I had met Dorothy Hamilton at another James Beard event, a charity gala and auction. Hamilton ran what was then called the French Culinary Institute. She was blonde, slim, a youthful sixtyish, indefatigably positive, the corporate executive whom American chefs trusted. When the James Beard Foundation ran into an embarrassing accounting issue (i.e., when its chief executive was systemically skimming the scholarships awarded to young cooks and went to jail), she stepped in to re-establish the institution’s integrity. She wasn’t paid for it. She implemented the fix in her spare time.
I ran my idea by her: the learning-on-the-job shtick, etc.
“France is not Italy,” she said. “You may,” she added diplomatically, “want to attend a cooking school.” She was so diplomatic that she didn’t make the obvious proposal—namely, her cooking school, even though it was both the only one in the United States dedicated to la cuisine française and walking distance from our home.
I described what I’d done in Italy: i.e., arriving and figuring it out. Then, for intellectual emphasis, I added: “Cooking schools are a modern confection, don’t you think? Historically, chefs have always learned on the job.”
My approach, I explained to the chief executive of the French Culinary Institute, was to find a venue, make mistakes, be laughed at and debased, and then either surmount or fail. My plan, I elaborated, was to start out in a good French kitchen here in the United States (“But which one?” I mused), and follow that with three months in Paris.
“Three months?” she asked.
“Three months.”
She said nothing, as if pretending to reflect on my plan. She asked, “Do you know Daniel Boulud?”
“Yes.” Boulud is America’s most successful serious French chef. He runs fourteen restaurants, most of them called Daniel, or Boulud, or a variation involving his initials.
“He grew up near Lyon,” Hamilton said.
“Yes, I’d heard that.” I had been to Lyon once, to get a bus at six in the morning. I had no sense of it except that it seemed far away.
“Some say that it is the ‘gastronomical capital of the world.’ ”
“Yes, I had heard that, too.” She could have been talking to my toddlers.
“The training, the discipline, the rigor.” Hamilton drew the word out, slowly, like a nail. “For two years, Daniel cut carrots.”
I nodded. “Carrots,” I said, “are very important.”
Hamilton sighed. “You say you want to work in France for three months.” She illustrated the number with her fingers. “And what do you think you will learn?”
I wasn’t about to answer.
“I will tell you what you will learn. Nothing.”
The auction opened and bidding commenced. The lots included a massive white truffle (that is, a massive Italian white truffle), which was only marginally smaller than young Frederick’s extraordinarily large head, and which Hamilton secured with a flamboyant oh-let’s-put-an-end-to-this-nonsense bid of $10,000, whereupon everyone at our table, plus a few friends met en route to the exit, were invited to her apartment on Sunday for lunch.
“I have been thinking about your plan,” Hamilton told me when I showed up, “and I have a gift for you.” She gave me a copy of her school’s textbook, The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Cuisine.
I found a chair in the corner. The book was impressively ponderous, 496 big landscape pages of double columns and how-to pictures. I opened it and landed on “Theory: General Information About Fish Mousseline.” I flipped. Ten pages were dedicated to making a sauce from an egg. The philosophy of a fricassee got three. My life had been a happy one, not quite knowing what a fricassee was. What person would I have to become to master half of this?
Hamilton sent one of the guests, Dan Barber, over to me. Barber ran two restaurants, both called Blue Hill, one in Manhattan and the other on a farm. I knew him and liked his cooking. It was ferociously local and uncompromisingly flavor-dedicated. I once ate a carrot at a Barber restaurant: by itself, pulled from the earth thirty minutes before, rinsed gently but not skinned, suspended on a carved wood pedestal, and served with several grains of good salt and a drop of perfect Italian olive oil. Barber is thin, with the nervous chest of a long-distance runner, and is wiry, like his hair, and is bookish and articulate. He asked about “my French project,” but before I could answer he interrupted me.
“French training,” he declared. “Nothing more important.”
The statement was unequivocal. It was also refreshing. At the time, the charisma of France was at a low point. People weren’t going there to learn how to cook. They went to extreme outposts of the Iberian peninsula, or isolated valleys in Sweden during the winter.
“Americans think they can do without French training,” Barber said, “but they don’t know what they are missing. I quickly spot cooks who haven’t been to France. Their food is always”—he hesitated, looking for the right word—“well, compromised.” He paused so that I would appreciate the implications.
“You should work for Rostang. Michel Rostang,” he said. The tone was imperious. It was an instruction.
“Rostang?” I knew the name. Paris, one of the fancy guys—linen tablecloths, art on the walls.
“Learn the classics. Rostang.”
I nodded, took out a notebook, and wrote: “Rostang.” “But why Rostang?”
“Because”—Barber leaned in close—“he is the one I trained with.”
“You worked in Paris!” This came out as a loud blurt. Barber looked over his shoulder, as if embarrassed. I hadn’t meant to blurt. I was just surprised.
“Yes, I worked in Paris. And in Provence. And…” The tone was: Duh? “I am French-trained.”
Barber was remarkably tall, which I hadn’t noticed until now, maybe because he is so thin and uses less space than a normal tall person. I also hadn’t noticed that he was wearing a beret.
“You speak French?” I asked. Blue Hill had been the name of Barber’s grandmother’s farm and was important to how he presented himself: Grandma’s kitchen on Saturdays, the down-to-earth Americana of it all. Barber sits on panels in Washington and knew about the chromosome constitution of Hudson Valley garlic root. The Frenchness was confusing. “Do people know this about you?”
He stepped closer. “You can’t get the skills anywhere else.”
* * *
—
We reached the Chesapeake, its vast brackish sea, America’s largest estuary.