In 1997, I was offered the chance take classes at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and do an internship in a French restaurant. I was learning a lot in school, but I was keen to see how a real French kitchen functioned, especially since I had decided that this was the business for me. I was hovering over the Atlantic Ocean missing my mom when I realized I was sufficiently prepared to only discuss colors, the days of the week, and where to find a bathroom en français. I dealt with the gravity of this potentially lonely situation by drinking lots of airline alcohol and discussing what I’d heard about French women with the other American guys on my flight. (The only thing I was capable of saying to an actual French woman at the time was “Today is Monday. I like blue.” Such details are easily overlooked when you’re 22-years-old.)

I envisioned Le Cordon Bleu in Paris as being a huge fortress, with vast, gleaming tiled kitchens, each manned by a snooty French chef wearing a toque (those are the ridiculously tall chef hats). I was surprised that the school is housed in a tiny stone building, which, like the all the instructors, was ancient. And there were no huge expanses of stainless steel work spaces. As in most old Parisian buildings, rooms are tiny. The American students and French chefs communicated through interpreters, who I pitied for having to say, “You’re doing that all wrong” 300 times a day. Apart from the language barrier, the experience was astounding. I learned techniques I had only read about, such as massaging a filet of Dover sole with the back of a teaspoon when you’re sautéing it to prevent the flesh from tightening up too quickly. The fact that somebody had figured this out four centuries ago and codified the technique was still astounding to me! But my real eye-opening time in France was yet to come.

My first experience in a French restaurant kitchen was at L’Ésperance, which is located in Saint-Pere-sous-Vezalay in lower Burgundy. I was so overjoyed to get this coveted stage (French culinary-speak for professional internship) with Chef Marc Meneau that I overlooked the fact that the town was in the middle of nowhere. When I arrived I was directed to a tiny room. I thought perhaps it was my closet, but alas. The furnishings consisted of one cot next to a small window shrouded in ivy, a tiny kitchen with no pots or pans and a wall-mounted hot-water heater that spewed noxious fumes every time I tried to bathe. Even for its tiny size and lack of any creature comfort it was the quaintest apartment this New Jerseyan had ever seen. The door emptied out onto a stone-paved alley next to a stone wall that had probably been around since the Romans.

After changing into my chef whites I went to the kitchen to start my first day of work. I stared with wonder like a dumb American hick at all the sparkling copper pans and fancy kitchen equipment. This was the gleaming tiled heaven I had dreamt of back home, not to mention the sheer amount of people in the kitchen!

Like me, most of the cooks in this kitchen were working for the privilege of being there; when you have an abundance of free labor, why not use a lot of it? This was a real French kitchen running under the brigade system, which is how the French have organized their kitchen employees for centuries. This was the kind of kitchen I was learning about in school but had yet to see.

I couldn’t stand there and drool at all the fancy pots for too long without getting a rude awakening. As you might imagine, the French frown on most Americans in the kitchen, and I was no exception to the rule. I knew I would have to pay my dues.

“Eh, Jim?”

“No; Tim.”

“Voila. Bonne chance.”

I was handed a paperclip and a bag containing 2,000 snails each the size of my pinky nail. Insert paperclip into snail. Scrape meat. Repeat for 8 hours.

To be continued. 


Underground Butter is a monthly column from acclaimed Motor Supply Co. Bistro chef Tim Peters about life behind the scenes in the restaurant world. Reach Peters by email at food@free-times.com.