Put another way, the chef was actually discouraging the team from having their practice in Lyon.
Hollingsworth was unflappable. “Let him know that we need to try their products because we can’t get them in America,” he said. “Their fish or their meats.”
Henin conferred with Bouvarel. “The American meat is younger, it’s tender, but it’s not mature. It doesn’t have the full flavor,” he said, via Henin. “The French, or the European meat, is a little bit older, it’s more mature, it has more character, more flavor, more taste. It might not be quite as tender as the younger one. It’s true, he agrees. You are correct. There is a difference in the product. There is no question about it.”
With that, Hollingsworth launched into his list, starting with the most basic ingredient he could think of.
“Canola oil. Do you guys have that?”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est, ‘CA-NO-LAH?’ ” said Bouvarel. It means, “What is that, canola?” But the chef drew out the pronunciation of canola with such disdain that it sounded more like, Who is this guy, Canola, and who the hell does he think he is?
Thrown for a loop, Hollingsworth repeated himself: “Canola oil?” No response. “Rapeseed oil?”
Bouvarel squinted and shook his head slowly from side to side. Never heard of it.
“Neutral?” said Hollingsworth. It didn’t have to be canola oil, any neutral oil would suffice.
“Vegetable oil?” said Guest.
Henin thought that might work. “Huile végétale?” he said.
Bouvarel was a statue of incomprehension.
“Corn oil?” offered Le Roux.
Bouvarel perked up. “Maïs? L’huile de maïs?”
Close enough. Hollingsworth wanted it. No problem.
Whew.
“Five pounds of butter,” to make clarified butter. Piece of cake. Now they were rolling. He kept going.
“Cream?”
Kaysen, who had been through this kind of thing two years earlier, whispered in Hollingsworth’s ear. “Be sure you specify the percentage you want on the cream.”
“Percentage?” asked Hollingsworth.
The well-traveled Dr. John Guest interjected: “It’s different cream here.”
“Heavy cream,” said Adina Guest.
“Very, very heavy cream,” said the good doctor, lest Hollingsworth not understand that the cream was heavy.
Kaysen knew what Hollingsworth wanted, so he euthanized this portion of the conversation before it got out of hand: “La double est bonne,” he said.
“Their double cream is like heavy cream,” he told Hollingsworth.
It was fast becoming apparent that it wasn’t just the proteins; the team also required a crash course in the significant differences between even the most common ingredients in France and what they were used to back home.
“Two liters of crème fraîche,” said Hollingsworth, referring to the slightly soured cream he needed for various preparations.
“Crème fraîche?” said Bouvarel. Here they went again.
“They have crème fraîche,” said Kaysen, baffled by the reply.
“They don’t call it crème fraîche?” said Hollingsworth disbelievingly. The chef must have misheard. “Crème fraîche!”
Henin turned to Le Roux, who had worked in both the Orlando and Lyon. “Crème fraîche en français?” he asked. How do you say it in French?
“It is already a French word,” laughed Le Roux, which brought the house down. Everybody was trying their best; it was just a matter of identifying exactly which of the myriad French options the Americans meant when they said crème fraîche.
In the intervening minutes, one of Bouvarel’s cooks had brought a liter carton of cream out from the kitchen to show it to Hollingsworth.
“Be careful,” said Henin. “This one is ultrapasteurized, meaning you don’t have to refrigerate it, meaning it may react differently than the one that we use. You’ll have to play with it.”
“Two liters of milk,” said Hollingsworth.
This was surprisingly easy.
“Two liters of nonfat milk? Do you have nonfat milk?”
“Yes,” said Le Roux.
“Do you have microgreens? Like petite …”
Henin did his best here: “Miniature pour les feuilles de salade?”
“What type of greens?” said Henin.
“Petit céleri?” said Bouvarel.
“No, micro,” said Henin. “C’est la germination.”
“De la root ou de la branche?
“Do you want the celery stalk, or the leaves?” translated Henin.
“No,” said Kaysen, picking up on a miscommunication. “Basically he’s saying there’s two different kinds of microgreens. One comes from the stalk and one comes from the root.”
“One each,” said Hollingsworth, hedging his bets, then moved on. “Two navel oranges,” he said.
“No problem,” said Le Roux.
“Truffles? Has to be large.” He made a circle with his fingers. “Like this.”
This, too, was doable.
Hollingsworth ran through a list of other necessities: Parchment, foil, plastic wrap. All were manageable. Puff pastry they could have, but it would come in a five-pound block that would need to be sheeted. Brioche was also available, but would be enormous, the size of two Pullman loaves, but better too big than too small. He’d take it.
“Broccolini?”
Henin started trying to explain this, but there was no point. Technically, broccolini is an engineered hybrid between broccoli and Chinese broccoli, but even seasoned culinarians misidentify it as either baby broccoli or broccoli rabe.
“I think we can ask Daniel to bring some,” he said.
“Avocado.”
“Oui.”
“Tarragon?” said Hollingsworth.
“Estragon?” translated Henin.
Bouvarel nodded.
After they got through the rest of the produce, Hollingsworth asked if they had the specs for the proteins that would be used in the competition. The team still had not been directed to that essential Web site page, and Hollingsworth didn’t want any surprises. Bouvarel thought that the côte de bouef came from the meatier end of the steer, near the shoulder, but wasn’t really sure of any details. So Henin and Hollingsworth ordered what they thought made the most sense: scallops in the shells so he could practice shucking, 16/20 shrimp (meaning sixteen to twenty per pound), an average size, and so on.
Henin also asked Bouvarel if his crew could procure a few bricks for the team. The solution they had hit on to keep their platter warm was to heat foil-wrapped bricks in the oven, then use the bricks to heat the metal. This, too, would be done.
After almost ninety minutes, the team was synced up with their hosts. The food they required would be procured. Now all they had to do was get it all to come out the way it did back at their Bocuse House, back in Yountville.
TWO MONUMENTAL EVENTS WERE to take place on January 20, 2009: Barack Obama was scheduled to be sworn in as President of the United States at twelve noon Eastern Standard Time, and eight to ten hours later, the anticipated re-review of Daniel would be up on the New York Times Web site.
Team USA was transitioning from acclimation mode to preparation mode: they visited the Boulud farm again to sort through a few newly arrived FedEx boxes as well as some boxes Kaysen had left in France two years earlier (Michel Bouit had carted them there during a trip to Lyon in December), picking out what they’d want to transfer to L’Abbaye. They loaded up the van and drove to the catering hall, where they were met by Chef Serge Cotin, an affable, ruddy-cheeked, middle-aged man with whom Daniel Boulud had worked when they were teenagers, who helped them to stash their things in an out-of-the-way upstairs room until their practice on Saturday.
Needing to print some directions off the Internet, the team was directed up the road to Restaurant Paul Bocuse. What began as a quick errand turned into a visit with royalty as Chef Bocuse invited Hollingsworth, Guest, a
nd Henin to join him for a coffee. Chef Bocuse, out of his whites and clad in a long-sleeved black cashmere sweater and dark slacks, had the air of a benevolent don about him, reinforced by the floor manager stationed to the side of the table functioning as an attendant, lest he or his guests require anything.
Bocuse reminded Hollingsworth and Guest of some key points of the competition (e.g., be ready for the noise), then turned to Chef Henin and spoke in French. Henin broke out in a broad smile and relayed the message to Hollingsworth and Guest: “Monsieur Bocuse would like to invite you and your friends to a dinner tonight in honor of Obama.”
Hollingsworth and Guest could scarcely contain their excitement at this invitation. Instead of another meal in another bouchon, they’d be guests of honor at Bocuse’s own restaurant, on Inauguration Day. For young American cooks representing their country overseas, it didn’t get much better than that. They returned to the city center and Hotel Beaux-Arts where most of them watched the inauguration in their rooms as they gussied up for dinner. For most of the group except Kaysen, it was their first dinner at the restaurant, and so when they returned, they were given a tour of the kitchen, where they stood behind the stoves and were photographed with Chef Bocuse.
Minutes later, in the dining room, they were presented with menus for the evening that—voilà—already had the photograph from the kitchen printed on the front, a souvenir before the first course was even served. The old man hadn’t lost his touch for the unforgettable flourish.
The meal was, like much of the menu at the restaurant, composed of Paul Bocuse’s Greatest Hits—the famous black truffle V.G.E. soup (created in honor of former president Giscard d’ Estaing), a beehive of puff pastry towering out of the bowls; rouget crusted with potato “scales” and swimming in an addictively rich white wine and vermouth reduction, finished with cream and decorated with a squiggle of reduced veal jus, Volaille de Bresse en Vessie “Mère Fillioux,” a classic of Lyonnaise cuisine, a truffle-stuffed chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder (think of it as the original sous vide), which is presented like a veiny balloon at the table, punctured, deflated, carved, and served with rice and vegetables. And all of it followed by a selection of cheese from local celebrity fromagère, “Mère Richard” (Renée Richard), and a comprehensive selection of desserts, everything from babas and cakes to ice creams and sorbets, all presented on an array of tables that were carted around with impressive grace.
Throughout the meal, in addition to the food itself, the depths of Bocuse’s marketing prowess were on full display—there wasn’t a piece of silverware that didn’t have the initials PB engraved at the base of their handles, not a plate that didn’t have the chef’s full moniker spelled out on its rim; even the soup bowl had the name of its contents emblazoned in calligraphic script around its equator.
After a pleasing eternity, the team rose as one, filed back into their SUV and back into Lyon in silence, each ruminating on the experience before it faded into memory. “It was like being able to travel back in time,” said Hollingsworth of the evening. “You read about places like Paul Bocuse and Alain Chapel and Pic and Michel Guérard and all these people who are two generations out. You can’t really experience what it was like. How was that food? Was it really that good? You don’t know. You don’t really know. You read about it. Some of the dishes, you’re like, wow, that was amazing. To actually be able to travel back in time and experience a three-star Michelin restaurant as close to what it was actually like thirty years ago, forty years ago, that’s really, really priceless.… The food and the service is so old-school French. It’s amazing to have a place still like that. To have that food that you’ve read about. That soup and the history behind it. Or the fish with the escalloped scales. Bresse en vessie. It’s amazing.”
Later that night, as Team USA slumbered in Lyon, Daniel Boulud, en route back to New York from an inauguration event in Washington, D.C., and stuck in traffic with two of his sous chefs on the New Jersey Turnpike, learned that Daniel had, once again, had a four-star review bestowed upon it by The New York Times.
“At restaurants considered much less exclusive,” wrote critic Frank Bruni, “you could spend only $30 less on a similar amount of food, and you wouldn’t get anything approaching Daniel’s bells and whistles. These flourishes make you feel that you’ve slipped into a monarch’s robes, if only for a night, and turn an evening into an event.”
As congratulatory text messages and e-mails shook his Blackberry like a maraca, Boulud cranked up Led Zeppelin on the sound system, uncorked some Champagne, and celebrated. After service, the party would continue back at Daniel, and it would not stop until morning, and with good reason: the Bocuse d’Or was one thing, but a review in the Times, especially in the current economy, was life and death.
He had survived the most important judgment of all.
AT BREAKFAST WEDNESDAY MORNING, the team met Roger Gural and Isabel Daniels, the candidate and commis who would be competing for the United States at the Mondial du Pain, the bread competition hosted by the Sirha, the gargantuan trade show that was also home to the Bocuse d’Or. (The Sirha also hosts a dessert contest and a cheese competition.) For reasons having nothing to do with the competition, Gural, who bears many resemblances to the actor Steve Buscemi—wide eyes and a nasal accent—was in a bit of discomfort.
“Man, the food here is killing me,” he said to the Bocuse d’Or team, referencing the local restaurant diet of protein, fat, and starch. He had a point: unless you were in a position to cook for yourself, the only three sources of green vegetables, if you were lucky, seemed to be salade Lyonnaise and certain soupes du jour or vegetable side dishes.
In the streets of Lyon, the inauguration was still reverberating. As the team made its way through the Les Halles marketplace that morning, asking purveyors to hang the team poster in their windows, they were welcomed with open arms that made the Bush era seem as ancient as the local architecture. Many vendors gestured the team behind their counters, stuffed them with slices of sausage and cheese, and posed for pictures. When they walked into Brasserie Les Halles around the corner for lunch that afternoon, a lone middle-aged Lyonnaise woman slid down the length of a banquette in the middle of her meal to enable the growing squad to have a seat.
“Merci beaucoup,” said various members of the team.
“No prollem,” came her accented reply.
“Oh, you speak English?” said Coach Henin.
“Yes,” she said with a smile, then expanded her answer with an Obama-inspired flourish, “Yes, I can!”
Feeling the effects of the local diet, and still sated from their dinner at Paul Bocuse, many of the team members ordered a salade Lyonnaise. Dr. Guest forewent his menu, handing it to the server and telling her to just bring him whatever dish had the “maximum vegetables.”
They ate, they drank some wine, Kaysen pocketed a spoon, and the team left.
When they returned to the hotel, Jennifer Pelka had arrived, bearing, among other crucial items, black Team USA jackets and T-shirts emblazoned with Je t’aime USA. These were to be worn at all times to show a united front, she explained, as she distributed them to the group.
That evening at Léon de Lyon, a well-regarded bistro, the team received its first taste of anti-American sentiment when Chef Henin tried to convince the manager to display one of its posters in the window. When Henin teasingly refused to take no for answer, the manager snidely offered to hang it in the bathroom. But things were different later that night when, on their way into a local bar, a Swiss gentlemen heard Pelka and Kaysen speaking English and called out, “Are you two American?”
“Yes,” they replied.
The man lifted his smoldering cigarette in the air like a glass of Champagne, nodded regally, and said, “Congratulations.”
THE NEXT TWO DAYS were consumed with planning, planning, and more planning. Pelka established the hotel’s bar as her office, working on team paperwork, orchestrating events and hotel accommodations for expected VIPs and s
pectators, and keeping track of the budget. Her constant presence, and that of the other team members and adjuncts who came and went, was met with wildly varying reception by the different staff members of the Beaux-Arts; the women who oversaw the registration desk by day and doubled as barkeeps by night were accommodating, even offering espressos and wine outside the operating hours of the bar. On the other hand, the night man, a bestubbled shaggy dog, could not have been less enchanted, glaring at the team as they came and went. But at least he was consistent: Kaysen remembered him from two years earlier and found that he hadn’t changed a bit.
Thursday afternoon, Hollingsworth and Guest met in the salon adjacent to the bar for three hours, a sacred session to which not even Coach Henin was invited. Hollingsworth believed that, because only he and Guest would be in the competition kitchen, they had to spend time alone reviewing their timeline and talking through the specific mental and logistical challenges before them.
Guest found the meeting essential. “That was the single most important thing we did there,” she said. “I have to know his mind and he needs to know my mind. And there’s no other way of doing that unless you’re sitting there alone spilling out your mind.… Cooking is not only a technical thing, it’s an emotional thing. So I’m getting his emotion of how he wants me to carry out this action, and while I’m talking about a certain doubt or worry I have with this certain technique, he’s getting that emotion so he can help me deal with it.”
THE WEEK ENDED WITH a bit of melodrama: the team’s platters, on the way from Scannell in Rhode Island via FedEx, were held up in customs in Paris, so the team would not be able to practice on them. The larger concern, of course, was whether or not they’d show up in time for the actual competition. Pelka, troubleshooting from her perch at the Beaux-Arts bar, had asked Vincent Le Roux to try to unclog the bureaucracy.
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