Knives at Dawn (14 page)

For Powell and Rellah, it would be a hard day, their platters received in a lukewarm way by the judges, even though they displayed no shortage of creativity: Rellah prepared all American-French hybrids such as cod cake,
pipérade
(tomato and pepper stew), chowder sauce, and caviar, and a potpie of oxtail and beef cheek, which he'd been developing since the summer, while Powell unveiled a daring platter featuring unpredictable touches such as a lobster-roe-and-squid-ink pasta, black-olive-tomato caviar, and corn-and-seafood-chowder
fondant
on his fish platter. On his beef platter, the tenderloin was set on a bed of vegetable
brunoise
(fine dice) and wrapped in a mushroom–foie gras crust. Unfortunately, despite patches of approval (David Myers appreciated that Rellah's meat dish “ really represented what he wanted to achieve,” while Vongerichten praised the “great detail” and “good skill” on display on Powell's fish platter), the prevailing feeling was that the dishes were, at the end of the day, unsuccessful.

Powell already knew that he hadn't done as well as he'd hoped to. He had had some technical problems, as just about everybody did, but he also felt he had made a psychological error: on the previous day, he had sought out Paul Bocuse in the VIP area and told him the story of how they'd met years earlier. Bocuse remembered, and Powell told him how happy he was to be able to meet him as a cook. “I was really pleased with that moment,” Powell said later. “But I wonder if it [would have] been a better thing after I cooked. Because it is like I already got what I wanted. I don't know. Maybe I am just trying to find excuses.”

Other candidates didn't know how to evaluate their own performances. Back in their hotel room, Hollingsworth said to Laughlin that he thought he had done well. He knew he had taken a risk by not doing competition-style food, but was hopeful that even if the old-guard French chefs like Soltner and Sailhac might have been looking for a more ornate presentation, the younger ones such as Laurent Tourondel and Daniel Humm might be more open to understatement.

T
HAT EVENING, THE REAR
area of the World Showplace was transformed for a gala dinner. Several hundred guests were on hand for a meal featuring dishes by Patrick O'Connell, Charlie Trotter, and Daniel Boulud. Absent was Thomas Keller, who had had to fly to New York City that afternoon for a function at Per Se that had been planned before the Bocuse d'Or USA came into his life.

The evening was exactly what one would expect of an event combining the worlds of Bocuse, Boulud, Keller, and Disney. At the end of the meal, Max McCalman,
fromager
of Terrance Brennan's Picholine and Artisanal restaurants in New York City, presented the cheese course, but not before Remy the Rat from the movie
Ratatouille
, a chef's toque affixed to his head, burst into the room and romped among the tables.

Dana Cowin, editor-in-chief of
Food & Wine
, announced the winners, consolation prizes first: Best Fish went to Hung Hyunh, while Best Meat went to Kevin Sbraga. Best Commis went to Adina Guest. The French Laundry newbie had to fight back tears because she thought that this award, like the fish and meat ones, meant that she and Hollingsworth were no longer eligible for the big prizes. Most upsetting to her was the feeling that she had let Hollingsworth down. “I was, like, this is Chef Tim's deal. I want him to win. This is all about him, not about me at all. When I got it, my heart sank,” she said.

Continuing with the announcements, third place went to Michael Rotondo, who was also named Most Promising Chef, with a potentially bright future with the Bocuse d'Or USA. Second place went to competition veteran Richard Rosendale.

And first place went to Hollingsworth and Guest, who would go on to represent the United States at the Bocuse d'Or in Lyon in January. The audience burst into applause, then quickly filed back out to the reception room for passed chocolates, more cocktails, and dancing.

It felt like the end of something, but the truth was that it was only the beginning. As photographs were taken and interviews conducted, Kaysen sought out Hollingsworth on the stage. To the veteran, his successor seemed happy, but understandably dazed and confused as he processed the mission ahead.

“Get ready for a wild ride,” Kaysen said.

We are trying to do the best we can with a piece of striped bass.

—
DEVIN KNELL

T
IMOTHY
H
OLLINGSWORTH STARED INTO THE EYES OF
Y
ASUJI
Sasaki, the Japanese candidate who would be flying his nation's red-dotted sun flag into battle at the Bocuse d'Or. The American didn't know what to make of Sasaki, who seemed the very picture of poise, and whose gaze gave nothing away. Of the twenty-three chefs against whom Hollings-worth would compete, the Japanese was among the handful he presumed to be most formidable. An admirer of Japanese cuisine—its purity of flavor and nowhere-to-hide reliance on pristine ingredients and the cook's
fundamental skill, especially with knife work—Hollingsworth trusted that Sasaki would be a fine technician, every bit as devoted to his craft as Hollingsworth was to his. He also took note of the man's age: forty-one, just enough to be experienced without being over the hill.

Hollingsworth wasn't in the same room with Sasaki, or even on the same continent. The Japanese chef was at his home in Kobe, Japan, a sous chef at Restaurant Alain Chapel at the Portopia Hotel, and Hollingsworth was at his home in Napa, scrutinizing the candidate photographs posted on the Bocuse d'Or Web site. Provided for fans and journalists, the profiles were a tantalizing resource for the candidates themselves. Of all the cooks and chefs in the world, just twenty-four would be throwing down in January. Regardless of who garnered the highest marks and who emerged empty-handed, it was an elite club and, for those who didn't already know one another, this was as close as they'd come to meeting until the week of the competition. The site was the only opportunity to size each other up, as best they could based on a photograph and some factoids: in addition to a headshot and date of birth, many of the dossiers, or link-to sites for the chefs' restaurants or national foundations, also featured brief profiles of the chef-candidates describing where they worked now and had worked, as well as statements on their philosophy of cooking.

Based simply on their country of origin, Hollingsworth had ideas about who the fiercest adversaries would be. Those were the profiles he clicked on first. The Norwegians had a fearsome track record at the Bocuse d'Or. Their cuisine may not be as highly regarded as, say, that of France, but their culture of cooking competitions and well-funded effort had produced three gold medalists and two silver. The Norwegians were the first team to beat the French at their home event, which may or may not have prompted a rule change: through 1999, in order to give other countries a chance, the victorious nation was not eligible to compete in the following Bocuse d'Or. Many believe that this demonstrated an air of superiority by the host country, who had won the top prize each time they competed, and are, of course, widely considered the kings and queens of Western cuisine,
if not world cuisine. But in 1999, even with the French in contention, Terje Ness of Norway emerged the victor. Shortly thereafter, the Bocuse d'Or organizers announced that the winning country from the 2001 event would be permitted to return for the next Bocuse d'Or. Jérôme Bocuse said the timing of the rule change was a coincidence, but the Bocuse d'Or's own Web site headlines its summary of 1999 as “The Norwegian Lesson” and describes it thus: “The victory of the Norwegian chef boosted the contest by proving that France was not invincible.” Since 2003, the French and Norwegians had such a stranglehold on the most precious of Bocuse d'Or metals—splitting the two top honors in three of the past five contests—that the reality of the competition, according to Michel Bouit, was that, “Twenty-two chefs are competing for the bronze.”

Hollingsworth looked up the Norwegian, Geir Skeie, whose headshot depicted a wisp of a young man the same age as Hollingsworth, with icy blond hair and laser-like eyes that looked right off the screen and through whoever was gazing at him. In 1993, when he was just twelve years old, Skeie had sat in front of the family television and watched in wonder as his countryman Bent Stiansen, who had won the gold for Norway that year, described his Bocuse d'Or triumph on a cooking program. As he imagined glitter raining down on Stiansen at the Bocuse d'Or, and the crowd screaming for him, Skeie had decided that, according to the Bocuse d'Or press kit, “one day it would be his turn to participate.”

These profiles, many of which indicated longtime Bocuse d'Or ambitions, were among Hollingsworth's first indications, other than past conversations with former housemate Lundgren, of what the contest meant to some European chefs. When he had taken on the Orlando challenge, he had no idea of what the Bocuse d'Or itself would be like. “I knew it was a famous culinary competition. Period,” he said.

Even now, he barely knew the half of it: in reality, the phrasing of Skeie's profile—his “turn to participate”—was a politic way of expressing what Skeie really meant: it was his turn to
win
. At the age of twelve, he had already decided that he wanted to be a chef. “When I saw this on the TV,”
said Skeie, who speaks in blunt though not unfriendly proclamations, “I thought that must be the best thing you can do when you're a chef. I wanted to be the best chef, so that was the wish.”

Skeie describes himself as highly competitive, a guy who “always liked winning” and, just as importantly,
hated
to lose. As a boy, he played soccer and did some shooting (target practice and hunting), and his lust for victory often led to arguments with his friends and his brother.

Like many of the European candidates, Skeie wasn't new to culinary competitions; if he were, he wouldn't have been taken seriously as a potential candidate to represent Norway. Skeie's competition experience dated back to 2000. He had been a member of the Norwegian national team, won the Norwegian championship in 2003, and placed third in both the Nordic and Norwegian Championships in 2004. To gather intel for the time when his own Bocuse d'Or moment arrived, Skeie went to Lyon on his own dime in 2005 and 2007 to attend the Bocuse d'Or as a spectator. He had not yet been selected as the Norwegian candidate when he attended the second time—that would come about two months later—but he had already made the cut to participate in the national trials.

Skeie had also put himself though physical hell in service of his childhood dream. In 2005, he fractured his kneecap in a car accident in the mountains of Norway, ramming into another car on his weekly commute from Oslo to the hotel where he was employed. He underwent strenuous physical therapy in order to firm up the muscle groups around it for extra support, eventually doing the exercises on his own, without a therapist. His doctors told him that the injury would shorten his kitchen career and that eventually he'd have to replace the kneecap, but these prognostications did nothing to deter him from his goal.

Hollingsworth, who had just learned that he'd be representing the United States, had no way of knowing the details of Skeie's preparation, but the Norwegian had made the most of his long lead time. For more than a year after he was selected to represent his country, he continued to work as chef de cuisine at Mathuset Solvold, where his employer, not coincidentally,
was Odd Ivar Solvold, who won the bronze at the 1997 Bocuse d'Or. During that time, Skeie
thought
about his cuisine, not cooking even one garnish, but instead visualizing elements and compositions, imagining their flavors and how they would harmonize, taking them apart and reassembling them in his mind. In September 2008, about the same time Hollingsworth was finalizing his dishes for Orlando, Skeie was taking his actual Bocuse d'Or food out for a test drive in a kitchen outfitted with the same equipment he'd be using in Lyon; he'd have started earlier, but his participation in the Bocuse d'Or Europe in July (one of the continental contests that had been introduced in recent years), ironically, distracted him from the upcoming world competition.

In addition to employer Solvold, who was on board as Skeie's coach, the community of Norwegian Bocuse d'Or medalists and other past participants was crucial to Skeie. “Most important was Odd Ivar, because he was with me all the time,” said Skeie. But other past candidates gave him important input: When Skeie and Solvold had the idea of outfitting a van with a training kitchen while in Lyon, so that he would be able to simply cook, without having to lug equipment to and from a training space, Eyvind Hellstrøm, who had placed fifth at the Bocuse d'Or in 1989, offered a hearty endorsement of the notion, opining that it would be well worth the trouble. As his training progressed, Skeie would also invite Hell-strøm and Stiansen (the one he had watched on television as a boy) to taste his food and offer feedback.

In addition to Skeie, Hollingsworth couldn't help but think of Lund-gren, who displayed a short and spiky hairstyle in his photo, which showed him holding a spoon and grinning almost mischievously—the very picture of quiet confidence. Lundgren hadn't been selected until February 2008, which was about the time Boulud was courting Keller in the United States, but which Lundgren considered “too late. You should select your candidate as soon as the [previous] Bocuse d'Or is over.”

Lundgren is an athlete: he plays soccer and participates in amateur body-building contests, and he likened preparing for the Bocuse d'Or to
training for the Olympic Games. Determined to make the most of his one shot at glory, he withdrew from his restaurant work after the Bocuse d'Or Europe in July, though he did take some part-time work for the money, as did his commis, Öyvind Novak.