Knives at Dawn (5 page)

When he's not in New York keeping tabs on Per Se and the Manhattan outpost of Bouchon Bakery, Keller lives in a house adjacent to The French Laundry property, and also—either via The French Laundry or jointly with his partners—owns the house next to The French Laundry on Washington Street and the one next to that, a 1940s ranch-style house with two bedrooms where his father, Edward, a retired Marine Corps captain, lived until his death in 2008.

Keller had his VIP guests seated in the Courtyard outside The French Laundry, and stole Boulud and Régis Marcon away for a tour of the restaurant. Then he served the group canapés, including two French Laundry classics—cornets (little ice cream-style cones) filled with salmon tartare and topped with sweet red onion crème fraîche, and oysters and pearls, a dish of lightly poached oysters atop a sabayon of pearl tapioca custard that's garnished with osetra caviar—and champagne. Afterwards, Keller himself led the group as they strolled along Washington Street to Bouchon, where he left them to enjoy lunch, returning at its conclusion.

Following the meal, over espressos in California, Boulud began chatting up his old friend from New York about the Bocuse d'Or. Keller, whose cautious, analytical nature is among his most defining attributes, wasn't unmoved by the passion on display, but he confined himself to practical questions, such as “What would my role be?”

Boulud's answer, as it often is to these kinds of things, was “Don't worry about it, Thomas; you won't have to do anything.” But Keller was wise enough, about Boulud and life, to know that more due diligence was in order. Among his concerns was the fact that they were already into March, and his calendar, kept by his assistant, Molly Ireland, did not have the Bocuse d'Or factored into it. With less than a year to prepare for the contest the next January, this was no small matter; the reservation book at The French Laundry is opened just two months before a given date, but Keller's dance card has commitments up to twelve months away. In addition to being a chef, said Ireland, “he's also the executive of a 900-plus person company.” Ireland also said that it's important to Keller that no matter where he is in the world, he be available “to keep mentoring staff and be available to them, and that requires a lot of time as well.”

Kaysen didn't say much at the meeting, but he was—figuratively if not physically—at the edge of his seat, and he welcomed it when Keller turned to him and asked what he thought of the competition. He told Keller that the only way to secure the sponsorships required to fund a legitimate U.S. effort was to have the best chefs in the country, if not the world, on board.

Keller nodded his understanding. “I'm sure,” he said. But he didn't say any more than that.

And so, on the drive back to San Francisco, Boulud told Kaysen that the time had come to unholster the big gun. The necessary next step in a series of diplomatic gestures and maneuvers required to fulfill Paul Bocuse's request was to have Monsieur Paul, as Bocuse is known in France, give Thomas Keller a call and formally ask him to take over as president of the Bocuse d'Or USA. Boulud felt that the wheels had been sufficiently greased. He would call Bocuse himself and let him know the time was right to make his overture.

Keller might not have given his “yes” just yet, but with a request on tap from Bocuse himself, everybody already knew what the answer would be.

A
S
K
ELLER WOUND UP
his Epcot remarks, introducing the chefs on hand to serve as judges in the coming days, Jennifer Pelka, an exceedingly extroverted twenty-six-year-old brunette, watched from the back of the reception, savoring a rare break and a sorely needed glass of wine, a respite from a summer of late nights worthy of a political operative.

With no support staff and precious little direct experience, Pelka had spent the past several months obsessively coproducing this weekend, helping bring to life all aspects of the Bocuse d'Or USA finals from her headquarters in the bowels of Restaurant Daniel, down below East Sixty-fifth Street in midtown Manhattan. There, Pelka operates out of a glass-walled office she shares with A. J. Schaller, Culinary Communications Director for Dinex Group, Boulud's corporation. The two face each other across two long and cluttered desks, a near-avalanche of reference books bending the shelves built into the wall behind them. A former cook and caterer, Pelka has the title of research assistant to Daniel Boulud, a job that can mean anything from writing the daily menu at Daniel (which can devour up to five hours on some days), to coordinating packaging and messaging with the manufacturer of Daniel Boulud Kitchen Spices, to conducting
research and honchoing specific projects related to new restaurants and charity events.

“When something creative pops up in Daniel's world, and he wants to work on it, then he will often call me in and then set me off on it,” summarized Pelka.

While Pelka spends her days below ground, Boulud hovers above it. He shares an office over the kitchen at Daniel with his assistant, Vanessa Absil, herself a native of France, a willowy, bashful woman in her mid-twenties who once studied in Lyon. The office is awash in energy, heightened by the steep, submarine-like steel stairway that ascends to the space, and by the room in which Boulud takes his meetings, called the Skybox: a windowed pen, separated from the office by swinging vented doors, and festooned with framed photographs of Boulud with everybody from Andy Warhol to Robert DeNiro to Barack Obama in his senatorial days—snapshots of more than twenty years in the public eye. The Skybox overlooks the expansive kitchen, all steel and copper by day, a swirl of white jackets by night—an odd, majestic cross between a grand, turn-of-the-century galley and an operating-room theater.

In March 2008, after a brief stint working in the kitchen of Daniel, Pelka had recently returned to the company in a nonkitchen capacity, and her job description was still being formulated. As the chef was between assistants, Pelka took a turn at the assistant's desk in Boulud's office.

Boulud's first impulse to move the Bocuse d'Or USA forward had been simply to tap Kaysen for an encore effort, but when he mentioned it to him, his protégé's response, delivered in his typically quotable style, was a conversation killer: “No problem, Chef,” said Kaysen, “I'd love to do it. I'll just need six months off and three hundred thousand dollars.” Boulud also found out from Bocuse d'Or Contest Manager Florent Suplisson that the organization prefers that candidates be selected via some form of competition, as was now the case on three continents with the Bocuse d'Or Europe, Bocuse d'Or Asia, and the Copa Azteca in Mexico City.

On March 7, Boulud, commonly referred to as DB among his staff—a
casual touch that undercuts the chef's French heritage and the formality of his flagship restaurant—told Pelka they were going to need to find a candidate. By her own admission, Pelka knew nothing about Paul Bocuse beyond his famous moniker, and had never heard of the Bocuse d'Or. But before she could do the necessary Googling, she and Boulud had relocated to the Skybox and set about hatching a plan.

In many ways, Boulud is the unofficial mayor of the New York City chef community. Not only is he one of just a handful of them to hold a coveted four-star
New York Times
rating, but he also relishes socializing and networking in addition to empire building. From 2000 to 2009, at an age when many chefs are plotting their retirement, he added seven restaurants to his portfolio in locations as diverse as Beijing, and Vancouver, British Columbia. His boundless energy is legendary, as are the occasional late-night dinners he throws, welcoming fellow chefs to an after-hours feast. “Daniel is the life of the party,” said Per Se's Benno, who worked for Boulud in the 1990s at Daniel, then located in its original space on East 76th Street (now home to Café Boulud). “[He] is up on the bar at four in the morning, dancing, screaming at the top of his lungs, and is back in the kitchen at seven the next morning.”

Boulud and Pelka created a network of possible “committee” members to help with “influence, expertise, [and] fund raising,” and a list of possible sponsors, which Pelka divided into cash and “see above potential committee members,” meaning for in-kind contributions of products and services. Having expedited these first tasks, Pelka recognized that the job she had just been given was colossal, but she wouldn't have had it any other way. She found Boulud's enthusiasm and go-for-broke impulsiveness contagious, and always had.

T
HE
F
RENCH TERM
MISE
en place
refers to having everything in its place. In American kitchens where French terminology still rules, it describes the order a chef or cook desires before service begins.
Mise en place
means that
you are ready to perform, everything is a grab away, and just the way you want it. You are set up for success.

During the rest of that March, Boulud, Pelka, and Kaysen, with intermittent participation from Keller as his schedule allowed, established what the ideal mise en place would be for Bocuse d'Or USA success. Boulud conceived the plan of action the way a chef approaches a dish, building a base, then adding layers in a carefully considered fashion, each following logically the one that preceded it.

A few pieces had already fallen into place: once he was on board, Keller had offered up his father's old house in Yountville, which he had been planning to convert into a research and development facility for his company, as a training center. His vision was to install equipment identical to the competition kitchen so Team USA could practice with the same stoves, ovens, and other equipment that they'd be cooking on in January. The house also had two bedrooms where the team could stay while they trained. Jérôme Bocuse, meanwhile, had suggested making the team trials part of the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, a forty-five day celebration that takes place in the late summer and would provide a built-in audience to cheer on the competitors as they vied for the honor of representing the United States. He phoned Nora Carey, director of the event, who had
just
left a planning meeting for the next year when he reached her, and had no room in her budget for another event. But this was the Bocuse family asking; she just couldn't say “no.” So she forged an alliance with some like-minded members of the Disney food and beverage team, and made the rounds until they had secured all the necessary executive buy-in. (For Keller, it would be the second “collaboration” with Disney. The creative team behind the Disney-Pixar film
Ratatouille
spent time working with the chef at The French Laundry as part of their research, and Keller designed the
confit byaldi
—the elegant interpretation of ratatouille assembled in thinly sliced concentric rings instead of rough-cut vegetables—that Remy the Rat prepares at the film's climax.)

Boulud's next step was to approach a who's who of famous American
chefs—or at least chefs who worked in America—to ask them to become members of the “US Committee for the Bocuse d'Or.” In the last week of the month, Boulud sent out e-mails, “signed” by himself and Keller, asking fellow luminaries to affiliate their names with the effort. “By having your association as a US Committee member,” it read, “we will gain lever-age to:

Support fundraising and sponsorship efforts

Increase awareness of the Bocuse d'Or among our peers

Encourage young chefs to apply to compete