Mediterranean Summer A Season on France's Cote D'azur and Italy's Costa Bella

One FiveYear Summer The restaurant was in downtown London, a couple of blocks from the Savoy hotel. Although it was close to a landmark, its side street address gave it the sense of being a hideaway spot off the main road. The interior decor was simple and clean, adorned with colorful paintings by California artists that accented contemporary furnishings. In the back of the dining room, a semiopen kitchen featured a mesquite grilla new trend in restaurant design in the States and a fresh addition to the London restaurant scene. From the beginning, I felt apprehensive. It was the first time I would be responsible for all the backofthehouse operationsfrom scheduling, ordering, equipment maintenance, and serviceas well as the most important, the quality of the food. The departing souschef hinted that things might be a little "sensitive" in the kitchen. After a couple of days on the job, I got the picture all too clearly. From my training in other restaurants, I learned that great kitchens are silent kitchens, the air thick with concentration. The only competition for your own thoughts are the sounds of knives chopping, whisks whisking in stainless steel bowls, and food sizzling in hot pansall under the hum of the exhaust hoods and refrigerator compressors. I also believed it was the best way to get the most productive work out of a staff. But each afternoon long before service began, this kitchen was abuzz with a cacophony of endless, needless, and distracting chatter. It was clear the staff enjoyed each other's company far more than the work. Something else was clear. No one was looking to impress the new guy in charge. Then again, why should they? They knew I was there for only a couple of months. And I wasn't confident enough of the support I'd get from the owners if I told everybody to just chill out, that until they heard otherwise I was the boss and quiet was the way I liked it. Or maybe it wasn't confidence I lacked, but a natural assertiveness. One afternoon about a month into the job, on what was supposed to be my first day off since starting, I stopped at the restaurant to reassure myself that I could go and enjoy the rest of the day in peace. I was in the chef's office, looking over the week's food invoices, when one of the line cooks dropped on me that he had heard Alice Waters had reserved a table for dinner that night. Yes, the same Alice Waters who by any measure was one of the most respected figures in American cooking. I went to the hostess stand and checked the reservation book. It was true. Next to her name, in letters the hostess could not miss, the day manager had written "PPX"personne particulierementextraordinairethe restaurant's version of VIP. My evening's plans would have to wait. I had met Watersseveral years before, first at a charity event in New York, and then again after I moved to San Francisco. One day, while flipping through a popular food magazine, I noticed an article describing a small, intimate cooking school in the south of France run by a selftaught authority of the cuisine, Nathalie Waag. What particularly caught my attention was the article's description of how Nathalie took small groups of students to openair markets in Provence to shop for the ingredients that they would use to prepare dishes that evening in hermas, a Provencal farmhouse. It was mornings in the markets, a leisurely lunch at a nearby cafe or an impromptu picnic made up from market finds, afternoon drives in the countryside, informal classes in the kitchen with aperitifs, and long evenings at the farmhouse table in the diningShalleck, David is the author of 'Mediterranean Summer A Season on France's Cote D'azur and Italy's Costa Bella', published 2007 under ISBN 9780767920483 and ISBN 0767920481.