Knives at Dawn (19 page)

“When we work lunch, we sometimes sit on that bench over there and write menus,” said Hollingsworth.

Kaysen laughed, imagining his urban setting back in Manhattan: “I write mine downstairs in the prep kitchen.”

The trio walked along the patches surveying the produce: cabbage, pea tendrils, assorted herbs, petit lettuces, squashes (still the summer varieties), assorted greens, and the last of the tomatoes and peppers for the year. One bed also held a plentitude of tiny
fraises des bois
(alpine strawberries)— Kaysen knelt down, held the stem of a berry in one hand and with the other twisted the fruit off the vine. He popped it into his mouth, its nova of flavor a reminder of a season that was a distant memory in New York.

Kaysen shook his head. “It's November and you are eating fraises des bois …”

With the waning sunlight throwing long shadows across the scene and a cool breeze coasting in over the mountains, the members of Team USA seemed more like contented suburbanites in search of a porch and a six-pack than competitors less than three months away from the battle of their lives.

J
OSEPH
V
IOLA WOULD BE
right at home on a movie screen: his piercing eyes, stubbly beard, and receding hair slicked neatly back suggest the vaguely familiar, slightly unreadable presence of a veteran character actor—he could be the benevolent college professor or the next Bond villain.

Viola, the chef Boulud had hired to tutor Hollingsworth in all things Bocuse d'Or, arrived at the Bocuse House, rolling garment bag in tow, on Monday morning, November 17, having slept off his transatlantic, transcontinental flight in a San Francisco hotel. Kaysen and Hollingsworth were already there, dressed for work—Hollingsworth in a French Laundry jacket with his name emblazoned on the left breast, black slacks, and black leather clogs; Kaysen in a crisp jacket, freshly ironed by his own hand in his temporary quarters at the Green House, one of the properties owned by Keller and company within walking distance of The French Laundry and the Bocuse House. (Guest was attending a wine seminar by day during this week, so would join the group in the evenings.)

Hollingsworth speaks a modicum of French from some community college courses and from a brief stage at Lucas Carton in Paris, but is far from conversant, so the introductions were stilted, with Viola directing most of his attention to French-fluent Kaysen.

Viola, too, produced a chef's jacket from his bag: it bore the name of his restaurant, Daniel et Denise, with a 2004 MOF symbol on the chest—the symbol carries great meaning in France, shorthand for
Meilleurs Ouvriers de France
, a coveted designation that means one of the “best workers (or craftsmen) of France.” It's one of the highest honors a French chef can attain and was the inspiration for the certified master chef program in the United States, though it is much more well known in its home country.

Viola changed into his working clothes, and the trio gathered in the kitchen around the rolling prep tables. Time was short, as Viola would be returning to Europe Tuesday morning, so they got right down to business, breaking out color copies of past prizewinning Bocuse d'Or platters, notebooks, and file folders.

Viola began talking to Kaysen in French. After a few sentences, Kaysen translated for Hollingsworth: “We were talking about the garnish. You
should, when you're tasting it, first, close your eyes. Don't look at your garnish. Blindfold Roland, and let Roland taste it. If it's not the explosion that he wants,
then
you worry about the taste. Because everything's about the taste. The presentation is not as important as is the flavor. Then when you start to do the platters, take six of the garnishes [meaning one of each], taste six of them right away, hot. Then wait five minutes, see how they taste. If it has the same exclamation point as when they're hot, you're good. If it doesn't have the same flavor when they're warm or cold—which is what they're going to be—then we have to adjust it.”

This confirmed, once again, that the lag time between presentation and plating at the Bocuse d'Or was a real hurdle, that as good as the food had to be, it also had to be good
cold
. Viola suggested using a heating blanket to warm the silver platter before plating the food, so that there would be less time for it to cool off. (Unbeknownst to Hollingsworth, by this time, in Sweden, his old housemate Jonas Lundgren had hit on an even better solution, fitting a battery-powered heating element between the top and bottom panels of his platters, generating just enough warmth to keep the food hot without further cooking it.)

Next, Viola studied photographs of the food Hollingsworth had presented in Orlando, then spoke to Kaysen, who nodded in agreement, explaining that Viola had said how important it was for the visuals of the platter to be perfect, with uniformity of the garnishes.

“Like if you want to do a baby turnip in olive oil,” said Kaysen, “all of the tips have to be the exact same way, and the same height.” Kaysen pointed to the trimmed green tips of the turnips in the photograph which, while attractively presented, were not in Bocuse d'Or–worthy military formation. “You spend all this time turning a turnip, and doing it perfect and then you have some going here and some going here. Just on the tip, when they look at it across the platter, they all have to be like this—” He touched the stems on the photo in quick succession, saying, “Boom. Boom. Boom.” It was fitting that Viola had focused on the turnips, the same ingredient that had exposed
the gap between Hollingsworth and his original commis; now they symbolized the learning curve before Hollingsworth himself as he pursued the Bocuse d'Or.

Viola pointed to the society garlic blossoms, the edible flowers that garnished the barigoule bread pudding on Hollingsworth's Orlando platter.

“
Tim-oh-see
,” he said, speaking directly to the candidate in broken English, as though addressing a child. “Be careful. Flowers …” He shook his head gravely. “No.”

Hollingsworth's head recoiled in surprise. Kaysen and Viola conferred.

“A judge will ask himself if the flower's edible,” said Kaysen. “If to him it doesn't make sense, he won't eat it.”

“Why would he think it wasn't edible?” Hollingsworth asked.

“You have twenty-four different nationalities,” said Kaysen. “So, if the guy from Singapore doesn't eat it because it has a flower on it because he doesn't think the flower is edible, then you lose one judge. Know what I mean? That's the hard part. You have to think worldly at that point.”

Hollingsworth seemed annoyed. “
Everything
is edible.”

“You'd be surprised how many people put things on the platter that aren't edible.”

“Really?”

“It's amazing.”

Kaysen showed Viola a picture of the artichoke gratin with Hawaiian blue prawns, a garnish that impressed many of the judges in Orlando, so much so that a number of them had made a point of mentioning it to Coach Henin.

Viola spoke to him in French.

“He says that's a very good garnish, but for the finals of the Bocuse d'Or … it won't work.”

Hollingsworth was beginning to get the picture. “Not good enough,” he said.

“Not good enough,” confirmed Kaysen. “It needs finesse.”

It was an interesting word choice, because like that language about unattainable perfection, there are smaller plaques situated around the kitchens of The French Laundry and Per Se that remind those who work there of crucial elements in their collective success, such as “Sense of Urgency,” and “Finesse.”

Hollingsworth spoke to Kaysen: “Ask him what the deal is with items on the plate and a vehicle, like a serving vessel.” Hollingsworth was thinking about the candy dish
cum
smoke glass that he and Kaysen had been dialoguing about, and which would have to go on a little saucer beside the main plate come serving time.

Viola frowned, conferred with Kaysen.

“He doesn't really like it. All the chefs that have won have never taken the product and put it into something. You can use something as support to give it elevation.”

“So it's only one thing?”

“It's only one thing.” Kaysen located a color copy of Serge Vieira's meat platters that won the gold in 2005:
Royal Danish Veal Eight Ways à la Georges Roux
. He pointed to a square-shaped potato garnish. “This is nothing but a
pomme fondant
. That's it. But the
cuisson
is perfect. The seasoning is perfect.”

Viola again spoke via Kaysen: “The easier the garnish is to lift off, the better off you are.”

Something caught Hollingsworth's eye: both Vieira's fish and meat platter had potato preparations on them. At The French Laundry, where major ingredients are never repeated on a menu, this would be verboten. He asked about how such a redundancy would go over with the Bocuse judges.

“It's two different platters,” said Kaysen. “The fish platter comes out first. The jury for the meat does not judge the fish platter. They don't make any notes on it. They have nothing to say.”

The advice continued, with Viola free-associating and Kaysen interpreting:

If you get down to the wire and you're running out of time, don't do everything “half-assed”; eliminate, say, a tuile and make what remains “perfect.” Kaysen editorialized that you often see chefs hurrying in the final minutes, sacrificing precision.

You want your food to be complicated, but not “over the top.”

Regarding the best mindset to take into the competition, Viola admonished Hollingsworth to imagine that, “It's not the Bocuse d'Or. It's not a competition. It's not the people screaming. You're cooking for twelve people only. You don't go beyond that. You don't take the stress and all the anxiety that goes beyond that. The second you put your platter down, everybody's going to know you're going to plate, and the music's going to start.” Kaysen also warned him that the emcees will be talking about
his
food as he's carving the protein and plating the garnishes. He needed to shut all that out.

The garnishes aren't judged as highly as the proteins.