Chef Keitel led me down a set of creaking wooden steps and into the restaurant’s dim, cluttered basement. With my high heels and skirt, I had to step carefully. Extra tables and chairs were stored here along with boxes of dry goods and cleaning supplies. There were four doors along one wall: three wooden and one metal. He waved me over to the metal door, pulled a ring of keys off his belt, and unlocked it.
“Come in…” he said, moving into the shadowy room.
I took one tentative step, a little wary about sharing the small space with such a monumental ego. On the other hand, I knew this could be the best chance I’d ever have to speak with Keitel in private, talk to him about Vinny’s death and his relationship with my daughter.
“Come all the way in and close that door,” Keitel said. “The temperature and humidity are kept at a constant level in here, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
I shut the door. The second the steel handle clicked, he hit the light switch. A single bare bulb provided a golden illumination to the interior. Standing wooden shelves lined the walls, each one stacked with large and small wheels of white and yellow.
“Welcome to my cheese cave.”
I couldn’t believe it. Keitel had actually led me into the very room where he’d started his flirtation with Joy. That thought alone made it difficult for me to concentrate on the patter of words flowing out of the man’s mouth.
Take it easy, I told myself. This isn’t Bluebeard’s secret room. It’s just a stupid closet full of cheese.
He’d already started talking about the imported dairy products in the refrigerated space—from France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. Clearly, the man was proud of the collection, and he selected a few to sample, bringing them onto a small butcher block table set up against one shelf.
“So, what do you think? Are you game?”
I cleared my throat. It was very humid in here; warmer than a fridge but still downright chilly at fifty-seven degrees, if I could trust the thermometer hanging by the chef’s head.
Keitel was in a nice, thick chef ’s jacket. I was in sheer stockings and a skirt. I’d left my matching green jacket upstairs, and my silk, lace-edged blouse only had half sleeves. I wasn’t freezing yet, but I wasn’t exactly comfortable, either. And I suddenly recalled what I’d said about Janelle’s ball of sweet pastry dough. It’s so much easier to work when it’s cold.
“Sorry, Chef Keitel?” I said, folding my half-bare arms. “Game for…?”
“Taste the cheese and tell me what you think it should be paired with. Nappy can do it blindfolded with his wine list. You claim coffee and cheese can be paired, too. If you really do have the palate, I’d like to see what we’re paying for.”
“Not all cheeses go with coffee,” I warned. “Blues and runny cheeses, anything with strong ammonia notes, won’t work. But there are plenty of fresh cheeses that will pair fabulously.”
“So you are game?”
What is this? Some kind of test? Who does he think he’s dealing with?
My eyes narrowed. “Bring it on.”
From my work in catering, I knew plenty about cheese plate presentation. A proper plate positioned the portions in a circular pattern, starting with the mildest cheese at twelve o’clock, then moving around the plate with increasingly stronger flavors, the final cheeses being the most pungent. As a world-class chef, Tommy was well aware of how to handle a palate, and he started me with a mild one.
“What do you think of this?” Keitel had sliced a wedge of semisoft cheese onto his wide-edged, bell-shaped cheese knife—a knife with a silver handle, I noticed, like the ones Joy said Keitel had imported from Thiers. Like the one found inside of Vinny Buccelli’s corpse.
I moved to take hold of the knife’s silver handle, but he pulled it high, out of my reach. “Close your eyes, Clare. I’ll feed it to you.”
I folded my arms, already not liking the direction of this little tasting.
“What?” Tommy smirked. “You’re not afraid of the challenge, are you?”
The man’s condescension was absolutely infuriating. “I hate to burst your bubble, Chef Keitel, but I’m not intimidated by you.”
“Then close your damn eyes.”
With an aggravated sigh, I did. And Keitel fed me the first cheese. “All right. Talk.”
I let the soft morsel pass over my receptor cells, and I had to admit it was pretty amazing. “This product has an almost unctuously creamy mouthfeel, like a rich piece of cheesecake—without the sugar and eggs, of course. There’s a thin rind and a mousselike interior. It’s very seductive, this cheese. Voluptuous…”
“Have another bite.”
I savored and swallowed once more, my eyes still closed. “It comes into the mouth like a dense cake then dissolves into a creamy liquid without any trace of ammonia. It’s obviously very high in butterfat, definitely a triple crème, and that’s very good for a coffee pairing. I’d put this with the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe or the Purple Princess. The bright acidity of those coffees would cut the heavy fat of the cheese and make the gastronomic experience balanced and absolutely delightful.”
I opened my eyes. Chef Keitel was staring at me with a veiled expression. “That’s good,” he said simply. “What you were tasting, by the way, was a Brillat-Savarin from îlle-de-France. It’s one of my favorites.”
“Brillat-Savarin? That’s the name of the cheese? Isn’t that the name of the eighteenth-century French food writer?”
Keitel regarded me. “You know, most of my line cooks didn’t even pick that up.” He winked. “But I let them work for me anyway.”
“So it really was named after the writer?”
“The cheese maker who conceived the product back in the 1930s was a big fan. His son Pierre carries on the tradition.”
“Well, I guess a high-fat cheese is appropriate, since Brillat-Savarin was never one to deny himself.”
Tommy grunted, presumably in agreement. “Try another?”
“Why not?”
“This cheese was aged by Hervé Mons outside of Roanne,” Keitel informed me as he brought out a cheese corer to penetrate the wheel for a sample. “Okay, close ’em.”
I dropped my eyelids, and something extraordinary was slipped into my mouth. Oh, my… This product was firmer than the Brillat-Savarin but still mild in flavor. “There’s a nice nuttiness here. But it isn’t overpowering. It’s subtle and amusing…and the caramelized flavor is very delicately handled.”
I paused, thinking it over. “I could see this paired with a fine red wine, so I’d have to go with my Kenyan medium roast, which, as your maître d’ pointed out upstairs, has those umami characteristics of a really good burgundy in the finish. It would highlight but not overcome the flavor.”
Keitel was actually smiling when I opened my eyes this time. “Did you know what kind of cheese you were eating?”
“Wild guess? Petit Basque, but I’ve never had one that good.”
“Of course not.” Tommy snorted. “Most Americans think a Petit Basque is a yellow wedge of industrially produced sheep milk coated in yellow wax.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most Americans think coffee is supposed to come pre-ground in a tin can. It’s not always easy persuading people to pay premium prices for a premium product.”
“True.” Keitel paused, considering my point. “But it’s easier in this city, you have to admit.”
“I suppose. Of course, my customers only have to come up with an extra dollar or two for a transcendent experience. They can sip a cup slowly at one of my café tables and spend an hour on a beautiful piece of real estate. Your customers have to cough up well over one hundred to hang out in your house.”
“Spoken like a proud member of the proletariat.”
“I am. The democratization of luxury is my credo.”
“I come from the working class, too, Clare. My father was a Navy cook who bought a diner. My mom worked in a bakery. I get where you’re coming from, but I’m a man who’s learned to appreciate the finer things; not having grown up with them makes them all the sweeter to savor, no?”
The man had a point.
Tommy shrugged. “Anyway, I have no problem with the markups on my menu. My customers come here for a four-star experience, and they get one.”
“Except for the coffee.”
Keitel shook his head. “You’re one pushy female, you know that?”
“You have no idea.”
“And you probably have no idea just how cutthroat my world is. People don’t just want good anymore, Clare. They want new. They want fresh, novel, invigorating experiences. And, you know what? I can’t blame them, because so do I. Solange is going to be five years old in seven weeks, and there are younger, flashier restaurants opening up every season, trying to seduce her customers away.”
I found Keitel’s characterization of Solange as a “her” intriguing. He’d trained for over a decade in France, so assigning a gender to something like a restaurant was understandable. Then again, from what Joy told me, Chef Keitel had acted “married” to the place since it opened.
Given his increasing and unexplained absences, however, I’d have to conclude that Tommy Keitel had been straying, not just on his wife and my daughter, but on his other mistress, Solange. The question was why? Wasn’t this his big dream come true, the restaurant he’d envisioned over a decade ago on the west bank of Paris?
“Chef, I overheard you speaking with someone named Anton?”
“That would be Anton Wright, Solange’s owner.”
“It sounded like you two were having a disagreement about something.”
“Let’s do two more cheeses,” Tommy said, completely ignoring my query. “Then we’ll have a complete cheese-and-coffee pairings offering to try next week. That’ll give the regulars something new, eh?”
My eyebrows rose at that. “You want to put the tasting we’re doing right now on your menu?”
“That’s what I just said, isn’t it? Now, close your damn eyes.”
And he calls me pushy?
Keitel slipped a Proosdy into my mouth. The cheese was from north Holland and had the characteristics of a really fine Gouda.
“It’s hard on the initial bite, yet soft as the tooth penetrates. The flavor is much stronger than your previous offerings, but I’m a real sucker for muscular cheeses like this one.”
“Really?”
“Yes, my grandmother ran a little Italian grocery, so I grew up on this kind of sharpness: aged provolones, pecarinos, and asiagos. The first taste can be overpowering, but I love a cheese that’s been well-aged.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m tasting some caramelized notes in this product…butterscotch, I’d say…and also some satisfyingly salty bursts—I’m assuming from tiny crystallized curds within the meat. I think that’s what’s so tantalizing about this one. The coarse little bursts provide big surprises. They catch you off guard with these unexpected explosions of intensity. The effect is highly stimulating.”
“Well, then. Open up for more.”
Keitel fed me another slice, and I continued to chew and swallow blindly. “I’d definitely want to pair this one with an espresso.”
“My kitchen doesn’t have an espresso machine.”
“Oh, right. Of course. We’re using French presses exclusively, so I’d fall back on our Italian Roast; that’s the next best thing to an espresso for that dark, caramelized flavor. The Italian is also luxuriously full-bodied.”
“Full-bodied.” He grunted softly. “Now that’s something I can appreciate.”
“And there’s a level of smokiness in the Italian that can take on the power and sharpness that’s present here. Really stand up to it.”
Keitel was quiet a long moment as he fed me another bite. “It’s good to have that bite in there, don’t you think, Clare?” His voice sounded lower and softer all of a sudden. “It’s something I think a woman like you, with such well-developed senses, can appreciate. The pungency awakens that mature palate of yours, am I right? Excites it? Challenges it?”
I swallowed uneasily, my eyes still closed. Up to now, I thought we were talking about cheese. But now I was getting the distinct impression that Tommy Keitel was talking about something else.