Auberge du Schœnenbourg

It’s just past 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon in Riquewihr, France. One by one, the two apprentices and two junior cooks arrive in the kitchen and start their daily routine. Steve lights the oven. Thomas starts bringing today’s vegetables from the walk-in box next door. Guillaume sets out the cutting boards at each of the five work stations in the kitchen. Jurgens sets some water to boil on the stove to cook the lobsters. It’s a routine they execute with efficiency and speed. By the time the senior cooks Jacky and Sebastian arrive, the daily grind is well underway. As each cook enters the kitchen, there’s a bonjour and a handshake for those already at work. If a cook’s right hand is dirty, the new person shakes his wrist instead.

An hour or so later, Rémy, the pastry chef, cheerfully saunters in and greets one and all. He comes later because at the end of the shift, the others will be finished with all their tasks while he is still preparing desserts for the last remaining guests in the restaurant. Some time during this period, Chef François Keiner will come downstairs from his living quarters above the kitchen and make sure that all is proceeding appropriately towards the evening’s meal service at Auberge du Schœnenbourg, a Michelin one-star restaurant in the heart of Alsacian wine country.

Into this ordered routine I come like the proverbial bull in a china shop — clumsy, ill at ease, and liable to bring everything crashing down at any moment. I’m at the restaurant for a ten-day stage. (A stage is a French tradition where someone pays for the opportunity to work in a kitchen for the experience and to learn directly from the chef.) This isn’t the first time I’ve spent an extended period in a French kitchen, but it still takes a while to enter into the kitchen’s unique routine and interact with its unique cast of players. Also, these are professionals and I’m just someone with a strong interest who strangely considers this a good way to spend a vacation. In Riquewihr, except for the Chef, I’m twice as old as any of the other workers — a difference I’m keenly aware. But, I have no way of knowing if the cooks are bothered by the age difference since I’m not conversant in French and they know only a few words of English.

This is the first time I’ve entered this restaurant, although I am somewhat familiar with the area, having traveled through it a number of times in the past. A friend referred me to the Chef. When I learned that I was coming to France for another purpose a couple of months ago, I simply called the Chef and asked if I could do a stage with him. Up to our first meeting, we have had only a couple of short telephone calls. He knows little about me and I know less about him! When I arrived at the restaurant at about noon, after a four-hour car ride, I found it locked and dark. It’s not until now that I learn the restaurant is only open evenings, except Sundays. I checked into the hotel and went over to the restaurant periodically until I found the kitchen occupied. After I finally made contact with the Chef, we decided that I will start right away. I returned to the hotel to change into my white chef’s jacket, and now my adventure begins…

The kitchen is small. When the dishwasher arrives, there’s a total of ten of us occupying a space ideally filled by half our number. Instead of the large, custom-made, two-sided range I’m used to at other Michelin-starred restaurants, this one here seems like it would be incapable of producing enough meals for the sixty customers the Auberge serves when it is completely full. Equipment is placed wherever there’s a little extra space. Most of the storage is in the basement or in another large room across the alley behind the restaurant. The most common word heard in the kitchen is “pardon.” It is impossible to move freely without having to zigzag between the bodies at work. When things start to hustle later in the shift, there’s more body contact and fewer pleasantries.

During the period from when they arrive until a few minutes before six o’clock when they break for dinner, the staff concentrates on mise en place, the preparation of the food stuffs that will be needed for dinner service. Much of the preparation is for items that will be needed a few days from now, rather than just for tonight. Sometimes this is because it is more convenient to do prep for multiple days at a time, sometimes because someone just needs something to do.