In another respect, however, the timing was not so positive. In the arrangement that Jessica and I had established, I needed to be home by Friday evening to take over the care of the children: no matter what. By Friday evening, she would be at one of those I-can’t-do-this-a-second-longer moments. Do I phone and say, well, actually, would you mind doing a few more days—say the weekend and, well, the rest of next week—on your own?
Richard was at the chef’s table, working on a recipe. I hesitated to interrupt him. Besides, I hadn’t explicitly asked him, not yet, if I could count on his help to find me a kitchen in Paris. He then disappeared before I had a chance to speak to him and didn’t return in the evening. (Probably having dinner with his dear friend Michel—the two Michels at a table somewhere.)
On Friday morning, David got a text. “They’re coming!”
Besides, how was I even remotely qualified? I knew how to lasso red-pepper sausages. I could make breadcrumbs and a tuna sandwich. I couldn’t speak French.
“They’re here!”
I heard them before they appeared: Had they been chanting? They burst through the door in a sprint—I had to jump out of the way—and went straight to their positions. They looked like an occupying army. It was the first time I witnessed what I would learn to describe as “kitchen focus.” Each team member looked straight ahead—no small chat, a perfunctory firm-handshake hello—and then they set up their stations. It was exhilarating to witness. It was intimidating. They were so different from the Americans at Citronelle. We seemed pampered, unserious, soft. They seemed like street brawlers. They were—there is no other word—terrifying.
Rostang has two Michelin stars. I had never seen a Michelin kitchen brigade before.
They spoke no English, or if they did, they kept it to themselves. It didn’t matter because they weren’t about to speak to an American anyway. During a break, they fell in with Citronelle’s French staff members, the “executives”—David, Mark Courseille (the pastry chef), Cedric Maupillier (a former sous-chef who was now at Richard’s Central, his “American” bistro), plus a chef from the French embassy, a former Richard employee.
The Americans retreated, got on with their tasks, rarely looked up, and conveyed, unmistakably, that they were weak, frail, and catastrophically inadequate.
I reflected: What did I have over the American cooks, all of them trained and experienced, who now looked out-skilled and intimidated? I couldn’t imagine being a member of the Michelin team. Two stars? Not a chance.
Where was Richard? Were the two Michels now having lunch as well? By the afternoon, I had a train to catch. Jessica and I had our agreement. And I wasn’t too unhappy about it. But I did wonder: Had I just missed my chance to work in Paris?
* * *
—
Three weeks later, there was another opportunity. I was on the line one night, at fish, finally learning the station, when David called out from the pass: “Michel wants you upstairs. There are people he wants you to meet.”
I didn’t move.
“Michel is my boss. You must leave the line.”
Richard didn’t give a flying fig if I cooked or not—I wanted to be cooking, so he indulged me—and since I was basically there at his pleasure, he was fully entitled to summon me at will to be at his side. This was, in itself, a great pleasure, except that the interruptions were often longer than the time I was spending on the line, and I still believed that I would learn to be a French cook there. (Spoiler alert number two: I wouldn’t, although I would learn how to be a cook in Richard’s kitchen, which was not nothing.)
The friends were Antoine Westermann, an acclaimed Alsatian chef, and his wife, Patricia. They were outside on a warm evening—wooden tables and benches, like a pop-up sidewalk café. I joined them. A platter of oysters was produced, a bottle of Chablis. Richard was telling stories of his childhood, his “mom” and her terrible cooking. More food appeared, charcuterie on a tree-bark platter; my glass refilled, another bottle put on ice. I relaxed. Why not? It wasn’t such a hardship not to be in the kitchen.
(Meanwhile, I did, I admit, think about my wife, decisively even if briefly, and wondered what version of hell, at this particular moment, she was going through with the twins.)
Westermann’s first restaurant, when he was twenty-three, had been a converted barn, in the heart of Strasbourg, that combined high technique with his grandmother’s recipes, and, over a twenty-five-year period, earned him three Michelin stars. Then he gave them up for love (“for the beautiful Patricia,” Richard clarified), left his former wife, and signed over his restaurant to his thirty-two-year-old son; Westermann and Patricia moved to Paris, where he bought Drouant, founded in 1880, one of the city’s venerable establishments.
Westermann came to Washington regularly—he had a consulting arrangement with the Sofitel Hotel—and always saw Richard. For many French chefs (like Westermann or Alain Ducasse or Joël Robuchon—i.e., some of the greatest talents of their generation), coming upon Richard in the United States was akin to discovering an unrecognized national treasure—how could someone so accomplished be so unknown in France? They instantly “got” him, came to adore him, and were then lifelong members of the Michel Richard fan club.
Westermann was demonstrative in his affection for Richard. The two chefs were about the same age. Westermann was tall and fit—he did mountain cycling—with perfect posture and round bookish glasses and a manner of vigilant rectitude. In a chef’s coat, and he seemed always to be in a chef’s coat, he had the manner of a scientist, a stiff, slightly formal manner that disappeared when he smiled, and in Richard’s company he smiled easily. Until that evening, the only people I’d met with Richard were employed by him.
“You know, Michel, you really need to exercise.”
“Yes, I will, Antoine, I promise.”
“It doesn’t take much—a little, but every day.” He was concerned about Richard’s health, and there was tenderness in the concern.
Richard had once been a broad-shouldered man. In photos from his Los Angeles days, he conveys power. But now those hefty broad shoulders had lost their heft, and the mass of what remained seemed to have slid down to his middle. He was still a beautiful man—it was in the joy he exuded whenever you were lucky enough to be in his company—but his body was in distress. Three years earlier, he’d had a stroke. “It was here at the restaurant,” he told me. “I wasn’t making sense. I was saying random words.”
“It’s your weight, Michel. You just need to lose it.” Westermann wanted to help.
“Yes, Antoine, ma petite Laurence tells me the same. I will start tomorrow.”
Richard loved his pleasures immoderately and was only able to moderate them by avoiding them. His Sunday lunches in Los Angeles were raucously drunken and taught him not to keep wine in the house. Food was more difficult. You can’t live without food. (“Once, Laurence gave me cottage cheese. Have you ever eaten it? I tried it for lunch. I wanted to make Laurence happy. But I couldn’t. It’s terrible.”)