"Bruce Holland Rogers - Wind Over Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

 Eric sipped the concoction. It was slightly bitter, but not bad.
My restaurant, Gero called it. Technically, it was Eric's restaurant. Well, Eric's and Sutherland's,
now. But Gero was right in a way.
***


There were times, Eric thought, when it all seemed a little surreal. Twelve years ago, when The
Tarragon Leaf was struggling in its infancy, when Eric had a splendid atmosphere to go with
not-yet-splendid food, Gero had shown up. Two days earlier, the original saucier had quit. Clutching a
battered satchel, Gero was vague about his training and references, and his accent that day was generic
pidgin. "I know sauce," he said. "I know food. Let me show."
What the hell, Eric had thought. He picked three sauces from the menu-- a cerleriac remoulade, a
lobster chiffonade, and bearnaise. "Make these."
In the kitchen, Gero looked over the spice racks, muttering and shaking his head. Eventually, he
opened the satchel and set its contents on the counter-- jars of dried powders, roots, mushrooms. There
were two books, too, their leather covers stamped in gold with Chinese characters. But Gero didn't
consult these. He worked by tasting his base, adding an infinitesimal trace of some powder or another,
and tasting the base again, so that he was absurdly slow, and Eric already knew the answer would be no,
sorry, we have no position for you.
Until he tasted the finished sauces.
They weren't what the restaurant had ever served before. They weren't, Eric was almost certain, what
any restaurant had served before. It seemed like magic.
"Not magic," Gero said. "Balance."
His sense of balance, as it turned out, extended to more than sauces. Though he always insisted that he
was a saucier and only a saucier, he was soon giving advice to others in the kitchen about everything
from perfectly timed creme patissiere to deftly positioned garnish. He was subtle about it. Balanced, you
could say. He managed to offer compliments that planted only the tiniest hint of dissatisfaction, the barest
clue that he had available some advice to offer about how something that was nearly perfect could be
nearer still.
And if Gero's area in the kitchen grew a little strange, with its drying herbs and spices hanging here and
there, its unlabeled jars filled with the unknown, if it became, in fact, a little spooky on the days when his
suppliers-- often speaking no English-- appeared in the kitchen with jars wrapped in brown paper, that
was easy enough to overlook. The food, the reputation, the growing success of The Tarragon Leaf more
than made up for the dreamlike witchiness of the saucier's shelves.
Besides, Eric liked the man. How could he fail to like him? The Tarragon Leaf had been Eric's dream,
but it seemed that Gero dreamed it, too. He was nearly always there, even on Mondays, rearranging his
things in the kitchen, experimenting, and often giving Eric a taste of something new, something divine.
Sometimes the herbal remedies that Gero dispensed for imaginary maladies he had diagnosed as "bad
humors" or "overbearing yang" were a little hard to swallow. But they seemed a small price to pay.
***


The table in The Tarragon Leaf's private dining room wasn't small, but Spencer Sutherland's bulk at
one end made it seem that way to Eric. "There are certain economies we need around here," Sutherland
way saying, his words muffled by a mouthful of salad.
Eric said, "What do you mean?"
Sutherland swallowed. "Like this salad." He took a bite that was too big and chewed it impatiently.
Eric wished that he'd paid attention to how Sutherland ate before he had agreed to the marriage of their
restaurants. Sutherland's first bite of anything would be careful. He would consider as he chewed. Then,
once he had passed judgement, he would eat the rest too fast to savor. Once he knew what something