Henin made two unproductive visits to Yountville in early November, finding Hollingsworth largely unavailable because, in addition to his working schedule, he was down with the flu for several days. But the two did engage in some tense conversations over the calendar. In addition to the schedule, Henin tried to convince Hollingsworth to employ a grid that would ensure they hit all the necessary marks on both platters: flavors, textures, colors, and so on. Hollingsworth wasn’t interested; those were obvious concerns, he said, and ones that he considered on a daily basis when he shepherded a new menu to fruition at The French Laundry. Hollingsworth would later acknowledge that he took the grid suggestion personally, a sign that even though he might have been ignorant of the ways of competition, Henin didn’t give him credit for all that he did know.
Despite the tension, Henin—who is nothing if not a realist—tried to keep an open mind about Hollingsworth’s fidelity to his job, especially if he could weave proteins and garnishes from his platter into the daily menu at The French Laundry, as he planned to. “I am all for it,” said Henin. “If it can be done. If you can incorporate [the food into the restaurant menu], so much the better, as a practical issue and an economical one, too, because you don’t waste the food. You get feedback from the customer and you can pay for the food that you used.” But the coach quickly developed the opinion that Hollingsworth was “in limbo … neither at work, neither in practice, he was always in between.” He also had the feeling that the candidate didn’t understand what he was up against. Hadn’t Hollingsworth taken those words from The French Culinary Institute to heart, the ones about it not mattering what you’ve done before, where you work, or who you know? Even to a sous chef from The French Laundry, a culinary competition, especially a five-hour-plus labor of love like the Bocuse d’Or, was something to be respected—the difference between basic training and actual combat, or in Henin’s preferred long-distance-running analogy, a sprint and a marathon.
In an attempt to accommodate everybody’s needs, a revised monthly calendar was fashioned that included the coach’s goals while also showing the days Hollingsworth was committed to working his regular job. One glance revealed a daunting void at the end of November, when Hollings-worth was set to work at The French Laundry Saturday the twenty-second and Sunday the twenty-third, then decamp for Maine and girlfriend Kate Laughlin’s family for the Thanksgiving holiday—a week of non-Bocuse time after which he’d be plunked down in December, just six weeks from the departure to Lyon.
Henin couldn’t have disagreed more with that decision. “Not when you have the Bocuse d’Or in six weeks!” he said.
BEYOND THE SCHEDULING KERFUFFLE, the truth was that Hollingsworth just plain didn’t want company yet, not from Henin, not from anybody. He might have been working, but by early November, feeling ready to try his hand at competition platters, he had also been conceptualizing his cuisine and he felt he had to do it on his own, that his dishes needed to flow naturally from him and be given the time and oxygen to grow.
There’s no one path to conceiving a dish. But for many chefs, the creative moment—the instant when an idea emerges from the primordial mental swamp, either fully formed or requiring further evolution—often does not involve a protein. The average diner might be surprised to know that the fish, poultry, or meat is frequently the last tumbler to fall into place; as often as not, inspiration offers up a notion for a fresh variation on a familiar theme, a new sauce, or a combination of accompaniments. Even for those chefs who begin the thought process with a protein, it’s almost unheard of that they would begin with three or four of them in mind.
This is one of the distinct challenges of the Bocuse d’Or: the proteins are the only parameters dictated by the organizers, and both the fish and meat platter demand the harmonizing of several of them. In 2009, it would be Norwegian fresh cod, Norwegian king scallops, and Norwegian wild prawns on the fish platter, and Scotch Beef Aberdeen Angus oxtail, beef cheeks, côte de boeuf (bone-in rib-eye, of which each candidate would be receiving three on a “carvery cut forerib”), and fillet (tenderloin) on the meat.
In addition to the assigned proteins, Hollingsworth had imposed some other parameters on himself. Because time was short, he had decided to incorporate preparations that Guest already had expertise in from her work at The French Laundry. Chive chips weren’t the only thing she already knew how to do: she also did a lot of Silpat work, such as making melba toasts and pommes Maxim (potato rounds tossed in clarified butter and baked together in an overlapping pattern), and adored brunoise for the precision it demanded. To give her a head start, or to help her make up lost time, Hollingsworth wanted to work those elements and techniques into his Bocuse d’Or food as well.
Beyond the hours he devoted at The French Laundry, Hollingsworth began spending personal time on his Bocuse d’Or menu. He’d sit in the living room of his Napa apartment, cookbooks surrounding him on shelves high and low, a steady blend of rap and hip-hop blaring out open windows, and, with the California breeze ruffling its pages, make preliminary drawings in a sketch pad, occasionally flying an idea by Laughlin, both for her feedback and because hearing the ideas out loud made them seem more “real” to him.
There’s no point denying the obvious: it had been more than a month since Orlando, and Hollingsworth was struggling, experiencing the cook’s equivalent of writer’s block. The meat selections practically tormented him. There might have been four different cuts, but when you got right down to it, they were all beef, and making your mark on beef is a distinct challenge. Because beef is such a powerful presence on the plate and the palate, it’s often the least creative offering on even the most progressive menus.
Nevertheless, in fits and starts, ideas began to trickle forth. Building on his desire to present something distinctly American at the Bocuse d’Or, something identifiable and straightforward, he began to think of his mother. Hollingsworth often said that he cooked for his mother, tried to make food that, if she were to dine at The French Laundry, she would enjoy eating. His memories of her home cooking are so strong that foie gras at the restaurant is occasionally served atop a slice of Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Banana Bread, so identified on the menu and made with her original recipe. This train of thought led him to the oxtail—a tough cut that requires braising or stewing to break down its connective tissues—and it occurred to him that maybe he’d cook it in a way that referenced his mom’s beef stew.
It was a start, but the truth was that nothing he thought of or sketched out felt good enough, exciting enough, with enough bells and whistles for a competition. And did he even want those bells and whistles? A tension was emerging between who he was as a cook and what the Bocuse d’Or demanded of its competitors: he did not want his food to look like quintessential competition fare, with what he called “those funny circles.” Twenty-eight-years-young, sitting there in his preferred personal-time ensemble of tattered jeans, a T-shirt, and black knit cap, he wasn’t interested in cooking old food.
As crumpled pages flowed from his pad into the wastebasket, frustration mounted. But he stuck with it, and additional ideas began to come into focus. It dawned on him that he should confit the cod—slowly, gently cooking it in an olive oil bath—because that was the most foolproof way of dealing with the quirk of timing presented by the competition—the notorious lag time between food leaving the window and actually being tasted: “If I were to take a sautéed piece of fish and parade it around for twenty minutes, it’s not going to be good,” he said. “If I take a confit piece of fish, [it] can be piping hot or it can be ice cold and it is still going to be very good. It puts all the moisture inside of it.” That moistness would also provide leeway; the fish could be slightly over-or undercooked and nobody would be the wiser.
He also had a partially formed idea for a garnish: sandwiching something (he wasn’t sure what yet) between brioche melba toast rectangles and topping the sandwich-like stack with a rectangular custard and a piece of spring garlic (young, green garlic with a gent
le, scallion-like flavor).
And that was where he was with little more than two months to go: a vague notion about riffing on his mother’s beef stew, a decision to confit cod (probably), and a brioche-and-custard garnish—the most tenuous of beginnings for three of the eight components he’d need to come up with, then perfect, for his platters.
GAVIN KAYSEN, THREE THOUSAND miles away, monitored what was beginning to feel like snail’s-pace progress from his small, sparse office overlooking the Café Boulud kitchen. There were no official systems of reporting established, so information from the West Coast was scarce, but Kaysen had been in touch with Hollingsworth sporadically by phone and e-mail. Having helped inspire Boulud, then Keller, to take on the Bocuse d’Or USA, Kaysen found the notion that not a single recipe had been finalized “nerve-wracking.” Perhaps more than anybody, more even than Hollingsworth himself, Kaysen wanted the United States to touch that podium, and wanted to be a part of the effort that got it done. He felt that he understood Hollingsworth’s quandary better than the candidate himself: you get picked to go to Lyon, then reality settles in; you realize what you’re up against and how well-funded and well-organized the competition is, and that they’ve been to the event before, and have past medalists consulting them, and you mentally curl up in a fetal position—at least that’s what Kaysen figured was going on. He’d done the same thing, but he’d had more time.
The situation wasn’t lost on Boulud who, with hopes of jump-starting things, had planned an intensive week for the team in mid-November, reaching out to Joseph Viola, chef-owner of Daniel et Denise restaurant in Lyon and a former organizing committee member (the chefs who serve as technical judges, help parade the platters, and perform other essential tasks) for the Bocuse d’Or. The Bocuse d’Or USA paid Viola an undisclosed consulting fee to fly from France to California and impart his institutional knowledge of the competition to Hollingsworth. A working session was scheduled for Monday, November 17, with Chef Henin arriving that afternoon.
Kaysen had decided to join the group as well. Eager to get out west and light a fire under Hollingsworth, Kaysen arranged a Sunday arrival so the two of them could have a heart-to-heart, man-to-man, chef-to-chef confab before the others arrived. Kaysen also wanted to begin the process of downloading whatever intel he himself had to share, from a competitor’s point of view. He was emerging as Team USA’s recon guy, the one who had been behind enemy lines and lived to tell the tale, and he wanted to help Hollingsworth and Guest with little tricks such as laying carpet down in the competition kitchen to provide traction on the slick floors or draping a sheet of canvas over the open doorway at the back of the kitchen pod because Kitchen 6, where the team would be competing on Day 2 of the Bocuse d’Or, is right across the corridor from the door to the parking lot that swings open and closed all competition long; Kaysen still remembered well how powdery snow had accumulated in the doorway the day he competed.
Since Hollingsworth hadn’t yet determined the food, former candidate Kaysen couldn’t help but think about what he would do with the given proteins. One notion he had was bleaching the bones on the ribs of the côte de boeuf and making them the centerpiece of the beef platter: a manly celebration of the meat itself that he thought would resonate with other chefs. He had also begun compiling a list of the food that was going to be available from The French Laundry’s Garden in January. He read from it: “Lettuces, radicchio, frisée, kale, collards, chard, baby beets, baby carrots, baby turnips, baby radish, green [spring] garlic, baby onions, baby leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, Romanesco (a psychedelic, lime-green summer cauliflower), and Savoy cabbage. Awesome!” He grinned wide as he imagined the possibilities: “You know, Savoy cabbage would be a really fun garnish to do with the beef.”
Kaysen had also jotted down ideas for combinations and garnishes: “Cardoons and black truffles are always good with braised beef cheeks and shallot confit or shallot marmalade or a shallot tuile. Celery root, carrot cannelloni, stuffed cabbage. Smoked foie gras or poached foie gras with quince. Apples, celery leaves—one of the two. Pommes dauphine or pommes croquettes. Foie gras cromesqui [a savory croquette that retains heat very well] with port wine gelée or a port wine disk or black pepper tuile. A Lyonnaise-style potato cannelloni made with a pommes cromesqui on top of that.”
He had just as many ideas for the fish platter: “Cod: Stuffed baby artichokes with confit cod belly wrapped in artichoke with green zucchini. Stencil leaves out of green zucchini for the green. Cod with black truffles is always a great combination. Scallop mousse. Possibly a monkfish liver. Can you poach monkfish liver? In Riesling? Whatever. Cardoons are good with shrimp. Shrimp crêpes with cabbage styled like an Alsatian clam chowder.”
Kaysen was also taken with the idea of using candy dishes for serving that were produced by Austria’s Lobmeyr and obtained in the United States from the design store Moss—individually hand-blown lidded orbs that stood on little stands that The French Laundry and Per Se sometimes used to smoke dishes à la minute: for example, a foie gras composition would be brought to a guest in the orb, the bowl full of freshly applied smoke, and when the lid was removed, the smoke would swirl around the food, dissipating as the diner dug in. At $245 each, these would be an expensive addition to the platters, but Kaysen thought they were worth it. At the moment, he was thinking they should be used to serve foie gras.
As he rattled off the possibilities, Kaysen spontaneously gave voice to the endgame in his mind: “We have got to figure out exactly what it is going to take to have him win,” Kaysen said. “We gotta hit that podium. That would be huge.”
Listening to Kaysen imagine all the possibilities, one could be forgiven for forgetting that he wouldn’t actually be competing in 2009. And here’s the funny thing about Kaysen: there are guys like him all over the world, chefs for whom the Bocuse d’Or is a sort of idée fixe: they competed once, didn’t win, and are now on a mission to succeed, even vicariously. The more extreme cases suit up for a second go at the gold: Rasmus Kofoed of Denmark nabbed the bronze in 2005, then competed again in 2007, winning silver, but had decided against returning again in 2009. But there was one return contestant on the way: Australian candidate Luke Croston had been the commis on the 2003 team, then competed for his country in 2007, coming in twelfth. He would be there again in January 2009. Croston had been hooked on the Bocuse d’Or from his debut as a commis, which he called “a mind-blowing experience.” Then twenty years old, he “had never seen anything that big.… I wanted to have a go at it myself and … see how close I could get to the top of the world,” he said. When he placed twelfth, he decided to go for it again, because he was disappointed and felt he could do better. With Serge Vieira advising him, he had stopped working in late summer and begun training about five days a week.
Kaysen’s mood swung from excitement to exasperation. Fueled by a personal passion for success at the Bocuse d’Or, Kaysen wanted to be as supportive as possible, but he also didn’t want to waste time. For the coming week, Keller’s precise, hospitality-minded team had arranged a thoughtful visit for their guests, with no detail left to chance—the schedule indicated where lunch was going to come from and when (for example, “12:30 p.m., Sandwiches from [Bouchon] Bakery”), and group dinners planned each night. Though he imagined one of those dinners might be scrapped in favor of him and Hollingsworth getting in the kitchen and actually cooking, Kaysen was okay with them. But when he saw that a tour of the West Coast outpost of The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, just up Highway 29 from Yountville, had been planned for Tuesday morning, he e-mailed the schedule back with one word added in red next to the field trip: “Why?”
The CIA excursion was promptly canceled.
WITH THOUGHTS OF TOUGH love in mind, Kaysen arrived in Yountville late Sunday morning, November 16. Northern California was summery then, with squint-inducing sunlight, temperatures in the high sixties, and not a trace of humidity. Kaysen ducked into Bouchon for lunch, then met Hollingsworth outside the restaur
ant and the two of them walked along Washington Street to the Bocuse House, as people had taken to referring to the former home of Edward Keller, where a Marine Corps flag still flew over the porch.
Hollingsworth wasn’t thrilled about the coming week. He felt the need to work on his platters and didn’t know what to do with all these people around. He ran the question by Keller, who—according to Hollingsworth—told him, “This is your thing, Tim. If you want to meet with these guys for an hour and then you want to leave afterward and go do your own thing, you can do that. This is your deal. You can do whatever you want.”
Kaysen was immediately struck, as most visitors were, that the structure that housed Team USA’s much publicized training center was, unmistakably, a house. Up a few steps from the sidewalk to the porch and through the front door, one entered a living room with wainscoted walls and a built-in entertainment center on the right. To the left was a modest living room outfitted with a brown leather couch, a low-lying coffee table, and behind that was a little office nook with a desk, a computer, and a printer. In a corner were large corrugated cardboard boxes filled with smaller All-Clad white boxes containing brand-new mixing bowls, pots, and pans—a good indicator of where the team was, or wasn’t, in its development.
Just past the living room was the kitchen, with two rolling prep tables in the center of the room, and all that equipment that matched what was to be provided in Lyon organized around its perimeter: a Convotherm combi oven (capable of producing dry heat, steam, and a combination), a Garland salamander (an industrial strength broiler) and electric range, a Delfield refrigerator, undercounter refrigerator, and freezer, a microwave oven, blast chiller, heat lamp—about $100,000 in equipment. But even with all this top-of-the-line machinery, it felt more like a home kitchen than Kaysen had expected, with a skylight in the ceiling and a back door that led out to a small deck. A few details personalized the space even further, like the Mickey Mouse trophy from Orlando that rested on the window ledge, and the round Obama magnet stuck to the side of the freezer, put there by Keller himself. Adina Guest, between homes and taking full advantage of her invitation to live there as a member of the team, also had some personal food items, such as cereal, stored in glass canisters.
Knives at Dawn Page 13