Knives at Dawn (39 page)

pulled tautly around him that frigid January morning. There were no industry giants, no half-million dollars in sponsorship funds. There was just the team. And ironically, on this day, there was just the team again. After all the money and media that had been stirred up over the past year, it all came down to the same thing it always came down to: a core group rendezvousing before sunup to head to Eurexpo and cook. At various points in and around Lyon, similar scenes were playing out as eleven other bands were coming together for the same purpose.

Day One of the Bocuse d'Or had come and gone the day before, and Team USA had taken advantage of their spot on the schedule to catch their breath, sleeping in before heading out to the event site to soak up the atmosphere and watch the platters go by. The setup of Hall 33 was very much like that of the event in Orlando, writ large: twelve kitchens, twenty-four
judges, plus a table between the fish and meat juries at which Daniel Boulud, Paul Bocuse (or, in his stead for much of the afternoon, Jérôme Bocuse, representing the Bocuse name), and President of the Jury and 2007 Bocuse d'Or champion, Fabrice Desvignes, would sit. The jury area was flanked by two carving stations at which the food on each platter would be portioned out onto plates for the judges.

Hollingsworth, Guest, and Laughlin spent most of the afternoon with Laura Cunningham, seated in the front row of a sponsor box—slightly closer to the action than the general-admission spectators—getting their bearings: About three hours before the first platter was set to be marched out, Vincent Ferniot, a paunchy, mustachioed French television food personality who had served as the French-language emcee of the Bocuse d'Or for many years, and Angela May, an actress and model making her Bocuse d'Or debut, replacing Jérôme Bocuse as the English-language host, took the stage. The pair began several hours of commentary, amplified throughout the auditorium itself where they were visible on a large screen suspended over the competition kitchens, and transmitted around the world through streaming video on “Sirha TV,” the host event's Web site. Throughout the late morning and into the afternoon, Ferniot and May interviewed coaches and sponsors, narrated the action in the kitchens, and introduced the judges, which included several world-renowned culinary figures: Anne-Sophie Pic of France, Lea Linster of Luxembourg, Eyvind Hellstrøm of Norway, Matthias Dahlgren of Sweden, Philippe Rochat of Switzerland, Juan Mari Arzak of Spain, and of course American's own Thomas Keller.

Day One of the competition was strangely anticlimactic as the much-vaunted noise level didn't live up to its legend. Not even close. Hollings-worth and Guest were both encouraged by what they heard—after months of being warned about the tympanum-traumatizing audience, the reality was startlingly mild. So, too was the size of Hall 33, routinely described in the media as hosting thousands of spectators when in reality there were just about one thousand people in attendance at any given time, including
media who were allowed to roam the area outside the kitchens in the first hours, then banished to a pen between the sponsor boxes and the competition floor when the judges took their seats shortly before the tasting began.

The line-up on Day One included Australia, Brazil, Finland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Historically, Day One has
not
produced many medalists, but with Lundgren in the mix, it was not a group to be dismissed. There wasn't much audacity on display that afternoon, no eye-popping surprises, but there were points of interest, as when the Brazilian platter came out with a unique solution to the “keeping the food hot” challenge: a small fire had actual flames licking the beef centerpiece as the platter was paraded before the judges. There was also a moment of heartbreak, when returning candidate Croston of Australia—there with hopes of bettering his twelfth-place finish of two years prior—sliced his cod fillet with its prawn “crocodile” skin (the shrimp that enveloped the fish gave it a croc skin appearance), only to have it go to pieces on him, the flesh all but disintegrating as he brought his knife blade down through it. As most candidates found out that day, the cod had a larger flake than what he was used to. As it turned out, the fish provided was a different variety of cod—skrei, instead of the promised torsk. “It's a little trickier because the fish is soft, especially if it is stuffed,” said Odd Ivar Solvold, coach of Norway's Skeie. “We Scandinavians know the fish well—you just need to salt it a bit and be a little more gentle with the heat, but I'm not sure everyone else knows how to work it.”

In his first time at the Bocuse d'Or, Thomas Keller found that judging detail came with its own sets of stresses and challenges. Boulud's concerns about the jury not having time to read Team USA's descriptive packet proved well-founded as Keller barely had time to take in each dish, often tasting one team's plates as another team's platter went by, and trying to make written notes at the same time. Before too long he had created his own shorthand system that he later transferred to the official scoring sheets. As for the packets the United States and other teams distributed, he
quickly developed the belief that they should be distributed to the judges the night before the competition so they might have a chance to anticipate what each team is preparing and to know what they are going for to guide them in their evaluation and appreciation.

None of the platters seemed especially intimidating until the fish platter emerged from the Swedish kitchen. As it was carried past the jury, bobbing in the handheld frame on the large-screen TV, Hollingsworth saw what might have been a harbinger of doom. The platter, from his old housemate Lundgren, positively reeked of confidence: cross sections of cod poached in its own skin, with lemon-marinated prawns aligned in its center, scallops filled with scallop roe crème, flavored with algae and topped with caviar, little pea custards topped with three perfectly spherical peas. On the edge of the platter was etched, in letters appropriate to the credits of a
Terminator
movie: lundgren SWE 09.
That's my name
, it said.
And don't you forget it
. Thirty minutes later, Lundgren's meat platter made an equally daunting impression: a centerpiece of a ballotine (roll) of grilled fillet of beef stuffed with its own fat and oxtail braised in red wine and veal bouillon. Standing up on their sides were circles of pickled golden beets, filled with foie gras and topped with a graduation cap of four-spice bread. One component was titled “Tastes and Scents of the Forest,” featuring porcini mushrooms in an oven-baked onion, set atop a potato pedestal. The platter was clean, perfect, and fanciful, brimming with identifiable flavors rendered in spectacular fashion. Nobody else on Day One would touch Lundgren, and by day's end, it was clear to Hollingsworth that he was the front-runner.

Kaysen, who had been watching the competition intermittently as he roamed around the Bocuse d'Or, catching up with old acquaintances and competitors, had come to the same conclusion. When he connected with Hollingsworth at the end of the day, they were in total sync.

“Jonas's stuff looked good, huh?” said Kaysen.

“Yeah,” said Hollingsworth.

“Good for him,” said Kaysen. “He deserves it.”

B
Y
W
EDNESDAY MORNING
, K
AYSEN
had put Day One out of his mind and his attention was firmly on Team USA. A few nights earlier, he had been relocated to the plush Sofitel because his room at the Beaux-Arts was needed for spectators. It wasn't a long walk to the Hotel Beaux-Arts, and he took it briskly. His sense of purpose was unmistakable, a man on a mission if ever there were one.

His momentum was momentarily stalled, however, when he spied a small passenger van parked across the street from the Beaux-Arts, rather than the passenger bus they were expecting, the same one that had been chauffeuring spectators to brunches and dinner, with its crucial cargo holds underneath for all of the team's food and equipment. Why the transportation company had sent them this van was anybody's guess, but there was no time to place a complaint call, and nothing to be gained. Coach Henin, veteran that he was, was already in the lobby, waiting. Pelka was there, too. On seeing Kaysen, she yelled out, “Hey, GK!” The night man, clearly ready for Team USA to find a new base of operations, shushed her sternly.

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.

U
NBEKNOWNST 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.