Knives at Dawn

by Andrew Friedman

  Finally, Hollingsworth got the cod cylinders rolled in plastic and transferred them to the refrigerator.

  “Adina, don’t forget, fifteen minutes before we fire it, we have to pull it out. Actually make it twenty minutes.”

  There were only two words he expected to hear back, and they were the ones he got: “Yes, Chef.” Guest seemed very intense to him at that moment, and he took that as a good thing, the embodiment of all those signs back home at The French Laundry: Sense of urgency? Check.

  A glance at his task list revealed, to Hollingsworth’s surprise, that he was actually ahead of his schedule. The only explanation was that although cooking and freezing were taking longer than they were supposed to, his butchering and knife work must have been taking less time than they usually did. Maybe he was dancing a little bit after all. He decided to use the time to help out his right arm.

  “How are you looking, Adina?” “I’m a little behind.”

  Because of the way the schedule had been designed, this was no problem.

  “What do you need? Give me projects. Is the endive made?” This was a reference to the endive marmalade.

  “No.”

  “Okay, give me that.”

  Based as it was on a longstanding French Laundry staple, Hollings-worth scarcely needed to think before jumping in: he put some honey and Banyuls vinegar (wine vinegar from mostly Grenache grapes) in a small pot, brought them to a simmer, and reduced them, a preparation called a gastrique. Then he stirred in the endive and let it simmer. While the marmalade was simmering, Hollingsworth took a few more tasks off of Guest’s list, mostly stove work: he blanched the cabbage, broccoli, and leeks, and pickled those pesky pearl onions. Then he moved on to the tart, drawing a circle on parchment paper with his Sharpie and arranging the punched celeriac, truffle, and tenderloin in that narrowing circular pattern. He also processed the ingredients Guest had measured for the hollandaise-like citrus mousseline and the shrimp foam that would sauce the seafood plates. The team was back on track, working in harmony and mowing down the items on their to-do list.

  On the competition floor, Ferniot and May brought out the judges, introducing them one by one, just as they had the day before. Paul Bocuse was also introduced, emerging through the curtain that hung between Kitchen 6 and Kitchen 7.

  By this time, the journalist pen, which stretched between the sponsor boxes and the judging floor, was packed—photographers and videographers threw elbows vying for position at the front of the pit, while writers with notebooks at the ready were just as eager to be able to lean on the counter for the coming two-hour platter parade.

  At the one-hour mark to his fish platter deadline, Hollingsworth was feeling surprisingly good. The cod was a source of concern, but he was otherwise still optimistic. He thought that Guest should have felt the same way, but …

  “Chef, the custards aren’t setting.”

  Again, Hollingsworth picked up on Guest’s anxiety over those custards. He talked to her as calmly as possible: “That’s fine, Chef, put them back in the oven. We have time.” He also wanted her focused on the work ahead of them, especially the tart: “Adina, the shrimp project is going to be a big project. In twenty minutes we’re going to do the shrimp. I’m going to need your help.”

  At one fifty on the button, Geir Skeie’s platter went up in the window of Kitchen Number 1.

  As a game show–like anthem underscored his words, Ferniot announced the fish platter to the audience: “Le premier plat de poisson, le poisson de Norvège.”

  The platter was lifted by two committee members, and it was a formidable piece of work: titled “Norwegian Cod, Scallops and Prawns à la ‘Sandefjord,’ ” it featured loin of cod with lightly smoked scallops and cod belly, green-pea sphere, brandade, Norwegian Kabaret (cabaret) with peas, prawns, and onions, a red beet cube with Jerusalem artichokes and black truffles, and potato and leek with quail egg. For sauce, there was a Riesling and horseradish emulsion.

  Angela May was moved to praise: “I have to say, this is one of those dishes that, if I were in a restaurant and I saw it walking past me, I would order it in a heartbeat because I eat mostly with my eyes before I eat with my palate.”

  In the stands, Rich Rosendale was also impressed. “That is going to be hard to beat,” he thought.

  When plated, the thoughtfulness of Skeie’s presentation was undeniable: for example, the Sandefjord—a browned rectangle of cod, a seared scallop, the brandade, and the pea sphere (a glistening Ping Pong ball–sized “pea” no doubt produced via some molecular means)—fit perfectly in a small rectangular indentation, while the beet cube stood on one corner, as though pirouetting at the back of the plate.

  And so the clock was ticking. For all of the Day Two competitors, it was only a matter of time. It would all be over, one way or another, soon.

  TIMOTHY HOLLINGSWORTH CAN’T SAY exactly when his abdominal muscles seized up on him, can’t pinpoint the instant when he first perceived the cramp in his gut, a “constant flex” that started in the center and gradually moved around to the side, a sensation unlike anything he had ever experienced in the kitchen, or even at the gym. But it was about one hour before the fish platter was due in the window.

  It’s a safe bet that the cramp was brought on, in large part, by the shrimp tart. While the puff pastry base remained the same, as did the fennel marmalade, the shrimp themselves, when cooked, were mealy and a bit odorous. To try to mask the unappealing taste, Hollingsworth threw the kitchen sink at them: lobster glace, reduced shrimp stock, fleur de sel, Espelette. He then hacheed (finely chopped) the shrimp, spread them out, and punched out “shingles” that he would transfer to the pastry with the aid of a spatula. These he would alternate with the avocado shingles, but he was barely started on this project when he wished he had gone with an alternate thought: spreading the shrimp out on the marmalade, then laying avocado on top to neatly mask the disintegrating crustacean. Hollingsworth was used to coming through at moments like these, but today, Keller’s kitchen philosophy would be more prescient than it ever had been: There would indeed be no such thing as perfect food. Only the idea of it. The fleeting, oh-so-close idea of it.

  Even in the heat of the moment, he was thinking clearly enough to realize that the pain was brought on by stress. “Coming down to the wire, you cannot be late, you have one shot,” he said. All those months of exertion, the decision to say “yes” to applying for Orlando, the development of his food, the last-minute arrival of the platters themselves, and the little serving pieces that had just shown up with Scannell on Monday. Everything. It was all taking its toll.

  To try to relieve the cramp, Hollingsworth stretched out his side, to no avail, then got back to work.

  Other platters made their debut, each one named, then described by Ferniot and May, and accompanied by that synthesized music.

  Denmark’s Jasper Kure sent out a platter featuring, among other compositions, a tartlet with shrimp and dill-glazed peas, and cauliflower with lightly smoked quail eggs, caviar, and radish. The most brazen element might have been the most simple: a turned carrot glazed and sprinkled with fresh herbs. To put something that basic forth in the Bocuse d’Or required immense confidence in technique, precision, and seasoning; it offered no place to hide.

  Spain and Malaysia followed, then Japan, one of the countries to which Hollingsworth paid the most respect. Their chef did not disappoint, at least where originality and showmanship were concerned: his platter was headlined by codfish in a shrimp “dress” with fresh wasabi sauce. His written presentation to the judges even came with eating instructions for devouring the garnishes (“left to right”). Those garnishes included turnip braised in soy sauce, stuffed with oysters, sea urchin, and shrimp, and perfumed with yuzu zest; and a scallop croquette scented with algae tea.

  “Very unique and very interesting,” said Angela May.

  Back in Kitchen 6, Guest removed the custards in their martini-glass stands from the oven. She began setting the discs of me
lba toast she’d just baked inside the rims of the glasses, where they’d be suspended. Hollings-worth stopped her three-quarters of the way through, noticing condensation fogging up the vessels. “Adina,” he called out. “You gotta wipe them!”

  After the bumpy morning getting to the Sirha and some missteps in the first minutes (his knife adjustment, Guest’s injury), it had been smooth sailing for the first few hours. Journalist after journalist commented to Henin that they couldn’t believe how little Hollingsworth and Guest spoke to each other.

  “They are not talking because they don’t have to talk,” Henin told them.

  But bit by bit, things were beginning to spiral out of control. Kitchen Number 6 had assumed the air of a submarine taking on water and Hollingsworth, the commander, was doing everything he could to keep it afloat and complete his mission. It was an odd moment for reflection, but time stopped for him as a rueful conclusion rippled through his mind. It really sucks that this was such a fast thing, he thought. “She was making mistakes that of course she would make because she doesn’t work service and that right there is ‘service time.’ ”

  If only they’d had more time, he thought. Then he could have positioned Guest at the canapé station at The French Laundry, right next to where he expedited, and she’d have known what he wanted before he knew it himself, and plating according to his standards would have been second nature to her. They’d have been the Astaire and Rogers of the Bocuse d’Or, waltzing their way through the last hour of the competition, instead of staggering toward the finish line. He saw them that way in his mind for a half-second, a different team having a different experience, but then the cacophony of the crowd brought him back.

  In the window, Coach Henin was giving verbal updates on the remaining time: “Two minutes,” he bellowed.

  The shrimp tart, such as it was, was already on the platter, as was the caviar tube. Hollingsworth began arranging matchbox car–sized wedges of potato mille-feuille around the caviar. Once again, his sense of time had abandoned him—he felt like it was taking Guest forever to clean up those custard cups, to get the melbas back inside, and to get them onto the platter, but he also recognized that time might have just been moving slowly for him. When the cups did come over, and he and Guest began setting them around the perimeter of the platter, he noticed that some of the melbas, despite the adjustment in size from the last practice, were not resting perfectly horizontally; some of them seesawed ever so slightly.

  I should have designed something a little more simple, he scolded himself. This is not the best application for something that will be paraded around for twenty minutes.

  There wasn’t time to fix those toasts. He knew that. He had recaptured his sense of time and realized that it was dwindling.

  Well, that was how the melbas would go out, be seen by the judges, photographed for posterity, and remembered. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. After all the preparation, time was finally coming to an end.

  Henin turned toward the audience and up at the USA cheering section, bobbing his hands up and down to let them know that they needed to whoop it up, to offer encouragement and help propel the team over the finish line. In the stands, the American contingent—filled out now—hollered their support, some rolling up posters to use them as megaphones, trying to be heard over the still-deafening noise. Gavin Kaysen, a red, white, and blue scarf around his neck, shot a fist into the air and screamed, “Go, Timmy!”

  Henin called out: “One minute!”

  As it turned out, the coach’s reminders were almost superfluous because the emcees had been talking up the fish platter of Japan’s Kitchen 5, so Hollingsworth knew his moment was coming up fast.

  There was still plenty of work to be done. Having confited the mousse-enveloped cod cylinders, he got ready to coat them, one of the steps that he’d had problems with in practices: he spread the pistachio dust out on a sheet pan, set the cylinders on it, and agitated the pan gingerly to cause the cylinders to turn. I hope this works, I hope this works, hope this comes out clean, no fingerprints or …

  The cylinders lifted out cleanly—evenly coated in green dust. He sighed, reheated them in the oven, and set them on their stands. Set the caviar tower in the shrimp tart. Applied the bacon chips to the mille-feuille. Then he and the commis carefully lifted the platter up into the window.

  There wasn’t a second to dwell on the imperfections. He and Guest had to prepare the two plates, one for the judges to evaluate and the media to photograph, and one to act as a “how-to” for the servers, guiding them on plating the items from the platter after it made its rounds and was deposited on the carving station.

  All of this, however, was just prologue to the last step of the fish stage of the competition: disassembling the platter and reallocating the components to individual plates for the judges. Hollingsworth, who had never participated in a competition before, wasn’t ready for the unique plating methodology. Having only worked in restaurants, he was accustomed to always plating from the guest’s point of view, and to doing all plates for a given table at one time.

  This was different: awaiting him at the carving station were three stacks of four plates each. When the platter finished its rounds and was set down before him like an ER patient, Hollingsworth went to work. The first thing he did was slice the cod and put one slice on each of the three plates that topped their respective stacks. As he prepared to put a piece of mille-feiulle on the plates, he was dealt a devastating surprise: The waiters began turning the plates, so suddenly Hollingsworth was working upside down, which was disorienting to say the least.

  “They kept moving plates. You do two plates, one is for the judges to see … the second one is for the service staff to know how to plate the dish … so I don’t understand why I needed to go over there and show them this is where this goes … they were waiting for me to tell them where to put it. Nobody was really taking initiative, once I put it on, they would follow. This guy would do this. You have one guy walking behind me. It was utter chaos. The worst part was, you get the fish on all four plates, then they rotate the plate. It kept moving around. I was, like, ‘Oh. My. God. This. Is. So. Hard. You have got to be kidding me.’ That was the hardest moment of the competition.”

  Just as soon as he’d begin to get his bearings, the three plates on top of the stacks were whisked away, and he’d start over again, working from the guest’s point of view, only to have the plates spun again.

  Laughlin, watching from the American section of the bleachers, could hardly look. He is really struggling, she thought.

  Once again, Hollingsworth was angry with himself. He had noticed something unusual at the carving stations from his observing perch on Day One, but was so interested in the food that he didn’t pay sufficient attention to it. “I missed an opportunity to be a little more successful,” he would say later. By the time he was done, things were moving so quickly and so confusingly, that he cannot remember what language some waiters were speaking. When one of the servers began walking to the judges with a plate that didn’t yet have caviar on it, the commis extra waved her back. “He said, ‘That plate needs caviar,’ but maybe I just understood it [in French] at that point,” Hollings worth said.

  HOLLINGSWORTH RACED BACK INTO Kitchen 6 and looked at his clock. There were about twenty minutes left until the beef platter was due in the window.

  “Okay, Adina, where are we?” he called out.

  Guest was assembling the deconstructed beef stew stacks. “She struggled a little with that,” Hollingsworth would say later, quickly adding, “No more than I was [at that point].”

  Hollingsworth gathered himself. As Guest prepared the celery salad for the pommes dauphinoise, he seared the bacon-wrapped beef and transferred it to the oven. Fearful that his own internal alarm clock might fail to go off, he told Henin that he wasn’t going to bother setting a timer for the beef, and that instead he wanted the coach to keep him on schedule by giving him a periodic countdown for the final minut
es.

  He then assembled the beef rosette, brushing it with the lemony truffle oil that had been infusing since Saturday night’s practice and transferring it to the center of the platter.

  The value of practice—even to a gifted cook—was revealed in these moments: he had the right amount of horseradish cream available because he had realized in Saturday’s run-through that he needed two bags’ worth. But he had never practiced with the little stands that had just been delivered to him on Monday. He put the pommes dauphinoise rectangles on the stands, then set the stands on C-folds (folded paper towels) on a sheet tray, before heating the pommes dauphinoise through in the oven. This was standard operating procedure back home at The French Laundry, where the cooks never put anything directly on a piece of metal. But when he removed the tray from the oven, he got the surprise of his life: the rubber coating on the bottom, there to keep the stands from sliding around or scratching the surface on which they were set, had melted onto the C-folds.

  “Adina, they all stuck!” he said. “I have to spend time doing this.”

  Guest responded with a deadly serious, “Yes, Chef.”

  And so, Hollingsworth spent the next several minutes peeling paper from the bottoms of the stands. To do this, he had to remove the potato dauphinoise from the stands, pick away at the paper, and then replace the dauphinoise. He quickly abandoned the idea of perfection, as he had had to abandon so much that day, leaving bits of paper fused to the very bottom of the stands if he was reasonably sure they would be out of view of the jury. It was a nerve-wracking exercise, and frustrating as well, because the time it consumed made the whole incident pointless: he might as well have not bothered heating the stands at all because by the time he was done peeling paper, the potato had cooled down. The tension compounded the difficulty of his next task: setting the little stands—the steel still hot from the oven—with the potato dauphinoise on top, between the delicate smoke glasses on the platter. He tried using a towel to protect his fingers, but the towel only got in the way, so he decided to go unprotected. He managed to land several rectangles without incident, but eventually the law of averages took hold and he toppled one of the smoke glasses. It didn’t break, but desperately wanting to continue his forward movement, he assembled a new one using extra ingredients and one of the spare glasses.