Tortue

When Edmund was a little boy in France all the other kids called him 'tortue'. Edmund was fat and slow, he waddled rather than ran and with his close cropped black hair and short round body he did look like a boxy turtle.

Edmund was raised by his grandmother, he called her Memere but thought of her as Maman. Memere was very poor after the war but found a way to spoil her precious little boy. Edmund grew up sucking the sugar tit and eating the best morsels of fatty meat. These were lean times in post war France and all the other kids were dirty and thin while Edmund was fat and clean. The kids were not mean to him but did laugh when he tried to keep up with their swift play. Poor Tortue would get sweaty and red in the face trying to follow the antics of the urchin horde.

In high school Edmund was sent away to apprentice in the kitchen's of Paris. He loved being around all the food but was not a very good student, the food was very distracting. Somehow he muddled through and learned the trade. He came to America where it was rumored you could make good money in any kitchen if you had the right accent. He worked his way around the big cities and married a big fertile girl. Somehow they ended up in Independence, MO and he in my kitchen in downtown Kansas City. He waddled into my glassed in office at the Savoy Grill and presented his resume. I showed it to the owner and we laughed at his salary expectations. "Offer him half that." Said the boss.

I don't know what they taught him in France but it was not how to work in a busy American kitchen, filled with black chefs, Hispanic workers and an army of gay waiters. Edmund had always worked in the stodgy French system, even in big city kitchens of famous American restaurants run by old world chefs.