Knives at Dawn

by Andrew Friedman

  “He wouldn’t just do that for the USA,” said Kaysen. “He would do it for any team. If it happened to Singapore, he would say something.”

  As these conversations unspooled, Hollingsworth came and went. On some occasions, it was to check on something at The French Laundry. On others, it was to go to The French Laundry but not to check on anything; it was because he needed space, a break from all the people around, trying to advise him on how to cook and serve a menu that he hadn’t finished devising yet. At one point, Hollingsworth returned as Viola, Kaysen, and Henin (who had just arrived and would be staying in the House’s second bedroom) were discussing the schedule. Hearing their anxiety, he averted his gaze and smiled a bemused grin. Though he knew he was in deeper water now, he had changed one of his platters mere days before Orlando and come back with gold, so the fact that he was a bit behind the assigned schedule didn’t concern him.

  “Tout se joue pendant la première heure et demi,” said Viola. Your first hour and a half is the most important.

  “After that, it’s a shit show,” said Kaysen. “Shit show” is one of Kaysen’s favorite expressions. “That first morning was a shit show.” “That event was a shit show.” That practice, the one we thought would go so well? “Total shit show.”

  As they spoke, a Thomas Keller Restaurant Group associate, in a button-down blue Oxford shirt and khakis, appeared at the door with a Rosetta Stone box under arm. “I’ve been instructed to install this on a Macintosh over here,” he said.

  “Yeah, this would be the place,” said Kaysen.

  In addition to training for the Bocuse d’Or, Hollingsworth planned to take his French to another level before heading to Lyon. “You do the DVDs,” he said, reciting the company’s promise, with a touch of skepticism in his voice. “And you are fluent.”

  Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. Nothing in front of him was.

  THAT EVENING, THE GROUP, joined by Adina Guest, headed to dinner at Ken Frank’s restaurant La Toque at the Westin Verasa Hotel in Napa. The restaurant is hard to miss, with a giant toque hovering like a foodie mirage above the open-air corridor that runs along its exterior.

  In the dining room, after orders were taken, Viola began dispensing his seemingly bottomless pit of Bocuse d’Or wisdom with Henin translating: “Do not overtrain in Lyon. Do it once, and discuss.”

  Hollingsworth and Guest nodded.

  “During the day of the event, your stomach will be upset. You will be nervous. So make sure everything, even salt, is measured.” Viola’s point was that you can’t trust senses that are affected by stress.

  In the dim light of the restaurant, Viola, and in turn Henin, assumed an almost spiritual tone, suitable to a séance: “All of us who work around Tim and Adina leave them the room to think about food. We are here to remove any problems and concerns. Starting today, we cannot talk to you about nothing but the platter. Not the hotel, the lodging. You cannot be bothered. Just eat, drink, sleep, dream your platter.”

  Chef Henin paused before relaying the next sentence from Viola’s lips. He tilted his head forward slightly, and looked up, delivering advice that he wholeheartedly agreed with: “And, honestly,” he said, “We are late.”

  Hollingsworth jumped into the abyss left by that proclamation: “Good,” he said. “We work well under pressure.”

  Chef Henin translated for Viola: “Good! Sometimes it’s good to have fire in your ass.” Henin smirked devilishly: “Well, he didn’t say ass.”

  Next, Kaysen took a turn translating for Viola: “When the jury tastes your food, it’s one bite.” Kaysen, who has a penchant for catchphrases and go-to one-liners, editorialized: “It’s like I say, you live and die in eight bites.”

  Over dinner, Viola—with Henin back on translating duty—offered some advice about the realities of the competition world. “In a competition, you need to be smart.” Henin, recognizing more counsel he believed in, took a few liberties with the translation, and added: “Not be a goomba, naïve asshole, fuck up something stupid.

  “You have to be a little bit slick … a lot of these people are sharks. Open cheating is not allowed, but there are tricks—”

  “Street smart?” asked Hollingsworth.

  This elicited nods from the elders. He got it. But then Hollingsworth jumped in with a joke: “Bring your protein in a wine bottle?”

  It was a sly reference to an occasionally alleged aspect of the Bocuse d’Or that you won’t find in the press materials, but which are a part of the oral history of the event: the question of whether or not cheating has occurred. The most outlandish drama transpired in 2007, when gold medalist Fabrice Desvignes was accused by representatives of the German and Denmark teams of sneaking in already-prepared ingredients. According to eye-witnesses, two metal containers were delivered to Desvignes’ kitchen after the competition began, a violation of the rules. Contest Director Suplisson told The Times (of London) that the containers arrived two minutes before cooking commenced due to the snow storm that morning, and contained foie gras and silverware.

  Henin told a story about how he once Crazy-Glued some pastry wings to a figure in a competition, probably not a moral offense, but not exactly a textbook maneuver. Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

  After a brief silence, Hollingsworth said, “Integrity is important to us. If we can’t win with integrity, then we can’t win.”

  Guest nodded. Though she and Hollingsworth barely know each other, they were in perfect sync on this point.

  Integrity was also on Hollingsworth’s mind because he was concerned about whether or not it was aboveboard that Viola was even there. Earlier in the day, Viola had revealed that he had just signed on to again serve as an organizing committee member for the Bocuse d’Or, though he had not yet made that commitment when he agreed to counsel Team USA. Was this a conflict of interest?

  As Hollingsworth got up to go to the men’s room, he said, definitively, “I don’t want anybody saying the American team cheated.”

  A MOCK-UP OF TEAM USA’s Bocuse d’Or meat platter—pieces of cardboard held together with clear packing tape—sat on one of the rolling prep tables in the center of the Bocuse House kitchen. It wasn’t a gaudy platter. If anything, it was excessively understated: rectangular with a wide lower berth for the main protein, and two narrow tiered shelves at the back for garnishes. The platter had been envisioned by restaurant designer Adam Tihany, whom Boulud had arranged for Hollingsworth to meet with in New York City when the candidate was there to shoot a Bocuse d’Or related Food & Wine magazine story in October. The platter would be realized by Custom Designers & Silversmiths, a start-up concern spearheaded by Daniel J. Scannell, a certified master chef and member of the United States Culinary Olympic team since 1998, who was the managing partner, along with Richard Rosendale. The two worked in conjunction with third partner, the actual silversmith, Olle Johanson, to bring Tihany’s platters to life. Because metal-crafting is painstaking, time-consuming work, the facsimile was all Hollingsworth could use to help plan his presentation; the actual platters would not be available until just before the competition. The showiest flourish was unrepresented on the facsimile: the two elevated tiers would feature a total of twelve illuminated circles on which the smoke glasses would sit, creating a dramatic visual effect.

  It was Tuesday morning, and Hollingsworth, Henin, Viola, and Kaysen stood over the platter examining it, trying to imagine it rendered in silver. Viola and Henin shook their heads. Not good enough.

  Viola sighed, then launched into one of his pocket lectures, pointing out, with a photograph of the 2005 French fish platter as an example, that the protein is almost always elevated, a pedestal effect. Hollingsworth’s platters had none of that—the meat platter, represented by the three-tiered cardboard prototype, had some height, but not in the conventional sense, and the main protein would actually be situated below the garnishes. And the fish platter would simply be a porcelain rectangle, with no levels at all to speak of. There
wasn’t even a cardboard version of that one, because no imagination was required to picture it. The understated design was an apt reflection of Hollingsworth’s personality, and of The French Laundry aesthetic he had absorbed over the past seven years. But it was not in line with the classic Bocuse d’Or sensibility, and this concerned the elders in the room.

  Henin inverted a fluted casserole dish onto the top shelf of the cardboard meat platter to make Viola’s point for him. He began riffling through photographs, searching for something specific. “Centerpiece …” he said.

  “I understand what a centerpiece is,” said Hollingsworth, again taking some offense at the presumption of ignorance.

  Viola spoke. Henin translated: “By the end of the month, have all the platters conceptualized, would be ideal.”

  Hollingsworth just smiled, but said nothing.

  Viola looked at him, imploringly: “Tim-oh-see?”

  Hollingsworth’s frustration with the crowd of observers bubbled over again: “That’s obvious, come on.”

  Viola spoke, and Henin again translated: “Again, I want to clarify, by the end of the month, have both platters conceptualized.”

  Hollingsworth didn’t even bother replying this time.

  Viola also had another point to make, a more abstract one, but a crucial one. He pointed to the Italian platter from 2005: “Ça n’as pas de vie.” He waved his hands to animate his words. This does not have life.

  Then he pointed to the 2007 French platter. “Cela a la vie.” This has life. “Il a le mouvement.” It has movement.

  And having conveyed all that he could convey in twenty-four hours, Viola changed back into his traveling clothes, took his rolling cart in hand, and left the House.

  The next time they saw him would be in Lyon, at the Bocuse d’Or.

  AFTER VIOLA DEPARTED, KAYSEN read Hollingsworth an e-mail from Boulud saying that Viola’s counsel was no problem, because he had committed to making the trip before he was approached about helping out at the Bocuse d’Or.

  Later Henin, Kaysen, and Hollingsworth reviewed the schedule for December. Hollingsworth was off from December 16 to December 19, but Henin was planning to be in Yountville on the twenty-eighth.

  “Okay,” said Hollingsworth. “I’m working the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, thirtieth, thirty-first, and first. Then I’m off the whole month of January.”

  Henin explained that he couldn’t change his schedule to be there the week of the sixteenth. Hollingsworth didn’t know what to tell him.

  Henin made a theatrically flustered face, and looked at Kaysen, who didn’t offer anything. What could he do? Henin shrugged, and looked away.

  It would be Henin’s last stand on the scheduling issue. Having made his case to anybody who would listen, he resigned himself to the situation. “They didn’t know [what they were up against],” he said. “You can’t blame them. I didn’t want to fight it. I said, ‘Well, that is what you want to do, that is what you want to do.’ ”

  With nothing more to say on the subject, Henin moved on.

  “Since Adina’s not here, I can be the commis and peel shallots,” he said. He took a paring knife in hand, and got to work.

  And so the cooking began, at last.

  Hollingsworth was eager to try out the equipment, so he seared some beef cheeks in a sauté pan, basting them with butter. With that melba-custard garnish in mind, he also made an unflavored custard base and cooked it in the oven. And it was a good thing he did: it was faster than he thought it would be, instant validation of the importance of training on the same equipment that would be waiting for him in Lyon.

  Meanwhile, Kaysen suited up in an apron and began cooking as well. He turned a potato into ribbons on the turning vegetable slicer, cooked them with a little butter and salt, then transferred them to a mixing bowl with a few thyme sprigs. Then he made a caramelized onion paste with onions, garlic, and water. He laid some ribbons across the width of his station, spooned little blobs of the paste on it, and spread them out. Then he rolled up the potato. He put the potato roll in a pan with some butter and basted it to a dark, amber brown, and transferred it to a paper towel to drain. Then he transferred it to a cutting board, and cut it into one-inch-thick pinwheels.

  “What do you think of that?” he asked Hollingsworth.

  The candidate nodded politely, but the truth was that he could not have been less interested in what Gavin Kaysen wanted to cook. He understood that his predecessor was trying to rub some sticks together and get a fire started, but Hollingsworth continued to feel strongly that he had to create his own food. He knew that it was taking him a while to get there, but for him, it had to be an organic process that blossomed on its own natural timeframe. Moreover, one and a half days into his allotted Bocuse d’Or time for the week, Hollingsworth felt that he was burning precious hours, that for all of the good intentions behind the visit, a lot of people were going through the motions but not accomplishing anything.

  The day didn’t get better. When Hollingsworth found himself alone with Coach Henin, he decided to share one of his garnish ideas, that melba-custard–spring garlic stack. Henin, meanwhile, had the côte de boeuf on his mind, and interrupted to ask him what he planned to do with it. The seemingly minor exchange took less than fifteen seconds, but Hollingsworth found the change of subject unsupportive and it put him off.

  Combined with his frustration at the passing time and the strangers in his midst, his reaction was extreme; he almost immediately began keeping Henin at arm’s length. It was an awkward dynamic: Henin was his own chef’s mentor and a man for whom he had a great deal of respect, and so getting off on the wrong foot with him made him uncomfortable, to say the least. (When discussing the tension between them in interviews for this book, Hollingsworth almost always made a point of reinforcing that he bore Henin, the person, not a whit of animosity.)

  For his part, Henin was baffled by Hollingsworth’s cold shoulder. He speculated that perhaps it was the displaced expression of a young American cook’s inferiority complex at being shepherded by an accomplished French chef he barely knew, or perhaps some feeling of inadequacy related to competition.

  Neither man discussed his feelings with the other. And the truth was that it hardly mattered since Henin would not return to Yountville in December. In the meantime, the emerging irony was that while Kaysen had made that red-faced proclamation to Eric Brandt in Lyon—that no American team would ever be undersupported again—Timothy Hollingsworth, at least until he had a working draft of his platter to share, might have been happier going it alone.

  HOLLINGSWORTH HAD TAKEN UP surfing in the past few years, and wanted desperately to hit the beach that Friday to clear his head, but couldn’t find the time. Instead, that Friday and Saturday, he tried out one of his possible garnishes at The French Laundry: that brioche with custard, which at this stage in its ideation housed tomato marmalade in its center. Henin had left town early Friday morning, so Hollingsworth was on his own to evaluate, and determined that it needed a little more—he wanted to incorporate spring garlic, which was not available in November, but would be (in Yountville) by the time of the competition in Lyon.

  Then Hollingsworth spent a rare Thanksgiving away from his family. Though homesick for his parents and siblings, he embraced the mental break, finding a special sanctuary in the sound of the water splashing against the Maine shore, and sleeping an unheard-of eight or nine hours per night.

  He also stole away to Rabelais bookstore, which he had read about in Saveur magazine as one of the top ten cookbook destinations in the world. Strolling the stacks, he was able to enjoy the store as he hadn’t been able to enjoy very much the past few weeks, with the Bocuse d’Or hovering over him like a storm cloud. Cookbooks were his domain, something he felt an intimacy with, and he took his time browsing, getting reacquainted with books that had helped teach him about food in the first place, long before he was even a commis at The French Laundry.

  He looked at book after book, buying up so
me to take back to Yountville. In particular, he found inspiration in the pages of At the Crillon and At Home: Recipes by Jean-François Piège, which had that tightness he so revered. He also looked at a number of books that described, in first person or third, some of the most celebrated Michelin-starred chefs of France, such as Alain Chapel. And he picked up a first edition of the classic that had inspired Keller himself, Great Chefs of France, for its photographs of platters, to help him in his continuing quest to get a handle on that style of service and its history.

  He also treated himself to a copy of the new work by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, The Flavor Bible, which brought back memories for Hollingsworth. When he first moved up from commis to cook at The French Laundry, John Fraser (today the executive chef of Dovetail in New York City) had recommended that he read one of the authors’ earlier collaborations, Culinary Artistry. The book features extensive lists of ingredients and other foods they get along with. Hollingsworth, who was then starting to participate in those nightly menu meetings, spent his wee hours studying those lists so that he’d look like he knew what he was doing in the meetings when fellow cooks with finely honed palates and improvisational talent turned to him and said, “What do you want to run?”

  Hollingsworth had had a bumpy adjustment from the rustic style of Zachary Jacques to the ultrafine dining of The French Laundry, but also had a fast, deft pair of hands, and a hunger to learn—French Laundry veterans recall the quiet cook lingering on the margins of the kitchen after his shift to observe or ask to be tasked with further assignments. “He was the commis that stayed late to watch service so we would clear some space on the line so that he could see what was going on,” remembers Corey Lee. “He was the commis that, when everyone was done, checked in with every one to make sure that they didn’t need anything.”