“We’ve cleaned, Chef”, she snapped back. She knew what he was feeling because she was feeling it too. Christmas week and she was already planning where to work next.
My dear reader, it was Christmas week and as usual Carl, the Chef-Patron was in a tumultuously bad mood. The restaurant had been decked with all sorts of Christmas decorations by the front of house staff because, as the manager said, that’s what restaurants did at this time of year. There were pretend gift boxes in shiny, metallic paper, dolled up with bows. There were pastel coloured paperchains and tinsel, elves and snowmen. Even the tight passageway between the 30-seat dining area and the kitchen was made even more claustrophobic by a plastic Santa in his sleigh being led by his reindeer even though they were stuck to the wall.
Although all of this annoyed Carl, his ire was derived as much from fear and responsibility as it was from seasonal humbuggery. The place was dying. His place. Deep inside himself he knew that this was his fault – and that feeling had been surfacing for months now. But Carl was a stubborn man. That’s how his many years in the business had taught him to be. From his early days as an eager potwash, full to his adolescent brim with dreams of Michelin stars and good reviews in the national newspapers, to this current sad state of anxiety and debt, he had learnt that it was his role to keep the ship of cuisine afloat.
A former and formative head chef, a large and bellicose Scottish fellow simply called ‘Chef Mac’ had smashed this idea, this ‘law of the Pros’ into young Carl’s head.
“Even if something is wrong, you never show weakness to the brigade, to the front of house and definitely not to the civilians”, he called the paying guests ‘civilians’ for no reason anybody could fathom. By ‘never show weakness’ he meant, ‘never admit it’.
“Sort it out when you can and never, ever let anybody know that you did so”.
Last Christmas Sam’s restaurant had been pack-jammed with paying customers. This year, only two tables were seated and those were tourists who had wandered in out of the snow. Of course, they’d ordered the cheapest things from the menu, and when asked if they might like wine to accompany their meal, opted for tap water instead.
Sam herself had moved on from the place decades before, sliding into a loud retirement on an island in the Adriatic. Carl had been her sous chef, and was the Chef-Patron when this story begins. He was a thin man, classically trained. By this he meant French cuisine, and only French cuisine. He was a good chef, a solid chef, a sad and beaten chef.
He bossed what he insisted on calling his brigade. This was despite it consisting of two lowly chefs and a kitchen porter called Flo’ who was always dragooned into peeling and chopping the onions, carrots and potatoes before returning to her station.
Outside in the bins area, collecting snow on their baseball-capped heads, the two under-chefs were smoking roll-up cigarettes and swapping horse-racing tips.
Amy dragged on her second roll-up of the session and said nothing. There was nothing to say. The chances were that she’d be looking for another job come the new year.
Cathal, the slightly more senior chef, butted his fag and stood up from a large drum full of rancid oil. Had Sam’s actually been busy, both the under-chefs would have been heads-down, bums-up with prep and service. Sam’s was not busy. Sam’s had not been busy for months now.
“It’s the location”, suggested Carl’s non-hospitality friends. They’d seen this on television.
Carl knew it wasn’t the location. Sam’s was situated on a pretty little side street next door to a shop that sold buttons and threads, and across the road from a beautiful toyshop. The side street, St Odilos St, led through from the Cathedral close to the train and bus stations on Corporation St. Footfall was not the problem. Not even in the Yuletide snow, especially not at this time of year.
“Maybe you could try and get Gordon Ramsay in for this Kitchen Nightmare programme?” A former friend had suggested this once and only once. Chef-Patron Carl had slammed his vodka and Red Bull onto the pub table and seethed. Gordon bloody Ramsay indeed. Carl was no amateur, no dilettante. Carl was not a civilian. Carl did not want to be a televised freakshow.
Cathal and Amy returned to the kitchen where the extractor fan’s row competed with Chef’s choice of heavy metal dirges. No Christmas carols this year. He couldn’t bear to hear them in their sugary confected glee. He could not, of course, admit this to anybody.
The two tables of tourists had departed complaining about having to tip their waitress, a young lass called Katy who had done her best to cater for their every need. The restaurant, despite the decorations, had more the ambience of a waiting area in a hospice than a place of comfort and joy.
There was an hour to go until the Sam’s closed. The front of house manager, a constantly busy woman in her fifties called Joan, wandered past the flying Santa, up the tight passageway and into the kitchen.
“That’s it, Chef. We’re empty. We’ve had three cancellations and four no-shows. I can’t see us getting any walk-ins. What do you want to do?”
Carl looked up from the pot of beef stock he had been tinkering with for want of anything else to do.
“Clean!” he snapped back.
Joan and her team of two had cleaned and cleaned again. Until the restaurant closed, they were unable to clean any more.
“We’ve cleaned, Chef”, she snapped back. She knew what he was feeling because she was feeling it too. Christmas week and she was already planning where to work next. This would hurt Carl deeply because they loved each other, had done for years, since they had both been callow and ambitious.
The brigade were back at their stations, shaking off the snow, heads down, watching it melt on the red tiled floor, listening for the most beautiful words in the language of hospitality.
Those words came from Chef Carl almost in a whisper, “Start cleaning down, you two”. Cathal and Amy, despite the 12 hour shift or maybe because of it, jumped into action. Joan returned to the dining area where her two waitresses looked hopefully at her.
“Not yet, not yet. Clean what you can for now”, she said.
Outside a small choir of charitable folk were wandering to the Nag’s Head pub. They were singing, just for the fun of it, for the season. The carol was ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, and they were belting it out while retaining harmony and great good humour.
Half an hour later with his notes for the day and orders for the next day complete, Carl stood still knowing what his brigade wanted to hear most of all in the world. That was the sound or the lack of it, of the extractors being turned off. The silence of the living.
Instead a bell rang and the ticket machine buzzed like a boney finger sliding down a metal comb. Carl looked at the order from ten feet away. Three simple mains, no starters. Joan wasn’t going to let three guests go unpaying back into the night. She knew Carl would agree, she just knew him.
“Check on!” he barked. The two under-chefs got down to it despite wanting to go out there and physically ejecting the heartless bastards who had wandered in solely to wind them up. It wasn’t making the food that was the problem, that was easy, second nature. No, it was cleaning down again.
Amy – just off her phone – had agreed to meet some other chefs, on their days off, in a scalliwags’ bar called Busters. Cathal was ready for a McDonalds quarter pounder and fries or maybe a Goan fish curry.
Carl left it to them – he knew this was a sure sign that he was giving up the ghost of a dream. He buttoned his whites and then, for a reason even he couldn’t discern even years afterwards, instead of making his way upstairs to his office, he walked down the passageway of the 300-year-old building to look at the diners.
There they sat, three of them. From the look of it, a mother, a father and a very young boy. They were, as old Chef Mac would have said, “Arab looking buggers”. Carl sat down on the stool by the bar to watch as their food was delivered and they began to eat.
“Tap water?”, he whispered to Joan who nodded sadly. Wine was where the money came from.
The food was delivered and the family, each one of them said thank you to young Katy, their server. Joan and Carl looked on.
“There’s something quite dignified, quite peaceful about them, isn’t there?”Joan whispered, touching the chef’s hand lightly as she had done years before.
Carl tried not to agree with her but couldn’t. There was something quite disarmingly charming, something calming about them as they ate his food and chatted with each other. When their meals were done, instead of finger-snapping at Kate, the mother turned and smiled towards her.
It was a smile of such genuine warmth and good grace that it forced a cigarette-stained breath each from Joan and the chef. Kate had cleared their plates and the father asked her a question. Armed with the detritus of their table, the young server walked past the bar.
“Chef?”, she trembled slightly, overawed by her recent encounter more than she was scared of Carl.
“Yes”, he whispered.
“They say they’d like to see you”.
In recent months this request had resulted in either spurious complaints or, worse still, in the one of the diners explaining that they had a suggestion or two to make dishes that Carl had been cooking just fresh from his crib. He shrugged. Why not, how bad could the day get?
He checked his whites for stains, and made his way over to the table, bowing slightly he said his good evening and waited for the inevitable top tip or moan about the quality of the meat.
“Thank you Chef for such a delicious meal”, her voice was soft but, again in a way he could never explain, it was transparently honest. Her son, a slight boy with, Carl noticed, only had one hand, one left hand. The young boy’s face was scarred and had been quickly stitched together as if in an ad hoc medical facility.
“Yes, thank you deeply, Chef. We enjoyed this meal very much”. Father’s accent, like Mother’s was not local, it came from a place Carl felt he knew but did not know. The accent was melodious even as it was just a smidgeon staccato. Their son nodded and smiled up at Carl.
Young Katy came back with the bill, which she placed in the middle of the table. Mother picked it up and examined it. Katy knew that every single penny counted. Every note helped.
“However, I must apologise. We are unable to pay”, said the Mother, calmly and with good grace.
Carl looked at Joan, “I knew it. I just knew it”. The defeat in his voice smothered any anger.
Joan walked to the table. “How could you do this to us?” Any veneer of professionalism had finally departed. Desperation had taken its place.
The Mother then did something utterly unexpected. Instead of bolting for the door, she beckoned Joan to sit with the family. Carl joined her. The brigade drew closer, certain of an eruption.
“Dearest Chef, and hardworking colleagues, where we have come from, food, the preparation and serving of food to strangers – even to paying strangers”, his eyes twinkled, “are all precious. The first because it is rare. The second and third because of the skill and the care involved are the marks of great civilisations.”
Mother said, “Where we come from, no restaurants remain, no bars, no cafes, no homes remain in which such great courtesies, these welcoming talents can be enjoyed.
Carl and Joan were as still as artificial ice on artificial holly. Both had given up.
Father said, “So, we say thank you and we offer what we have of value to you.” A fake watch? Some terrible old cloth? Carl’s shoulders sank.
“Sure, why the hell not”, he said. “We’ve got nothing to lose”. The final, inevitable, nail in the coffin of Sam’s Restaurant may as well have come this way as any other.
The Son pulled a small, battered leather, draw-strung bag from under his lap. He reached into it and pulled out a small book, battered and burnt notebook. He remained silent.
Mother took his turn to speak, “In lieu of the money we no longer have, we would appreciate it if you would accept this.” She handed the book to the Chef.
The brigade drew closer still, slightly aghast at the calm that had descended. They watched as Carl opened the book and began to leaf through it. It was full of hand drawn illustrations of dishes and ingredients. Next to the pictures were neatly handwritten instructions.
“Your recipes?” said Joan.
The son smiled such a smile that his scars seemed to be dissolved by it. He didn’t speak at first but finally replied in a slight voice, as damaged as his face.
“These are recipes from our village. From the village that once was but is no longer. Our village of Khirbet Humsa.” He lowered his eyes and his smile failed for the briefest of moments. His mother took the book and handed it to Carl.
He looked at the very first recipe, a simple dish of chicken and rice that, according to the method neatly inscribed in pen, was cooked ‘upside down’ in a pot. For the first time in many years Carl’s mind was illuminated by the light of understanding. Silence descended throughout the restaurant only warmed by an impromptu crowd of singers rendering ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ like tipsy angels outside in the snow.
Carl read on.
He paused every once in a while to show this page or that to his two under chefs. “This. This one, have you seen this recipe? Look Amy. Look Cathal. Just look”.
“Is that a tear in his eye?” Chef Amy asked Cathal.
There was a tear, an elegantly seasoned tear, on Carl’s cheek as the excitement, the eagerness of his younger self flooded in. Hours passed. Blissful hours. Hours in which the restaurant seemed to take on the fragrances of each recipe. No one noticed the passing of time. Although young Katy had noticed something very strange indeed.
“How is he reading it? It’s not even in English,” Katy asked Joan nervously.
Carl and the other chefs huddled over or rather into the book. They were oblivious to every and anything else. Joan had never seen any of them as, what was the word? As beatific, that was the word, dear reader. As blissed out, as thoroughly immersed in the sheer beauty of word and image.
“It’s like they can taste the words”, said Katy and Joan agreed.
Indeed, the chefs had ingested, digested and memorised every recipe in the slim volume. Carl turned to where the family had been sitting. “Thank you but we can’t keep this, it is too precious, too valuable.”
But the Mother and the Father and Son were gone.
The next day the brigade gathered early in the kitchen and began, all four of them including Flo’ the potwash, and they planned a new menu. Meanwhile Joan and Katy took down to old signs from the front of the restaurant. Within a day a new sign was given pride of place. To honour the mysterious family, Sam’s had become, quite simply, ‘Khirbet Humsa’.
Every year since these events had transpired, Carl and Joan would clean down and then go and sit in the front of the house. Hand in hand they would wait for the return of the family.
