Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) by Alexander Campion Page B

laughed. “Not only was that from another age, but it made no sense at all if you’re twenty minutes from Paris. I think Brissac-Vanté only staked Brault because he wanted to keep him happy and motivated in his kitchen. The idea of doing up more than three or four rooms was insane, but it was Chef’s biggest hobbyhorse.”
    “So who owns the restaurant now?”
    “The court hasn’t decided yet. Brissac-Vanté acts like he does. He came the other day with his wife and had a long lunch with some very heavy-duty wines. He stayed until the service was over and then gathered everyone in the kitchen for a pep talk. He was going to insure that no one had anything to worry about and the restaurant was going to go on forever and climb to new heights. He implied that I was in full charge, but didn’t actually say it. That didn’t make my job any easier, let me tell you.”
    “So Chef Brault had no enemies that you knew of?”
    “The only person that came even close to being an enemy was that son of a bitch Lucien Folon. That guy couldn’t stop hammering away at Chef. He’d write these reviews that you wouldn’t believe. Always the same stuff. Chef’s cuisine was limp-dicked, tasteless vegetarian crap, sexed up with bizarre, exotic spices. Everyone in the kitchen hates his guts. And he couldn’t stop coming. He’d be here at least once a month for lunch or dinner. If Chef didn’t insist on cooking everything that went on Folon’s table himself, the guys would probably have pissed on it.” Ouvrard chuckled.
    “Why do you think Folon hated Chef Brault’s cuisine so much?”
    “That’s the funny thing. I don’t think he hated it at all. He’d clean off his plate. I’d watch him through the judas. You know when they love the meal. You can see it in their eyes. Folon absolutely relished what he ate. Every time, we were sure he was finally going to write a good review, but the more he seemed to like his meal, the more he trashed us in the press. Go figure.”

CHAPTER 10
    A t seven thirty that evening Capucine sat in her office, reading the final edition of Le Monde, waiting for David to get off the phone so she could start a meeting with the three brigadiers.
    Once a week Alexandre wrote a column called “ Celui Qui Ecrit la Bouche Pleine —He Who Writes with His Mouth Full.” It was about various food topics: a little restaurant gossip, his views on current food trends, comments about what he had been eating, maybe a dish he had invented and thought would be perfect for one chef or another. It was one of the more popular columns in the paper. That day’s was a eulogy of Jean-Louis Brault. Under the column’s logo and his picture, Alexandre had started with a quote from Destouches.
    “ La critique est aisée, mais l’art est difficile. Criticism is easy, but art is difficult.”
    Capucine had no idea who this Destouches was. The biographical Robert dictionary told her he was a composer famous for an opera she had never heard of, and had died in 1749. She went back to the article.

    This has been a black week indeed in the annals of food criticism. One of my colleagues has completely lost sight of what the word criticism means.
    Every lycéen knows it comes from the Greek kritikós, “capable of discernment or judgment. ” That is—or should be—the goal of all food critics.
    Yet Lucien Folon published a piece in Le Figaro declaring that Chef Jean-Louis Brault’s fatal flaw was his hubris, which deluded a vegetable prep cook into believing he was a true chef, tempting him to fly so close to the sun of haute cuisine he singed his feathers and plunged to his nemesis.
    I’m dumbstruck. Chef Brault had been crowned with the highest accolade our country has to offer its most cherished culinary artisans: the third Michelin star. How dare anyone defame him? Folon dares, dear readers, because he has so lost sight of the meaning of kritikós, he seeks to sell newpapers by spitting on angels.
    Do you know why we