Knives at Dawn (10 page)

Where Rellah felt the most pressure was in preparing his commis, Vincent Forchelli, for the challenge ahead. Because Forchelli was right out of culinary school, Rellah felt it was important to create a stressful environment for him, so he'd put him on the line and throw curveball after curve-ball at him.

The result of that brutality? “He is a different person today,” said Rellah. Forchelli agreed: “I think it improved my skills dramatically. Any competition where you push yourself you will always be better than the guy who doesn't do competitions.”

For the two weeks leading up to Orlando, Whatley and his commis, Josh Johnson, a chef de partie who had worked with him for two years, performed exhaustive practice runs every day—not just the five-and-a-half hours of cooking, but also another several hours for prep and then a few more for clean-up and debriefing—about a twelve-hour commitment per day. As he practiced, Whatley came to respect the Bocuse d'Or, as opposed to, say, cold-food contests. “This particular competition really makes
sense,” he said. “You have to be organized. You are on a timeline. You have to work clean. You have to make things sizzle. Smell good. Being in a live stadium with an audience is the ultimate
Iron Chef
.”

Asked what he had done to prepare a week before the competition in Orlando, Hyunh—who was working in the kosher restaurant Solo in midtown Manhattan while its owners got a new project together for him—cackled gleefully. “I'm not!” he said. “This is a kosher kitchen … I'm competing against Thomas Keller's guy, Charlie Trotter's guy. They have all the resources in the world. Here I am, I have two vinegars—red wine and rice wine vinegar—and some vegetable stock.” He shrugged. “It's very hard.”

“I know what I'm going to do,” he explained. “But I haven't had time to perfect it. I'm just going to bring ingredients down there … and I'm gonna go … I'm gonna cook, with proper techniques, and I'm going to hope it tastes good. I don't know if it'll be the most perfected dish of my career— definitely not I would say—but given the circumstances I'm in now and given what I can do and get out of it, I think it's going to be excellent.”

“I cook best under pressure,” he said, snapping his fingers. “And at the moment. Shit's gonna go down. Things are gonna burn. Things are gonna break. I'm gonna go with the flow, and do what I do best.
Cook!
”

Clearly, this was not the ideal preparation, but in many ways, Hyunh's attitude exemplified the ideal of culinary competitons: He embraced the
experience
.

By the week before the competition, Richard Rosendale, who had been practicing overnight alongside Seth Warren, a string bean of a cook who worked for him at Rosendale's, between overseeing the build-out of a new restaurant and trips to Rye, New York, to train for the Olympics, had stopped rehearsing.

“All of the hard work should have already taken place,” he said. “Right now, as we get ready for next week, it's a lot of packing and going through pack lists, making sure shipping addresses match up, all those little things.”

Did Rosendale feel like the favorite going into Orlando? “Absolutely not. I know … from competing over the years, you can never underestimate
any of your competition … I hope that I'll win, but I also know there's some very talented people that I'm going against.… It's any given Sunday. Anything, and I mean
anything
can happen that can really just throw your game in that five-hour period. The Olympics is a perfect example of that. Four years of preparation comes down to spilling a sauce, or scorching something, or overcooking venison loins.”

Rosendale took about twelve hours to pack his toolbox, which was about the size of a chest freezer, in the most efficient way, and the tools and equipment would be set up very precisely according to when and where he'd need them in the kitchen in Orlando, all with an eye toward maximizing time.

“Every second counts,” he said. “If you go to reach for something and you bring your hand back without something in it … you lose precious seconds … you add that up and by the end of the competition you have lost five or ten minutes … that might not seem like much, but if that's your window [to present your platter] …

“Packing is huge.”

O
N
S
UNDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
21, a bombshell rocked the financial world. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the first stirrings of what would quickly reveal itself to be a financial crisis that would alter the world markets and the presidential election. The next morning, Senator John McCain uttered his faux pas for the ages, that the “fundamentals of the economy” were “strong,” triggering his downward spiral in the polls; by midweek, he would engage in a game of chicken with the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, as McCain threatened to pull out of the first planned presidential debate that Friday night so that he could return to Washington, D.C.

Yet all this election-season melodrama was mere background noise at the World Showplace by Thursday afternoon, drowned out by the power tools employed to bring the new Bocuse d'Or USA to life. In the auditorium, construction teams worked furiously to finish the setup for the next two days: a scaled-down facsimile of the Bocuse d'Or space in Lyon.

A staging area had been set aside for the candidates—a large high-ceilinged space with industrial carpeting on the floor and a few long folding tables. As the chefs arrived—some had already gotten there the day prior—they went scavenging around the back corridors of the facility and into the kitchen area in search of speed racks, sheet trays, and other sundry items they needed to transfer their ingredients.

It was Jérôme Bocuse's idea to make the competition hall in Orlando as similar as possible to the one in Lyon, to give the candidates a chance to visualize what the day would be like in January. Smart, because one of the distinguishing challenges of the Bocuse d'Or is that it's a culinary Brigadoon that only exists for the few days during which it takes place. Candidates who weren't selected two years before their entry, or didn't go on their own in years past, simply cannot see or experience it until they get there. To bring Bocuse's vision to life, Nora Carey had worked for months to coordinate the efforts of Disney's Entertainment, Culinary, and Operations teams, reviewing video footage of the Bocuse d'Or for inspiration and accuracy, and holding weekly meetings and planning sessions.

That afternoon, Jennifer Pelka and Coach Henin held a briefing for the candidates at the American Adventure Parlor. With Revolutionary War music, all flutes and drums, wafting in the windows from outside, it was the first time that all of the candidates and commis were in one room. There was the air of a mass blind date about it. Henin, dressed in a camel-colored Ralph Lauren Oxford with the sleeves rolled up and Pelka, in a sleeveless black dress, set up an easel with a giant pad to brief the group on the rules and regulations of the competition: the start times would be staggered by ten-minute intervals; they'd be required to prepare their platters as well as six plated portions; and waiters would take the actual plates to the judges.

The separate preparation of plates and a platter was a marked departure from the standard operating procedure of the actual Bocuse d'Or, where platters are paraded before the judges and the audience, photographed by the media, then delivered to a carving station, where they are portioned out onto plates for tasting and evaluation. This protocol results in one of the
more vexing elements of the Bocuse d'Or: it may be the preeminent culinary competition in the world, but after the twelve-to fifteen-minute lag time between preparation and service, the food is received by the judges in a manner that would be unacceptable in any restaurant: it's cold.

When Henin opened the floor to questions, Rosendale's depth of experience became clear, as he peppered the coach with one query after another: Could anything that wasn't connected to plumbing be moved to customize the work space? Would there be a runner and dishwasher the whole time? Would there be an ice machine or a runner who can fill an ice bin?

“Good one!” exclaimed Henin, writing the question on the pad.

After the meeting, the chefs emerged into blazing sunlight and made their way to the French Island, a recessed area alongside the lagoon around which Epcot is centered, where they were met by a humbling spectacle: the chefs who would be observing and serving as judges, many of them members of the Advisory Board. There were old-guard legends such as Alain Sailhac, former Lutèce chef Andre Soltner, and Georges Perrier, chef-owner of Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia. There were young bucks such as Daniel Humm of New York City's Eleven Madison Park, and Laurent Tourondel, partner in the fast-expanding Bistro Laurent Tourondel (BLT) restaurant group. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, chef and co-owner of restaurants all over the world including Jean Georges and Vong, was on hand. And of course, Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller. All were dressed in their whites. If there was a chef heaven here on earth, this was it.

Boulud, Keller, and Jérôme Bocuse each spoke, then the candidates drew lots to determine in what order they would compete: on Day One, Rosendale, Sbraga, Rotondo, and Whatley would cook; on Day Two, Hyunh, Powell, Hollingsworth, and Rellah. The chefs were presented with official Bocuse d'Or USA jackets, then Boulud, Keller, and Jérôme Bocuse posed for a picture. Before the photographer could snap the first one, Boulud—ever the showman—looked over his shoulder and realized something was missing. “Get the French Pavilion in the background,” he said.

The chefs pivoted, the photographer relocated, and the photo was taken.

Shortly thereafter, at the World Showplace, the chef-judges were briefed. With Henin and Kaysen chiming in, Boulud and Pelka ran through the timing for the two days of competition and how the scoring would be broken down: 50 percent for taste, 30 percent for artistry (presentation of the platters), and 20 percent for “execution/kitchen skills.”

A
T THE RECEPTION LATER
that evening, Dieter Hanning, a vice president for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, took the floor. An energetic German, Hanning launched into a hilarious recap of the milestones in world gastronomy, with a focus on American dining. Hanning began more than a half-century earlier. “In 1952, Kentucky Fried Chicken opened up,” he recounted, his German accent making the factoid sound automatically ironic. “And in 1954, the Burger King.” Sensing confused delight in his audience, Hanning said, “You're going to ask, ‘Where is that going to fit in with the Bocuse d'Or?' Just bear with me.”

He continued: Julia Child's
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
(which he charmingly misnamed
Mastering the French Cooking of Julia Child
) in 1961.

“In '64 to '74 I did some terrible misery,” he said, getting personal. “Today they would call it
slavery;
in those days they called it
apprenticeship
,
culinary apprenticeship
.” This brought one of the great laughs of the night from a room in which so many people had experienced the personal sacrifice it took to become a chef.

Hanning picked up his timeline: Alice Waters's Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley and the first-ever Starbucks in Seattle in 1971. From his folder, Hanning produced a menu from L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges, commonly refered to simply as “Restaurant Paul Bocuse.” “And here he signed, Monsieur Paul Bocuse, 1971. Eating at his restaurant …” The audience was silent, then he hit them with the sucker punch: “That was like taking out a mortgage.” Chuckles broke out across the room.

Hanning continued ticking off milestones: the first Spago in 1982, Charlie Trotter's restaurant in Chicago in 1987, and up to the present day. As he
spoke, the laughter subsided and the parlor took on a hushed tone, suitable to a sermon. His message was unmistakable: American food had come into its own, and many of the people in that room had been a part of the evolution.

“Then I would also like to thank the
millions
of unknown heroes in this industry, who will never get the recognition, but who help to make us look good. And there's a
lot
of people out there, who wake up every morning, different cultures, different upbringings, different heritages, and we should never forget this.”

Hanning again broke the seriousness conclusively with: “We should also never forget all those guests who come and spend all this big money.”

It had been the first speech of the night, but it set the tone for the evening and the weekend, putting the mission of the Bocuse d'Or USA in historical context. There would be a battle played out over the next two days, but the competitors would enter—and leave—the arena as colleagues with a common goal: bringing that golden Bocuse home to America.

Hanning's remarks were bookended by the evening's final speaker, Damian Mogavero, CEO and founder of Avero, who recounted the story of the Judgment of Paris, the 1976 blind wine tasting that put ten of France's best wines against ten from California, with a stunning result: California won! (The events had recently been depicted in the movie
Bottle Shock
.) Mogavero, a food and wine enthusiast, had purchased and brought along one bottle of the winning red wine from that long-ago showdown, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars' 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon, and while he couldn't procure any of the winning white—1973 Chateau Montelena California Chardonnay—he had managed to get his hands on a magnum each of the 1971 and 1972 vintages.

Small samples of the wines were poured, and the guests lined up to savor a sip, to experience what victory tasted like. And, for a fleeting moment, the candidates were reminded that, although the odds against them were long, anything was possible.

Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.