Sorcerer's Apprentices (eBook)

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June, or the Machine

'Quemo. Quemo. Quemo, quemo, quemo. Quemo. QUE-mo!'

The most important thing the stagiaires learn on their first day at elBulli is this word: quemo. Literally, it means 'I burn.' The ones who don't speak Spanish don't know that, however, and so, as they mouth the strange word in the early days before it becomes reflex, it comes out a question, one often formed, it seems, in their own language: Kay-moh? Qumeau?

At the restaurant, quemo is an all-purpose warning: behind you, coming through, hot stuff, watch your back. There is no room for variation in this kitchen, where forty-five chefs and cooks and stagiaires and dishwashers from different countries are constantly moving, and so one word must carry the burden of many kinds of caution. If you listen closely, you'll hear it in the background of the louder, more obvious din created by the Thermomix whirring and coconuts being cracked and orders being fired and marrow bones being sawed apart and the occasional plate crashing to the floor. It is always there, like a looped soundtrack, this steady chorus of quemos.

The cooks are supposed to say the word as they round the treacherous bend between the small kitchen and the main one or step through the portal that divides the hot stations from the cold--an alert on a blind curve. Some, however, repeat it as they pass through any crowded area of the kitchen, rhythmically announcing each step-- 'QUEmoQUEmoQUEmo'--so that the word becomes a mantra against accidental bumping and other calamities. Admittedly, this produces something of a boy-who-cried-wolf situation: how do you know when something really is hot? For that, the kitchen has spontaneously devised variations: quemo mucho for when a cook takes a hot pan from the flattop and turns around to empty its contents at his station--in other words, when something really is hot.

Except for when it isn't. Aitor Zabala, the chef de partie of Cold Station, says, 'Quemo mucho' as he takes a tray of Ponds, delicate glass bowls of ice that will become one of this year's stellar dishes, and moves them from one freezer to another. In other words, he says 'Quemo mucho' not when he is burning a lot but when he is freezing. The other variations are a little more reliable: quemo mximo is used for pots of boiling oil and other potentially disfiguring substances. And this being elBulli, at least twice a day comes the warning quemo nitro, as two of the cooks--protective goggles strapped to their heads, a cloud of smoke trailing behind them--haul a tank of liquid nitrogen back to the cold station.

Quemo has its personal variations as well. Katie Button never completely loses the querulous tone of the first day, for her, quemo will always be a question. Luke Jang puts the accent on the second syllable, which has the effect, like so much of what he does, of making his version seem faster, more efficient. For Luis Arrufat, quemo is a kind of personal manifesto, a bellowed I am here!, as if he were the lead in a musical who, having already walked onstage and puffed out his chest, still feels the need to signal that he is about to commence singing. The chefs de cuisine, Eduard Xatruch and Oriol Castro, get away with not saying it at all, it's a sign of their authority that they can assume that any person with whom they might collide will say it first. When they do use the word, it carries a distinctly didactic tone, as if to say, 'Remember? This is how you're supposed to do it.' Ferran doesn't have to say...