Knives at Dawn Read Free

fundamental, sometimes antiquated, techniques: ice sculpting, ornate platter service, and cold food competitions devoted to butchery, slicing, and basic knife skills. (The International Culinary Olympics combines the two formats.) In the cold food arena, the product itself is often evaluated mostly, if not exclusively, on its appearance, such as how perfectly a terrine is composed and even sliced, rather than on its taste. (One reason for this is that the food is typically prepared ahead of time, chilled, and preserved under gelatin or aspic.) These contests are an ingrained part of the culinary culture in many European countries, but you won’t see them televised or covered in newspapers or blogs in the United States and they rarely, if ever, draw the participation of brand-name chefs.
    â€œThere are many avenues for chefs to take in their careers,” said Keller, who gives the impression that he chooses his words as carefully as he sources his Elysian Fields Farm lamb. “The first competition that I saw was at the [International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show] … the only thing that you see is the finished platters. Everything is covered with gelatin. I was a young chef focused on restaurant
à la minute
cooking and the platter thing didn’t really resonate with me. I never found it interesting to be involved with that. That is the path that I took.”
    Many of Keller’s American restaurant colleagues aren’t nearly as polite about cooking competitions, regarding them as a curiosity with little real-world value, something that hotel or culinary school guys get together to do, but not
real
chefs. Even Jonathan Benno, Keller’s chef de cuisine at Per Se, commented that, “I respect [the Bocuse d’Or’s] history and tradition and the skill set involved to create those beautiful platters, but that style ofcooking doesn’t really interest me.
This
interests me. Working in a restaurant every day with a team interests me.”
    One reason for the divide between the European zeal for culinary competitions and the dearth of interest in the United States is that many, if not most, European chefs were raised in ultraconservative, traditional cooking environments, whereas many of today’s American restaurant chefs came up in the rule-breaking, fiercely forward-looking culinary scene of the 1980s and ’90s. The very name of the movement that drew many of them to the kitchen—New American Cuisine—underscores a desire to move on from both the past and the conventions of classic European techniques and dishes. Conversely, their contemporaries overseas maintain, even cherish, a strong connection to centuries-old traditions, which are themselves a source of national pride. As a result, many European teams are lavishly funded by foundations and other support organizations, and competitors’ employers are only too happy to give them weeks or months off to devote to their preparation, something exceedingly rare in the United States, where most culinary competitors come from hotels or cooking schools, entities that can afford to grant them the time, and for whom the prizes hold great promotional value. “Because they work in [a private] club,” said Boulud of those who populate the ranks of America’s competition chefs, “they don’t really work in the competitive environment like we have. Often in private clubs, or in a situation where the chef is a teacher in the CIA [Culinary Institute of America], he has plenty of time to focus on that … but when you run a restaurant in New York, and you do it day in and day out, you are so busy there is no way to find a break to do it.”
    Although Boulud had no relationship with the Bocuse d’Or prior to 2008, he did have one with Paul Bocuse, for whom he had briefly worked when he was a wee lad learning his craft in the kitchens of Lyon. Perhaps signaling early that he was destined for anything-goes