Hotel

They had strolled almost the length of the kitchen - an elongated rectangle extending the entire width of the hotel. At each side of the rectangle, like outlets from a control center, doorways gave access to the several hotel restaurants, service elevators and food preparation rooms on the same floor and below. Skirting a double line of soup cauldrons, bubbling like monstrous crucibles, they approached the glass paneled office where, in theory, the two principal chefs - the chef de cuisine and the sous-chef - divided their responsibilities. Nearby, Peter observed, was the big quadruple - unit deep fryer, cause of today's dissatisfaction. A kitchen helper was draining the entire assembly of fat; considering the quantity, it was easy to see why too frequent replacement would be costly. They stopped as Andre Lemieux considered Peter's question.

"What changes, you say, monsieur? Most important it is the food. For some who prepare food, the facade, how a dish looks, it is more important than how it tastes. In this hotel we waste much money on the decor. The parsley, it is all around. But not enough in the sauce. The watercress it is on the plate, when more is needed in the soup. And those arrangements of color in gelatine!" Young Lemieux threw both arms upward in despair. Peter smiled sympathetically.

"As for the wines, monsieur! Dieu merci, the wines they are not my province."

"Yes," Peter said. He had been critical himself of the St. Gregory's inadequately stocked wine bins.

"In a word, monsieur, all the horrors of a low-grade table d'hote. Such disrespect colossal for food, such abandon of money for the appearance, it is to make one weep. Weep, monsieur!" He paused, shrugged, and continued. "With less throw-away we could have a cuisine that invites the taste and honors the palate. Now it is dull, extravagantly ordinary."

Peter wondered if Andre Lemieux was being sufficiently realistic where the St. Gregory was concerned. As if sensing this doubt, the sous-chef insisted, "It is true that a hotel it has special problems. Here it is not a gourmet house. It cannot be. We must cook fast many meals, serve many people who are too much in an American hurry. But in these limitations there can be excellence of a kind. Of a kind one can live with. Yet, Monsieur Herbrand, he tells me that my ideas they are too 'igh cost. It is not so, as I 'ave proved."

"How have you proved?"

"Come, please."

The young Frenchman led the way into the glass-paneled office. It was a small, crowded cubicle with two desks, file cabinets, and cupboards tightly packed around three walls. Andre Lemieux went to the smaller desk. Opening a drawer he took out a large Manila envelope and, from this, a folder. He handed it to Peter. "You ask what changes. It is all here."

Peter McDermott opened the folder curiously. There were many pages, each filled with a fine, precise handwriting. Several larger, folded sheets proved to be charts, hand-drawn and lettered in the same careful style.

It was, he realized, a master catering plan for the entire hotel. On successive pages were estimated costs, menus, a plan of quality control and an outlined staff reorganization. Merely leafing through quickly, the entire concept and its author's grasp of detail were impressive.

Peter looked up, catching his companion's eyes upon him. "If I may, I'd like to study this."

"Take it. There is no haste." The young sous-chef smiled dourly. "I am told it is unlikely any of my 'orses will come home.

"The thing that surprises me is how you could develop something like this so quickly."

Andre Lemieux shrugged. "To perceive what is wrong, it does not take long."

"Maybe we could apply the same idea in finding what went wrong with the deep fryer."

There was a responsive gleam of humor, then chagrin. "Touche! It is true - I had eyes for this, but not the hot fat under my nose."

"No," Peter objected. "From what you've told me, you did detect the bad fat but it wasn't changed as you instructed."

"I should have found the cause the fat went bad. There is always a cause.

Greater trouble there maybe if we do not find it soon."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Today - through much good fortune - we have used the frying fat a little only. Tomorrow, monsieur, there are six hundred fryings for convention luncheons."

Peter whistled softly.

"Just so." They had walked together from the office to stand beside the deep fryer from which the last vestiges of the recently offending fat were being cleaned.

"The fat will be fresh tomorrow, of course. When was it changed previously?"

'Yesterday."

'That recently!"

Andre Lemieux nodded. "M. Herbrand he was making no joke when he complained of the high cost. But what is wrong it is a mystery."

Peter said slowly, "I'm trying to remember some bits of food chemistry.

The smoke-point of new, good fat is

"Four 'undred and twenty-five degrees. It should never be heated more, or it will break down."

"And as fat deteriorates its smoke-point drops slowly.",

"Very slowly - if all is well."