The Gourmet Mystery

Written by William Shepard, Published on 2/2/2009, Re-published on 8/13/2010

I got the call from an excited Lawrence Horton at about 1:30 on Monday afternoon. Horton, an old movies fan, is the owner of The Blue Parrot Restaurant, which is not far from the newspaper where I work, for too little money, as Food and Wine Editor. “Come right over. I need your help. Right now! Before this news gets all over town.” He sounded desperate, like a heart attack ready to happen.

I raced down the street and was there within a few minutes. Horton waved me into his office, and introduced me to a patron, William Saunders. “Yes,” Saunders said, “I read your column. You know your food and wines. So you’ll appreciate that I don’t like paying hundreds of dollars for what I did not order! My wife Caroline and I were celebrating our anniversary. We ordered a special meal, steaks with black mushrooms. That’s what we got. But when I checked the credit card, it was for the truffles, at three times the cost of the meal we actually had! We came here on your recommendation, too!”

That made it personal. I was startled. After all, I had just run a special article on The Blue Parrot, which featured this very dish. Truffles were rare and expensive. I had never tried the black truffles from France or the equally expensive and rare white ones from Italy. That is, I had never tried them before the special tasting Mr. Horton set up before my column. He had an order, and so did I.

Their cost was high -- reaching $1,500 a pound. These truffles grew randomly underground, and were difficult to find. They were usually found by specially trained dogs, or even pigs, which traced the truffle scent! They gave food an unforgettable flavor, rich with a touch of garlic. So tasting the real thing was a rare event, and charging for it without serving the dish was grand larceny.

“Show me where this happened,” I said.

“And please try to keep the noise down,” Horton added. “This’ll get sorted out, I’m sure,” he added, trying to reassure both Saunders and himself. “Believe me, you won’t have to pay for anything that you didn’t order.”

Saunders shook his head in an I-told-you-so affirmation. I turned to Horton. “I want to see everyone involved in the service.”

Horton summoned the waiter, Antoine, and the head waiter, Georges Monceau.

“What is the serving procedure?” My question was directed at the headwaiter, who was also in charge of wines. Monceau answered crisply. Clearly he was a man who knew his business.

“I deliver the menus, both the wine and also the food menu, if Sally Horvats has not already done so. I then offer to be of any assistance. Sometimes I even get the orders, when there is a rush. Actually, Mr. Saunders is a very knowledgeable consumer, and something of a wine authority in his own right. He will sometimes check with me about a special dish or a vintage year. But this was a special occasion. He had already made up his mind that he wanted the steak with black mushroom sauce, and he ordered it and was served promptly, so no special assistance was needed from me.” Saunders nodded in agreement.

“What happened then?”

Antoine answered: “I gave the order to the chef, Sam Wheeler, and when the order was ready, I served it immediately to the customer.”

Monceau nodded in agreement. “Then, I opened and served his wine, after the customer checked the label. After that, I would check back from time to time, to see if everything was all right. It seemed to be, and Mr. Saunders left his typical generous cash tip. Though, he was in a hurry to leave when he finished his meal. He just picked up his credit card and left.”

Antoine smiled in agreement. We all went into the kitchen. Horton introduced us to Sam Wheeler, a beefy man wearing a large, white chef’s apron and cap. “Tell us about the truffle service,” I said. “Just take us through your routine.”

Sam Wheeler grunted a bit. “Those are special orders,” he began. “By that, I mean that each is cooked to order, never prepared in advance. Truffles are not cooked very long. If they were, they might lose some of the flavor that the customer is paying such a premium for,” he said. “Show me the truffles.” He pointed to a medium-sized jar. I picked it up. It was a French import from a famous and respected shipping house. “We had just two jars,” he said, pointing to a hall-full jar: “I cook in front of the entire staff, they know we used one jar last week, and this is what remains from the second jar -- after three orders today. We’ll run out entirely soon.”

“How many orders can you make per jar?”

“ … About six.”

“Do you get many orders for steak with black mushrooms?”

“Sure, plenty of them. It’s something of a specialty here. A good dish, certainly. But not the same as steak and truffles!”

“Have you cooked truffles before?” I asked.

He bristled a bit, but admitted that he had seen it done when he was in culinary school, but had never before done it himself. They were just too expensive for student chefs to handle.

“Could there be a mistake, with one dish ordered and the wrong one served?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Also, I never serve the two together in the same dish. If the customer ordered steak with truffle sauce, and got mushrooms instead, there has been either a mistake or a crime.”

They were stunned. We left the kitchen, and Antoine and Georges Manceau went back to their stations. Saunders left, somewhat pacified that the matter was being closely investigated.

I took Horton aside and asked to see the daily receipts. He introduced Sally Horvats, the hostess who doubled as cashier. A troubled-looking brunette, she came over at Horton’s nod. “No, I really didn’t see anything,” she said. “It was a busy day, and there was just time to seat Mr. and Mrs. Saunders and give them their food menus. And then some more customers appeared at the front door, and I had to go and greet them.”

She was nervous, and I remembered why. Horton had told me that she was on parole for petty larceny. He was giving her a chance to redeem herself, a chance that, over the last six months, had seemed justified. “That’s right,” Horton said. “She was on duty all last week, but couldn’t have been at any table more than a couple of minutes.”

A new thought came to me. “How about the day’s receipts, Mr. Horton? And last week’s too, while you’re at it.”

We went to his office. Everything seemed to be in order. There were three orders for today, and six orders of the special truffled steaks for last week, including the order for the Saunders luncheon, and there were also six credit card duplicates for those orders.

“So it was just a mistake after all,” Horton said. “This proves it.”

I thought for a minute. “No, Mr. Horton. It was grand larceny. I know who switched the orders,” I said.