During my time in Paris, my former maîtresse and I would exchange seasonal greeting cards, or talk on the phone, maybe once or twice a year. And I would, of course, pay my respects when I returned to see the family in Lumière. But for all intents and purposes, she was no longer actively involved in my education or career, at least not officially.
But I have always wondered whether she did not help me—a discreet call here and there—to help things along at key moments. And if she did, I have often asked myself, how was she able to ensure I never found out about her role?
Pierre Berri was, for example, the bighearted chef who enticed me north to his restaurant La Gavroche, but what I learned, after I got to Paris, was that he was married to a distant relative of Madame Mallory, a second cousin once removed. Naturally, with this connection, I quietly suspected there was a whispered word from Mallory that had elicited this offer from Paris. Chef Berri flatly denied it, of course, but I was never entirely convinced by his denials.
When I was back in Lumière to see the family that first winter after my move north, I crossed the snowy street to have tea with Madame Mallory in her attic flat. The steam radiators were clanking loudly, infusing the apartment with a cozy heat, and we settled into the old armchairs, drinking coffee and nibbling scalloped madeleines still warm from Le Saule Pleureur’s oven. I remember she wanted to know all about the tapas-style restaurant that Chef Pascal had just opened in Paris, which was then creating quite a stir in the capital, and a new craze for smart bistros where the food supported the wine, not the wine the food. It was during the course of our shop talk, however, that I nonchalantly slipped in a thank-you for orchestrating the offer from Chef Berri.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hassan,” she said, refreshing our coffee with the same Limoges pot she had deployed during my apprenticeship. “I have far better things to do with my time than to call distant relatives on your behalf. Besides, I haven’t seen that particular cousin for thirty years—and I never liked her then. That side of the family is from Paris, you know, and they always thought they were superior to those family members who, like us, remained in the Loire Valley. Why in heaven’s name would I ask a favor from her? It would kill me. So I will hear no more of your nonsense. Now, tell me, is it possible for you to talk with your wholesalers in Paris and locate for me a few Ostrea lurida? Before I die, I want to try that American oyster. Just inconceivable to me that some French gourmands consider it superior to our Breton oysters.”
I returned to La Gavroche, worked hard, and five years after I arrived in Paris I was offered another opportunity and a big jump in responsibility. There was no opening expected to show up at La Gavroche for many years to come, so I handed in my resignation and instead became chef de cuisine at La Belle Cluny, a small and elegant restaurant in the 7th arrondissement, where I stayed for a total of four years.
I was very happy working alongside white-haired Marc Rossier, an elderly chef who, to put it politely, had his own ways. Chef Rossier made us dress completely in black, rather than the traditional whites, right down to the clogs, and he used to shuffle around us with his own billowing black pants tucked inside his socks, like a seventeenth-century Dutch pirate, all day singing raucous tunes from his youthful days in the French navy. But it was precisely this eccentricity that made Chef Rossier such a delight to work for. He liked to have fun.
He was, for example, amazingly open to new ideas, despite his advanced age, and so very unlike most other patrons. That meant I had, as his right hand, a great deal of room to try out my own new creations, such as a roast kid with lemons sewn into its stomach cavity. This creative freedom paid off, I think, and within two years of my arrival, La Belle Cluny was elevated from one to two Michelin stars.
This rewarding work at La Belle Cluny whet my appetite, and at the age of thirty I returned to Lumière to have an earnest talk with Papa. I desperately wanted to open my own restaurant, to finally become patron in my own house, but I needed capital. That Haji ambition, it was burning. So I sat in the chair opposite Papa’s desk in the old Dufour mansion and pleaded my case. Not five minutes into my fevered pitch, my cash-flow projections spread out across his table, Papa held up his hand.
“Stop! My God. You are giving me a headache.”
Spreadsheets with return-on-investment analysis, that was never how Papa worked; with him, it was always through the gut. “Of course I will help you! What did you tink?” he demanded crossly.
Papa took from his drawer a thick sheaf of communications. “I have long been expecting this,” he said, opening the file. “I am not some sleepy wallah picking at his toes all day. Nah? I long ago asked the lawyers and bankers to start arranging matters. It is all taken care of. Each of you children will get one-seventh of the family estate. You will get your share now. Why wait until I am dead, yaar? I would much rather see you launched and happy and making me proud. . . . But please. Don’t start sending me these computer printouts. I cannot stand such things. Always left accounting to your mother.”
I had to blink a few times, to cover up my emotion.
“Thank you, Papa.”
He waved his hand dismissively.
“Now. Here is the ting I am worried about. Your share, it will come to roughly eight hundred thousand euros. Is that enough?”
No. It was not. My Parisian accountant and I had figured the cost of securing a long-term lease on a top restaurant location in Paris, the space’s complete refurbishment, including a state-of-the-art kitchen, then hiring a team of top-rate staff—in short, all the initial start-up costs of launching an elegant restaurant targeted at the most sophisticated clientele—it would require close to two million euros in initial capital, to safely get off the ground.
“That’s what I thought,” said Papa. “So I have a proposal for you.”
“Yes?”
“Your sister Mehtab. She is troubling me. I cannot find a man in this little mountain town who will have her, and every day she is becoming more and more like your aunt. Cross all the time. She needs a bigger pond to catch her fish. Do you agree? So I tink you should consider taking her in as a partner in your fancy Parisian restaurant. Nah? She will be a great help to you, Hassan, and of course, she brings her own share of the capital to invest. It will also be a great relief to me, to know you are looking after her.”
This is the Indian way, of course, and so it was settled. Mehtab moved to Paris with me. But I must confess my one regret of this period: my parting from Chef Rossier, who was so good to me, it was not as I would have liked. Not at all. For when I told Rossier I was going to open my own restaurant, the elderly chef went quite red in the face and threw a pan, two plates, and a pepper-crusted salami. But life perpetually moves forward, not backward, so I dodged the flying projectiles and headed, for the last time, out the restaurant’s back door. For some time thereafter, however, Chef Rossier’s unusually creative maritime curses continued to ring in my ear.
But onward. Our path forward entirely clear, Mehtab and I embarked on our new mission to open our own restaurant in Paris. It was shortly thereafter, sitting in the bathtub, drinking a tea spiked with garam masala and dripping with sweat, all the while thinking of my father, that the name of the new restaurant suddenly came to me.
Le Chien Méchant.
Perfect. No?
Our first objective was to find the right space, of course, and Mehtab and I tramped through Paris for several months looking for a prime location. Real estate agents seemed to show us either cavernous warehouses in obscure side streets of the unfashionable 13th or 16th arrondissement, or else cramped shop fronts not much bigger than a doll’s house in the better streets down toward the Seine. Nothing suitable. But we pressed on, with great determination, in the knowledge the right location could make or break our fledgling restaurant.