me sound like a little figurine that sits on the shelf next to the ceramic butcher, the ceramic baker, and the ceramic candle stick maker.

All eyes turned to me when Molinero sat down, so I knew I was expected to say something. “I don’t like making speeches,” I said, “but I love good food, so I’m happy to be here. I look forward to meeting you and learning about the restaurant. I look forward to your help. I look forward to breakfast.”

I sat down. There was polite applause. A thin guy with wispy hair stood up and announced that the dish being served was
Gebratener Leberkäse
. Scruggs, who had taken the seat on my right, leaned over and whispered to me, “meatloaf.”

I later discovered that
Gebratener Leberkäse
consists of corned beef, bacon and onions ground very fine and baked until it acquires a hard crust. When you first cut into it, you think it’s a piece of meat. Then you notice that beneath the crust the texture is artificially uniform. I have a good palate and nose, so I recognized black pepper, paprika, and nutmeg as the seasonings. It was tasty but a little heavy for breakfast, even for someone like me who is used to
chorizo
and eggs.

After we had eaten, Scruggs insisted on taking my plate and silverware to the kitchen.

“You don’t need to do that,” I protested.

“You do your job,” he said, “and let me do mine.”

8

My supplies hadn’t arrived, so I took a postprandial stroll around the premises after breakfast.

The front door was so massive you expected a moat in front of it and chains on each side for drawing up a bridge. The door was made from thick vertical planks of dark wood held together with bolts through three wrought iron cross-pieces. The extruded bolt heads were cast in the shape of the Austrian coat-of-arms. Austrian flags flew from poles mounted at a forty-five degree angle on each side of the entrance.

The large foyer was floored in rough stone. On the left, a wooden podium for the
maître d’
matched the front door and was topped with crenellated molding. A bar replete with dark wood and stained-glass was to the right.

A set of mullioned French doors separated the foyer from the main dining area which held perhaps twenty tables, a few of which had been pushed together to create the communal table on which we took our meals. All the staff were gathered there for some sort of meeting.

There were stations around the perimeter of the room that I assumed would eventually hold serving pieces, napkins, water, glassware, butter dishes, bread, and all the other supplies and comestibles required in a fancy restaurant.

I had no doubt diners would be impressed upon entering
Schnitzel
. I wondered if they would think the atmosphere justified twenty bucks for a plate of meatloaf.

The kitchen was to the left of the dining room, and I was astounded to discover it was twice as large as the main dining area. I had no idea restaurant kitchens are so large. There were four cooking areas with surface burners, ovens, and salamanders. There were a dozen smaller work stations evidently intended for chopping, dicing, slicing, kneading, mixing, grinding, and generally changing the shape, size, and texture of various ingredients.

There was a walk-in cooler and a walk-in freezer on one side of the kitchen and a large storage closet on the other. Next to the storage area was a loading dock.

A door on the back wall of the kitchen led to the scullery where M’Lanta and three Hispanic assistants were washing up the pots and pans used in preparing the breakfast meatloaf and the plates and silverware used in eating it.

Molinero was visible through the window of a small office in the corner between the loading dock and the scullery.

The noise of sliding chairs and murmuring voices came from the dining room. The swinging door on the right flew open and the staff streamed in, taking their stations like sailors on a ship when general quarters is sounded.

The last one through the door was
Chef de Cuisine
Kuchen. The men and women at the stations stood at attention. Not like soldiers exactly – they weren’t all in the same stiff stance – but they were still, quiet and staring at their leader.

Kuchen let his eye fall on each person in turn. “Begin,” he ordered.

The staff began to mimic cooking activities. Some chopped at invisible vegetables. Others stirred empty pots. Some placed imaginary entrées on plates. As some of them finished their tasks, they picked up whatever they had done and began to deliver it to another station. Of course some tasks took longer than others (or maybe some of the staff simply had slower imaginations), so that some people moved about the kitchen and others remained at their stations. As more people joined the parade, I noted they all moved from right to left. Indeed, in one case, a chopper of some sort made his way around the entire kitchen and placed his phantom cargo on a station only six feet from where he started out. I figured out that each person who left a station visually checked the traffic flow. Since it was counterclockwise, they only had to look in one direction before safely merging into the flow.

The Rockettes couldn’t have been better choreographed. I stood in mute admiration until the wispy-haired guy who had announced the name of our breakfast backed into a woman carrying a platter of air. She lost her balance and swerved into someone attempting to pass and all three ended up on the floor.

There was no clattering and clanging because all involved were empty-handed. There was, however, a moment of deafening silence as everyone froze and stared at Kuchen.

“
Schwarzer
,” he yelled, and Scruggs appeared in the door of the scullery. “Clean the mess, please.”

Scruggs called one of his assistants who came and stood by him holding a large imaginary tray. Scruggs lifted the non-existent spilled items onto the tray and carried it into the scullery. Another assistant returned with a mop – a real one in this case – and pretended to clean up the area.

Everyone remained silent and in place while this went on. When it was over, Kuchen said, “Mr. Mansfield, you are an ox. Ms. Mure, you are little better. Mansfield caused the collision, but you failed to avoid him. You must all be alert for failures among the brigade. There is no point in marching always anti-clockwise if you do not check the flow. The three pillars of the successful kitchen are ingredients, technique, and precision.”

I had read the night before that Escoffier was responsible for the brigade system used in restaurants. I had thought ‘brigade’ a strange word choice, but as I looked at the people in the kitchen, it made perfect sense.

No one spoke. The only movement was the narrowing of Ms. Mure’s eyes and the reddening of her face.

“Everyone back to the dining room,” Kuchen barked.