Knives at Dawn

by Andrew Friedman

  Kaysen and Henin barely had to speak to each other. They knew what had to be done and they took off on foot through the darkness, Henin to the municipal garage where the team van was stashed, Kaysen back to the Sofitel and its valet garage. They had to be somewhat anxious about the sheer number of people and amount of equipment they’d need to fit into those two vehicles, but neither man betrayed this, at least to each other: this was go-time. Failure, as they say in the war movies, was not an option.

  Hollingsworth, Laughlin at his side, arrived in the lobby, bleary-eyed after just four hours’ sleep, having not been able to gain unconsciousness until after midnight. In addition to his nerves, his sleep was marred by revelers in a nearby room who had been partying until about three in the morning, one of whom had passed out in the hallway. Normally, the abbreviated number of z’s wouldn’t have made an impact on him, but he was tired in both body and mind. “I was excited. I was anxious. I was crazy. It was a little surreal that it was all there, that it was finally happening,” he would say later.

  When Hollingsworth saw the comically small van awaiting him, he took it in surprising stride. “Of course it’s going to happen,” he thought. “Of course, something’s going to go wrong.”

  And where was Adina Guest during all of this? The hyperorganized commis was, ironically, scurrying around her hotel room getting her things and her thoughts together as quickly as possible. Although she remembered her father setting the alarm, it hadn’t gone off. She woke up at five-twenty, just ten minutes before she was expected downstairs. The panic that set in the moment she awakened gave her the feeling that she couldn’t “freshen” herself.

  And that was how Team USA began its big day: its candidate exhausted, its commis running late, and its coach and consiglieri running through the dark streets of town in search of extra vehicles.

  They recovered well. When everybody finally gathered, the team loaded up the boxes that were on hand at the hotel—mostly posters and paraphernalia that Pelka would distribute in the spectator section—and got into the vehicles: Allison Wagner rode with Henin. Kaysen drove his car with Jennifer Pelka riding shotgun. The team itself, including Laughlin and Dr. Guest, piled into the passenger van. Hollingsworth, never exactly a motormouth, said almost nothing. He felt the eyes and minds of the other passengers on him. The scrutiny of even those close to him, such as girlfriend Laughlin, wasn’t especially comfortable at that moment. It was just like that drive back in Orlando: headed through daybreak into battle, with little or no sense of exactly how it would play out.

  The Team USA convoy navigated the streets of Lyon, winding their way to the Saône, and along its banks toward L’Abbaye. There were very few cars on the road at that hour, and lights along the bridges, little pointil-list pinpoints of yellow, reflected in the still water. The team disembarked at L’Abbaye, and Kaysen took charge of the scene, ordering everybody around, allowing the candidate to keep his thoughts on what he had to do when he arrived at the Sirha.

  Chef Serge, showing no signs of the hour, was already there, with his blue apron snug around his middle, fulfilling Vincent Le Roux’s promise of providing any assistance the team needed, at any hour of the day.

  Gavin directed the passengers: “Jen, I want you, Tim, Adina in this car. I want Roland and Allison in the van. You and I are here. I need a parking pass in each car.” He was almost a stereotype of authority: Kaysen Crossing the Delaware, and he got the cargo loaded and the crew back in their vehicles and on their way in no time flat.

  UNBEKNOWNST TO THE TEAM, that morning’s New York Times, and its global edition, the International Herald Tribune, featured a story by Sciolino describing the first day’s action, interspersed with snippets culled from her time with the Team USA and Chef Bocuse on Sunday.

  “I hope they will win because we’d really like this competition to cross the Atlantic,” Bocuse was quoted as saying. Sciolino went on to quote him as saying that Hollingsworth was, “extraordinary, awesome.… He heaped even more praise on Mr. Hollingsworth’s 22-year-old ‘commis,’ or apprentice, Adina Guest,” the article continued, “who will work by his side when they compete on Wednesday. ‘They don’t say 10 words to each other in five and a half hours, but they work together like a fine timepiece,’ Mr. Bocuse said. ‘The chef is very good, but his assistant, the young woman, is exceptional.’ ”

  There’s no telling exactly how this public display of affection from the event’s namesake might have affected various constituencies. The likelihood was that most of the competitors didn’t see it. But what of the judges, most of whom arrived considerably later in the morning, with plenty of time to scan headlines over their morning coffee and croissants? After the event, Hollingsworth would comment that, “You have to think about it and say are people going to be offended by that. The answer has to be yes.”

  Asked if Bocuse’s wish bothered him, Australian candidate Croston said that he supported whatever attention can be brought to the competition, anywhere in the world. But others took exception. Geir Skeie, the Norwegian candidate, would later remark that, “I think that he should not have those kinds of opinions, or that if he has he should keep them to himself … if America … won, then people would say it was already decided before the competition. That’s no good. It’s no good for America, either.” Though he declined to name names, Skeie also said that he had heard grousing from other candidates on this front, as well as complaints that Team USA seemed much too intertwined with the Bocuse d’Or inner circle, what with Boulud installed as Honorary President of the Jury and Jérôme Bocuse himself as vice president of the Bocuse d’Or USA.

  Skeie’s point of view, or something pretty close to it, was shared by none other than Coach Henin, who couldn’t escape the uncomfortable feeling that there was, at least on the part of Boulud, “sort of an atmosphere that we were favorized in a sense—I am not sure if that is a proper word— but favorized by the Bocuse organization. That there was high expectation. I don’t want to say a shoe-in, but …

  “It wasn’t spoken, but reading between the lines and feeling the vibes you could almost sense that. It was sort of, ‘Oh, we are okay. We are going to do fine. It is in the cards. It’s planned.’ ”

  ON SITE BEHIND KITCHEN 6, where the American team would cook that day, Richard Rosendale had already arrived to watch, and he wondered where everybody was. He felt that Hollingsworth was making a tactical error in not getting there earlier. “You want to be the first one there,” he said. “You want to have the whites on. The competition starts the minute you walk in the building. Technically the clock hasn’t started but the judges begin to create a picture of your level of preparation.… You can kind of get to a point where people are rooting for you and they want you to win, just because you have done all the things right.… I think that with that needs to be some doses of intensity. There has got to be some passion. You have got to show me you want it. They are not just going to give it to you. It’s the Bocuse d’Or.”

  Henin, who had been concerned that the team was about ten minutes behind schedule when they left L’Abbaye was now happy with the arrival time. “Seven eleven, we okay,” he practically sang as he cleared the parking lot checkpoint and made his way to the back doors of the competition space. Walking into the hall was like passing through the looking glass … into a pressure cooker. Chef-candidates, commis, team support groups, and officials shot past each other in both directions in the corridor that ran behind the twelve competition kitchens, many pushing speed racks or flying a piece of equipment or an ingredient to their designated kitchen. The consultants, the documentaries, the briefings from past competitors: none of them did justice to the current that seemed to be uniting the souls in Hall 33 that morning. There was a palpable sensation of “This Is It,” a tension between appreciating the moment and being awed by it. Adding to the swelling intensity was that, in sports terms, the teams were essentially sharing the same locker room—getting their thoughts and their equipment together right alongside their com
petitors. After all that time training in different countries around the world, they were actually there. The moment of judgment was nigh.

  The teams arrived more or less in a steady wave from Kitchen 1 to Kitchen 12. Due to the staggered start times, some of those cooks who would begin later opted to arrive at a slightly more civilized hour. Kitchens 1 through 6 showed up first. In Kitchen 5, the Japanese candidate—still wearing a winter jacket over his whites—was operating with a small crew, although there was a television camera set up outside the window, lending urgency to the scene. In Kitchen 4, the Malaysian candidate Farouk Othman was setting up. In Kitchen 3, a show of force was on display: three guys in bullfighter red España jackets assisted the chef and commis in their whites. Denmark’s kitchen’s curtains were pulled, making it impossible to tell if they were even in there. Behind his kitchen, Number 1, Norway’s Geir Skeie had his platters displayed on a table in the rear corridor, and they were formidable—four five-sided platforms that were visually arresting enough to perhaps win a medal with no food on them. As if flexing their muscles, the Norwegian support staff moved the platters into the kitchen and began polishing them to a sheen, the silver glinting like a knife blade under the lights.

  Unlike Hollingsworth, Skeie—who had more than thirty full practice sessions under his belt—had slept great the night before. He had gone to bed at about eleven o’clock and awakened at six in the morning, a solid seven hours, and woke rested and ready, the adrenaline coursing through his body allowing him to forget all about his bum knee.

  In the USA kitchen there was a burst of activity. The night prior, Pelka had obtained food for the team and as Guest arranged her station and her ingredients—stocking avocados, red chiles, leeks, and potatoes—she nibbled on whatever was available, a piece of granola bar one moment, a few bites of yogurt the next, a chaser of tomato juice right after that.

  “Ah-dee-nah,” said Hollingsworth, doing his best to sound casual. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, Chef.”

  In the back of the kitchen, Kate Laughlin was on smoke-glass detail, unpacking the dishes and ensuring that each orb was situated next to its lid.

  As the team did its work, Pelka lay claim to the spectator area across from Kitchen 6, displaying Team USA’s poster on the railing and tying duct tape along the length of the aisle on either side of the seating to rope it off. She also put an American flag (on a stick), a whistle, and 2009 sunglasses (the two zeros were the eyes) decorated red, white, and blue on each of the approximately 100 chairs in the section.

  On the judging floor, waiters were setting the long tables at which the jury would be seated, laying tablecloths and arranging silverware and bottled water.

  Outside the kitchen, Coach Henin was pacing about. As was often the case at moments of import, he seemed especially towering, upright, proud.

  At 8:10 a.m., forty minutes before the first kitchen was set to start, Dan Scannell and Richard Rosendale pit-crewed the platters: Scannell opened the top of the beef platter to check the power source on the lights while Rosendale surveyed the outside, wearing white gloves to ensure no fingerprints were transferred to the silver.

  The New York Times’ Sciolino came up to the window to do an impromptu interview with the team. Though Hollingsworth didn’t mind, Henin worried that this was a distraction, and as other reporters came up throughout the morning, he made a point of welcoming them with a big smile and trying to become the interview subject himself, allowing his charges to keep focus.

  For all of the activity on one side of the exhibition hall, all of the kitchens on the other side were either closed (curtains drawn) or dark, with one notable exception: Kitchen 8, the Canadian kitchen, which was awash in activity. David Wong and his crew, all wearing oversized faux hockey jerseys with “Wong 09” on the back, were in full set-up mode. Wong was also the only chef who paid attention to the growing number of passersby, shaking hands and posing for pictures.

  “We’re going to cook good food for good people,” he said earnestly to one bystander.

  Hollingsworth slipped out of Kitchen 6 and walked along the back corridor to the two long wooden tables next to Kitchen 1 where proteins and vegetables were being distributed. He didn’t have to introduce himself or present any credentials. “They read your jacket, I guess,” he said. The attendants handed Hollingsworth his proteins and, surveying them, he realized they were a mixed bag. He was happy with the quality of the beef cheeks (“way cleaner than they are in America” where they have more fat and sinew) and the oxtail, which was clean, with a nice healthy hue and not too much fat. The fillet, however, was a little bigger than optimal, and its “fibers were closer to, not the chateaubriand end, but the tail end. You can almost see the long fibers and shift them back and forth, up the whole thing.”

  The last protein he took was the one that held the biggest surprise: the shrimp, the ones he had never obtained the specs for, were about one-quarter the size he expected and were in a frozen loaf. “They were tiny, man! Tiny, tiny. I had never worked with shrimp that small. I was shocked. And they were frozen in a block. They were the exact ones, if you go to the grocery store and you buy shrimp that are frozen in a block of water in one of those cardboard boxes, it was the exact same thing. They were not meant to be fresh at all, those were frozen shrimp.” (Pity that he had never been directed to that Themes page, which indicated the shrimp were “supplied as both fresh and frozen products with and without shell,” and “size 90/120 prawns per kg.”)

  Back in Kitchen 6, Hollingsworth was introduced to Corentin Del-croix, the commis extra provided by the Institut Paul Bocuse, a young French cook who he estimated was slightly younger than Guest, and who spoke very good English. Hollingsworth briefed him, quickly: “We want you to work over here,” he said, pointing to the area just inside the kitchen to the right. “We want you to work clean. I’m going to hand you stuff. I want you to clean it and put it here. Here’s the garbage. Do you know where the ice machine is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how to use a Cryovac machine?”

  “Yes.”

  Hollingsworth, a believer in his ability to judge young cooks almost on sight, liked the guy, had a vibe that he was “a good kid, for sure.” There was just one problem, he didn’t catch his name.

  “Do you remember his name?” he asked Guest.

  “No.”

  Hollingsworth winced. Coming from a place where cooks shake hands on their way in and out of the kitchen every day, this was not the sign of respect he wanted to convey. “It’s okay. Let’s just call him ‘chef.’ ”

  The technical judges—Joseph Viola among them—checked the kitchen, then the lead judge said, “Bonne chance,” and slipped out the back and on to the next kitchen. Team USA was cleared for takeoff; all that remained was for the designated organizing committee member to come by ten minutes later and tell them to begin.

  Hollingsworth turned to Guest: “This is it. Ready to go?”

  “Yes, Chef.”

  Hollingsworth believed her. To him, she seemed “on,” which pleased him—his first goal of the day, keeping day-of panic from settling in, seemed to have been accomplished. His assessment was accurate. “I was just being in the moment,” said Guest. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, isn’t it amazing to be here.’ Was just like, ‘Okay, what do I need to do next?’ ”

  The mood in the back corridor had the feeling of a wartime farewell; loved ones lingered for as long as possible, then embraced their brave soldiers as if they might never see one another again. Hollingsworth and Laughlin hugged goodbye, then Laughlin headed out to the spectator section. When she got there, and it dawned on her that all of the effort of the past several months had just come to an end, for her anyway, and that now all she could do was watch, she was overcome with emotion and started sobbing.

  In the competition area, the committee member appeared in the back doorway of Kitchen 6. “Bonne chance!” he said, before heading to the next kitchen.

  An
d they were off …

  TEAM USA BOCUSE D’OR 2009 MENU

  OLIVE OIL POACHED LOIN OF NORWEGIAN COD

  Enveloped in Scallop Mousse, Preserved Meyer Lemon and

  Sicilian Pistachios with Citrus Mousseline and Shrimp Nage

  WILD PRAWN AND HAAS AVOCADO TART

  Fennel Compote, Chili Peppers and Yuzu Gelée

  AGRUMATO CUSTARD WITH SHELLFISH BOUILLON

  Toasted Brioche, Scallop Tartare, Ruby Red

  Grapefruit and Candied Orange Zest

  YUKON GOLD POTATO AND BACON MILLE-FEUILLE

  Crème Fraîche–Enriched King Richard Leeks, Hobbs

  Bacon Chip and Sacramento Delta Osetra Caviar

  ROASTED ABERDEEN ANGUS BEEF RIB-EYE

  Wrapped in Applewood-Smoked Bacon

  with Prune-Enriched Oxtail Jus

  ROSETTE OF SCOTCH BEEF FILLET

  Périgord Truffles, Celeriac and Oxtail-Endive Marmalade

  GLAZED BEEF CHEEKS À L’ÉTOUFFÉE

  French Laundry Garden Turnips and Sweet Carrots

  CALOTTE BRESAOLA FUMÉ À LA MINUTE

  Granny Smith Apples, Savoy Cabbage

  and Horseradish Mousse

  TRUFFLED POMMES DAUPHINOISE

  California Chestnuts, Pickled Red Onion

  and Celery Branch Salad

  THE FIRST THING HOLLINGSWORTH did was lay the oxtail on his board and section it; usually he found the sweet spot between the bones and his knife would sail right through, but today, using that new Misono, with its unfamiliar length, he was catching the bone. With his regular knife, he’d have just muscled it through, but that’s a bad idea with a new knife, because the thin blade can be easily damaged, so he had to lift it a hair, whittle his way back down, and then go through it. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.