Knives at Dawn

by Andrew Friedman

  While he was still chewing on Rosendale’s fish course, Vongerichten rose to snap a picture of the platter that had come out of Kitchen Number 2, bearing Kevin Sbraga’s fish offering: medallions of cod loin topped with pecans and tomato marmalade; slabs of Swiss chard–wrapped shell-fish terrine, a rectangle of duck liver showing in its center; “shrimp and grits” topped with a fried quail egg; and seared scallops perched atop green-onion bread pudding. The most distinctive component was okra, stuffed with a seasoned bacon mixture, buttermilk-battered, fried, and held aloft on antenna-like stands. Reviews were decidedly mixed: many judges—O’Connell and Vongerichten among them—praised Sbraga’s creativity and embraced the Southern theme, but others found the flavor lacking or the overall effect too convoluted.

  For all the drama in the kitchens and on the platters, the energy in the auditorium was strangely low. The stadium seating had filled up, but appeared to be populated by Duane Hanson sculptures, as many didn’t seem to know quite what to make of the spectacle, staring impassively at the competition floor.

  Boulud found Pelka at the edge of the competition space, and decided to pump up the energy by putting Pelka herself in front of them. He ran out to center stage and introduced her to the audience, adding emcee to her list of duties. Even though they had never discussed the possibility of her joining the hosting roster, she jumped right in to educate the turistas.

  “What you may not know about the Bocuse d’Or is that it’s like a football game,” she said, explaining the competition in France and how the chefs had fans rooting for them. She got their energy up, interviewing Daniel Humm at the judges table, and having Sbraga’s family and friends hold up their handmade sign, “Sbraga + Patel PUSH.”

  From Kitchen Number 3, Rotondo and Petrusky sent out their fish platter: a rectangular silver tray with cod wrapped in baterra kombu (kelp) and topped with fermented black garlic and a frizzle of fried baterra kombu slivers. A flotilla of little silver kayaks housed seared Long Island sea scallops topped with a coil of haricot de mar (a type of kelp with what Rotondo calls a “fettuccine-like appearance”) and a clove of elephant garlic. In the center of the platter, in a triangle pattern, were arranged six servings of Hawaiian blue prawn mousse with molten black garlic in the center, and on the other side were Spanish chorizo profiteroles that resembled small sliders filled with Oregon chanterelle mushrooms. Overwhelmingly, the judges were knocked out by the taste (“Set and leave a great flavor in my mouth,” wrote Alain Sailhac), though a few, Kaysen among them, dinged Rotondo for cold food and even cold plates.

  Somewhere along the way, Whatley and Johnson found themselves back on track, having regained their rhythm. “It’s like at a restaurant,” said Whatley. “It can be a little rough, that first seating, but by the time the second seating rolls around you’re in it.” They were also aided by the size of the kitchen, smaller than the one they practiced in. As Henin had said, seconds and minutes add up; all the time they saved not covering the same amount of turf they’d had to back home put precious minutes back on their clock and they were as synced up as they’d ever been. They reclaimed so much ground that Whatley only had to pass one job to Johnson, asking him to fry up arepas (cornmeal crêpes) for the beef platter.

  There were, however, some last-second hiccups: because the oven wasn’t calibrated the same as the one back home, their corn custards doubled in size, and because the fryer was smaller, their Tater Tots didn’t quite hold together. But the platter, titled “New England Seaboard Flavors,” came out on time, headlined by poached cod hugged by a summer truffle mousseline and crusted with shrimp. Garnishes included Ping Pong ball–sized cod brandade fritters topped with squares of ham hock sandwiched around a piece of Vermont cheddar and held in place with a steel pin, and in the back corner of the platter, a vessel containing sauce Newburg. Comments were all over the map: O’Connell, in a sheet littered with nothing but 8s and 9s, rhapsodized about all aspects of the platter, while Vongerichten awarded a measly 6.8 for Originality and Creativity saying “safe combination.”

  At the end of the first round, only one thing was apparent to those who couldn’t taste: Rosendale’s presentations were on another level from those of his competitors, and he didn’t let up with his beef platter. On an identical arrowhead silver tray, he presented his “Contemporary American Beef Medley”: foie gras–infused beef tenderloin cooked sous vide, with an herb cloud garnished with a beef oxtail and shallot confit with potato chive mousseline and assorted wax beans; chili-braised beef cheeks, tomato, and mushroom inside a pasta timbale; and crêpe-encased white truffle custard with shaved black truffles. An oxtail jus accompanied the goods.

  In a score sheet of 8s and 9s (with an unlucky 7 tossed in for perhaps the most unexpected category, Technical Knife Skills), Laurent Tourondel raved: “Perfect Beef Temperature, Right on It, Just the Right Combination of Flavors, Very different, Amazing Details!!!, Top Level.” Others, such as Handke and Myers, offered mixed reviews.

  In the VIP area, sponsors and visiting dignitaries, such as James Beard Foundation President Susan Ungaro, and Florent Suplisson, Contest Manager of the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon, nibbled on hors d’oeuvres made with Rougié foie gras and sipped spirits provided by Diageo as they watched the action on the television.

  Sbarga’s meat course, featuring medallions of tenderloin and that redeye gravy he’d had in mind since the summer, emerged from Kitchen 2, complemented by candied yams topped with orange-blossom marshmallow presented in petit jars with spoons tucked into the clasp, and a lattice-topped pie of barbecued beef cheeks and collard greens, playfully referenced as “en croûte” on the team’s menu.

  He was happy with the platter, although he was a little worried about the cuisson because, ironically, “the oven cooked perfectly and we are not used to a perfect oven.”

  On stage, Boulud, having reclaimed the microphone, strolled up to Andre Soltner.

  “What did you think of that beef dish?” he asked of Sbraga’s composition, apparently forgetting his desire for poker faces all around.

  “A little sweet,” frowned Soltner. “A little modern.”

  Eager as ever to bridge divides, Boulud smiled up at the audience. “Well,” he said. “You are going to have to be a little in the present and a little in the past.” Nothing to see here, folks.

  As the judges nibbled on Sbraga’s meat dish, Rotondo’s platter emerged, starring braised beef-cheek rounds topped with grainy preserved mustard seeds and “petite coin” onions. Supporting players included sweet potato custard and crispy okra atop a scroll of black pepper tuile, and confit turnips filled with red wine–braised oxtail and caramelized shallots. (Many American chefs use confit to refer to ingredients slow cooked in warm oil, an adaptation of the French word for duck and other proteins cooked and stored in their own fat.)

  Comments on the flavors of Rotondo’s platter varied wildly, from “Okay” (Tourondel) to “Great-tasting food all around” (Handke). Where Rotondo took a hit was in the presentation scores. “Garniture too small/too simple,” wrote Michel Bouit, who should know, while David Myers scribbled, “Somewhat minimal which is ok, but made it look lacking.”

  Whatley’s meat platter came out: beef tenderloin larded with chorizo, corn spoonbread set in tiny skillets, oxtail timbale set atop that pan-fried arepa. Unfortunately, the judges were not kind, with most box scores in the 3 to 7 range.

  As the teams finished cooking, they pulled the curtains shut on their pods and set about cleaning them, a requirement in Orlando just as it would be in Lyon to leave everything in perfect order before departing the kitchen. They would also be judged on how well they did this.

  THAT NIGHT, BARACK OBAMA and John McCain duked it out in their first televised debate, but in Orlando the fighting had ceased. Day One and Day Two candidates mingled with VIPs at a Chef’s Beach Barbecue held on the sandy banks of a lagoon down the footpath from Disney’s Beach Club Resort Hotel.

  Amidst the bonfire and revelers, Sbraga and Patel reflec
ted on their day: Sbraga wasn’t at all relieved that his work was done: “If we win then I will be relieved,” he said. “If we don’t, then I will be disappointed.”

  “We really wanted this,” said Patel. “We were the team that wanted this the most. We want to go to France and represent the United States as a team. It would mean everything.”

  Standing on the edge of the party, reflecting on the day, Rosendale was haunted by a concern about the jury, composed as it was, predominantly of restaurant chefs: “I hope that everybody is looking at what the actual Bocuse is.… It is not restaurant food. It is not restaurant food. If this competition today was about your best restaurant dish, we would have a dish that the presentation was completely different.… The Bocuse is the ultimate in French finesse and, if we want to win that, then we need to beat them at their own game, and that is just an unbelievable amount of creativity and visual impact and big-flavor profiles.… There is an incredible panel of judges, but I just don’t know … how familiar they are with the actual Bocuse competition.”

  He shook his head, unsure of what to think.

  “I hope it wasn’t a twenty-minute orientation,” he said.

  ROLAND HENIN WAS MESMERIZED.

  It was early on the morning of September 27, aka Day Two of the Bocuse d’Or USA, and in Kitchen 3, Adina Guest, the commis of The French Laundry’s Timothy Hollingsworth, had gone through a transformation: casual and carefree at the prior days’ events, now her hair was pinned back, she stood at attention, and the affability in her face was replaced with stoic focus. Guest was well aware of the change because she had very deliberately developed her kitchen persona out of a belief that the kitchen is still a different place for a woman than it is for a man. She calls it her “Game Face,” and it creates the impression that she is several years older than her actual age of twenty-two.

  But that’s not what attracted the rapt attention of Henin, as well as that of Hartmut Handke, who stood alongside him. The two competition veterans were impressed that Guest was actually trimming the green tape she was using to attach her task list to the glass wall of the pod, ensuring that the border was perfectly straight on all four sides. Had Henin known the reason for the step, he would have been pleased; it was a reflection of the exactitude demanded by his former protégé, Keller. “That’s The French Laundry,” Guest would later say of the tape-trimming. “The reason that I fit in well at The French Laundry and the reason why we all fit in well is that we are perfectionists.… What I have learned from Chef Keller and Chef Tim, it doesn’t translate just into food, it translates into everything. The tape, it’s major. If I hadn’t cut off that little edge, every time I looked at it I would have noticed it and it would have thrown me off.”

  When told of the slack-jawed admiration his mentor and Chef Handke had demonstrated, Keller was surprisingly unhappy. “It really troubles me that people found that to be remarkable,” he said. “Because cooking is about precision … and precision doesn’t start when the plate’s finished. Precision starts when you wake up in the morning. It is a lifestyle. When someone is trimming the tape it’s like that’s habitual and that’s a habit that we try to propagate throughout the entire group.” Indeed, anybody who works at The French Laundry will tell you that ripping tape is strictly prohibited, so much so that on a rare occasion when an uninitiated commis makes the mistake of tearing off a piece, senior kitchen members—even from the next room—react to the noise like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  “You can’t just say, ‘Okay, I am going to rip the tape and put it down, don’t worry about it and then I will be precise when I plate my food,’ ” Keller continued. “That is not consistent … we are trying to be consistent, not inconsistent, so everything that you do has to be consistent with the final idea that the plate is going to be perfect. Even though it is never going to be perfect but that is the goal. So every step before that has to be the same. You have to take it the same way. You have to feel the same way about it.”

  It was her love of precision that had landed Adina Guest at The French Laundry in the first place.

  When she was a student at Kapi’olani Community College in Hawaii, Per Se’s chef de cuisine, Jonathan Benno, performed a cooking demo there, and Guest was the only student who volunteered to assist him. Among the dishes he demonstrated were Keller’s signature salmon cornets, which the chef famously conceived (originally with tuna tartare) at a Baskin-Robbins years ago. Guest was charged with folding napkins around the little cones. She spent thirty minutes on the assignment, an intricate chore that she treated with painstaking attention.

  “I had known about The French Laundry for a long time and it had been my dream to even eat there and I was super psyched to be helping him out,” she said.

  Benno remembers Guest well. “I have been doing this long enough, I can see most of the time someone who is going to be really, really good and she was one of those people.”

  After the demo, she approached Chef Benno and asked if there was a possibility of doing a stage at The French Laundry. Impressed with her, he instructed her to e-mail him her resumé.

  She didn’t hear anything for two months and had pretty much written off the idea, at least for the time being. But one day, just after winning a student cooking competition in Idaho, she was in her hotel room checking her e-mail and performed a routine check of her spam folder. Among the unmentionable advertisements was an e-mail from the human resources department of The French Laundry, congratulating her on being accepted for a stage.

  Following on the emotional release of competing, the news was overwhelming: she burst into tears.

  DAY 2 OF THE competition had begun much as the previous day had, with the chefs congregating in the hotel lobby. Absent was Hung Hyunh. Given his casual preparation for the weekend, one might naturally have wondered if he had overslept, but when the other teams arrived at the Showplace, he was already there, having driven over with Pelka.

  Hyunh and his commis, Girair (Jerry) Goumroian, a Culinary Institute of America student who met Hyunh while working at Guy Savoy in Las Vegas, occupied the same kitchen as Rosendale had the day before. Powell and Kyle Fiasconaro, a French Culinary Institute student who just a year earlier had been cooking at a Red Lobster on Long Island, were in Kitchen 2. In Kitchen 3 were Hollingsworth and Guest, and in Kitchen 4 were Rellah and Forchelli.

  Hyunh and Hollingsworth had their eye on each other because they had something in common: Thomas Keller, and each presumed the other to be the favorite for the weekend.

  The presence of Hyunh evokes unavoidable comparisons between American television cooking competitions like Top Chef and the Bocuse d’Or. But despite surface similarities, the two are actually quite different. Where the Bocuse d’Or follows the same format contest after contest, a great deal of the drama of Top Chef is conjured by pulling the rug out from under the cheftestants in weekly challenges, sometimes altering the rules midstream. For example, on one episode in the winter 2009 season, the competitors were charged with cooking a recipe out of the Top Chef cookbook. Midway through their frantic improvisation, Grant Achatz, the red-hot chef of Alinea restaurant in Chicago and a former Thomas Keller disciple, emerged in the kitchen along with cohost Padma Lakshmi. “We’ve changed our minds,” said Lakshmi, whereupon Achatz smirked maliciously into the camera and announced, “We want soup.” The competitors then had to take what they’d prepared to that point, change gears, and fashion a soup with it, using Swanson’s broth. (One thing the Bocuse d’Or and Top Chef have in common is unapologetic product placement; the first thing that greets visitors to the Bocuse d’Or Web site is a shot of outer space from which an Eau de Perrier logo rushes up from the distance and explodes like the Death Star.)

  After his experience, Hyunh would offer this comparison of the Bocuse d’Or and Top Chef: “Bocuse is more like a three-star Michelin [restaurant]. The dishes are perfected before you even do it. You are satisfied, the restaurant is satisfied, and your execution had better be perfect. Top Che
f is more like when a customer comes in, they are ninety years old and they want this [a special request] now. They both reflect reality … in Top Chef you have to be creative and think on your feet and work fast. Do or die. In Bocuse, you have no excuses because you have time to train.”

  The morning did not go exactly as planned for Hyunh, but he didn’t know that: almost as soon as they started cooking, his commis sliced his finger. Badly. But he bandaged himself up and continued without the chef taking note. As the morning progressed, Hyunh’s lack of preparation began to show: his kitchen was cluttered, leftover ingredients were left strewn about, and he violated many tenets of Cooking Competition 101, such as reusing a tasting spoon without cleaning it. Watching him from outside the kitchen’s glass wall, one of the proctors shook his head mournfully and muttered, “All day long,” as he made a note on his score sheet. (By contrast, Rosendale had gone through more than 100 spoons the day before.)

  Hyunh also had a bit of a run-in with A. J. Schaller, who was tasked with making sure the candidates got whatever they needed in the kitchen. When he reached for corn that wasn’t where he remembered leaving it during his set up, Hyunh waved Schaller over and accusatorially asked her where it was.

  “Nobody touched your corn,” she said.

  “It was right here,” he replied, sounding a bit heated.

  “Well, I’m telling you—”

  “Never mind,” he said, waving his arms. “If it’s not here, I won’t use it. That’s fine.”