Knives at Dawn (38 page)

As for the beef platter, the feeling that the rosette was too sweet, owing to that elusive balance in the oxtail-endive marmalade, led to a brainstorm. Boulud suggested infusing vinegar with the truffle trimmings left over after
punching circles. Kaysen had a simpler idea: He squeezed a few drops of lemon juice over the rosette. On tasting it, everybody agreed that it perked up the truffles and nicely offset the flavor of the beef.

“Okay,” said Boulud. “Do lemon, do truffle oil, and keep the honey to a thumbnail.”

Boulud also suggested to Hollingsworth that rather than spread the raw scallop roe out on the mousse with a spatula, that he should freeze it in a sheet, then lay the sheet over the mousee before rolling it around the cod to help the roe layer maintain its shape. In the chaos of the moment, at the end of a long day, Hollingsworth agreed to do this in competition, even though he had never tried it before.

Laughlin came into the room and Hollingsworth told her that he wanted
a lot
of product from California: turnips, a bunch of celery, broccolini, avocado, leeks, orange, cutting celery, carrots, cabbage, essentially everything except the potatoes.

The team packed up their equipment and supplies and stashed the boxes until Monday, when they'd swing by to do one final inventory, and hopefully to see their platters.

One thing was for sure: the last hour of the Bocuse d'Or would be the hardest for Team USA. As it had in every practice, the transition game proved their biggest obstacle. Hollingsworth felt good about the rehearsal up to then, but what he referred to as the “coming together” continued to be a source of frustration, a riddle that he didn't know how to solve. No matter how they approached it, the final push always disintegrated into an improvised sprint. Hollingsworth knew that he couldn't start the plate-up any earlier, because then the food would be cold. And he couldn't plan extra time because then, again, if all went according to plan, they'd be done early and the food would suffer. To address this as best they could, the team created a separate, smaller timing sheet for the final hour that would be posted in the competition kitchen alongside the task list for the entire five-and-a-half-hour period.

In hindsight, although she found herself a bit rusty, Guest was glad
that Hollingsworth hadn't taken up Pelka on her offer to find them another kitchen for another practice because she had found working in a new kitchen disorienting.

Coach Henin remained concerned that the team still had yet to complete a full run-through using all the serving pieces. But, ever the optimist, he continued to hope for the best.

Before they took off for the night, Boulud asked Hollingsworth one more question, something he'd been meaning to ask since he tasted the citrus mousseline. “Do you think the egg yolks are stronger here?”

“
Yes
!” said Hollingsworth, emphatically.

Of course they were.

O
N
S
UNDAY
, J
ANUARY
25, with just seventy-two hours remaining before their day of judgment, Team USA went to brunch.

The first of several events for spectators, guests, and VIPs was planned for that day, an afternoon meal at Au Colombier, Frédéric Côte's restaurant on the outskirts of the city. Team USA wasn't exactly energized, having returned home from practice at well past 11:00 p.m. But it was a command performance, and just the first of many events planned for them that day.

After brunch, they were to venture to Eurexpo to cheer on Gural and Daniels as the Mondial du Pain results were announced.

After a week of having Lyon to themselves, there were suddenly all manner of interested bystanders there to meet and greet Team USA. Alain Sailhac and his wife Arlene Feltman were there, so too was Owen Franken, Paris-based
New York Times
photographer (with a striking resemblance and similar voice to his brother Al, who was in senatorial limbo at the time following a contested election in Minnesota). Writer Bill Buford and his wife Jessica Green were also on hand with their twin sons.

After the meal, the members of the Bocuse d'Or USA piled into various vehicles and headed to the Eurexpo site. Hollingsworth, piloting the Team USA SUV, decided to follow Boulud. Before he knew it, he was
treated to a firsthand glimpse of the chef's notorious driving style, as Boulud wove through lanes with abandon. Hollingsworth, matching the chef maneuver for maneuver, found it hilarious.

At Eurexpo, Boulud's car was stopped by a guard, but moments later was waved through. Hollingsworth followed and they parked.

“They said, this is for VIPs,” Boulud yelled to Hollingsworth and company as he disembarked his car. “And I said, ‘I am as VIP as it gets!' ”

Everybody laughed, but not for long as Boulud was suddenly off in the distance, his leather jacket dancing up ahead. Everybody raced to catch up.

Eurexpo was impossibly sprawling and crowded. Boulud kept ahead of his crew, like a celebrity inexplicably trying to shake his own entourage, though he did stop for a moment, having picked up a newspaper off a stack along the way. Turning around, he flashed a story about the Bocuse d'Or, with a profile of him in a sidebar, and beamed: “No matter where you go in the world, it's good to see yourself in the paper.”

The team arrived at the Mondial du Pain presentation just in time for the announcements. Team USA did not win, but Daniels nabbed the Best Commis prize.

That afternoon, in Hall 33, home of the Bocuse d'Or, the team met in the media center on the second floor, along with the famed Monsieur Paul himself, and were interviewed by the
New York Times
' Elaine Sciolino, who was blogging from the event. As had been the case from the beginning of this endeavor, there was always time for the media.

O
N
M
ONDAY, AT
L'A
BBAYE
, Hollingsworth finally got to see his platters, which had arrived via FedEx in huge, museum piece–worthy crates. They were exactly as he had imagined them and they got him excited for the competition. But their communion was brief, because the team had to get to the Sirha. Two other American teams met with disappointment that day: in Caseus, an international cheese competition, the Yankees placed fourth, while in the World Cup of Pastry event, held in the same hall as the Bocuse
d'Or would be in the coming days, the American team's chocolate sculpture
collapsed
just before the judging. Hopefully, these would not be omens for the Bocuse d'Or squad.

After the pastry awards were handed out, in a small meeting room adjacent to the auditorium, there was a briefing meeting for the Bocuse d'Or candidates and judges. Scannell and Rosendale met up with the team here, and Scannell handed the new pieces he had brought over personally. Finally the team was in possession of all the elements of their platters.

The judges drew lots to determine if they would evaluate fish or meat, and the rules were reviewed. (The president of each competing nation's foundation or organization served on the jury, so Keller was among them, and found himself judging fish.) For Hollingsworth, it was an uncomfortable meeting. He found it strange to be sitting there with people he'd be competing with, even his old housemate Lundgren; the old friends sat next to each other, but Hollingsworth felt the Swede had his guard up the whole time. When Hollingsworth tried to trade notes on how much they'd practiced, Lundgren nodded back, but offered nothing. Other teams, Hollingsworth felt, exuded arrogance; in particular, he was put off by the Norwegians, seated near the dais in white jackets with sky blue lettering, who evidenced no desire to talk to anybody else.

That evening, Team USA had dinner at Paul Bocuse, a special meal to welcome them and their spectators. Dinnertime traffic clogged the roads that encircled Lyon so by the time the team got back to Hotel Beaux-Arts, cleaned up, and donned Bocuse-appropriate attire, it was after nine o'clock, and many of the spectators had been waiting for hours. But that was all forgotten at Salon Fernand Point, their virtual home away from home, which had been overtaken by a gargantuan table that extended almost its full length. Keller and his (personal) partner Laura Cunningham (who had been The French Laundry's Director of Operations until 2006) sat alongside Hollingsworth and Laughlin. Alain Sailhac and Arlene Feltman were there, as were the Bocuse d'Or's attorney Joel Buchman and Eleven Madison Park's Daniel Humm, there with his fiancée.

In the midst of a pressure-cooker week, it was a fantastical reprieve, the evening highlighted by toasts from Boulud and Keller, and the meal headlined by
Lièvre à la Royale
, royal hare, rolled out on giraudons and carved tableside by Bocuse himself, up well past his usual bedtime, as was Adina Guest. “I was amazed that I stayed up that late,” said the commis. “I really enjoyed the food, the people, the speeches.”

The evening was a personal high point for Keller, who called it “an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime moment to have. To be sitting in that dining room, in a historic place, with that group of people, telling stories, living stories inside yourself.”

For the Francophile chef, who spent the final minutes of the evening taking pictures
of the pictures
that lined the walls, it was a journey to the very heart of his career. “For me, looking at pictures of Fernand Point or Paul Bocuse, remembering when I first heard about that chef, first read the book, how much of an impact that's had on me, being there and watching that food come out, so classic and so true to form, so true to Chef Bocuse, so true to France, the linens starched perfectly, the glasses, the butter, every little detail about that experience was so French and so traditional and so classic and so perfectly executed, you had to be in awe.

“Your life is about those memories,” said Keller. “You have to embrace those memories and those moments.”

“Why isn't somebody doing this now?” he wondered. “This is a dying art … the rouget crusted in potato with a
vin blanc
sauce and a little design in the sauce. You would call that contrived today. If I did that in my restaurant, or Daniel did that in his restaurant, people would say, ‘What is that?' But you're there and you eat it and you go, ‘My god. Amazing.' The rabbit royal, exquisite.”

He added a word he doesn't use often about food: “Perfection.”

Listen to those with experience, but also know when to follow your own instincts and desires. You have to pursue your own ideas, do what you feel is right, and give it one hundred percent during the preparation and the big day, so that you have no regrets.

—
SERGE VIEIRA, BOCUSE D'OR CHAMPION
, 2005

G
AVIN
K
AYSEN, FUELED BY FANTASIES OF VICARIOUS RETRIBUTION
, marched through the predawn streets of Lyon on Wednesday morning, January 28. The last time he had been awake at this hour, in this city, was on his own day of judgment. Back in what now seemed like the dark ages of the Bocuse d'Or USA, there were no team jackets like the one he