Knives at Dawn by Andrew Friedman Page B

black hair combed back into a near-pompadour, had more culinary competition experience,
exponentially
more, than the rest of the field combined: a member of two United States Culinary Olympic teams, Rosendale had participated in two three-year apprenticeship programs in his young career, including one at The Greenbrier, the fabled hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. As part of his education there, he was expected to do competition-like exercises after work such as mystery baskets (cooking spontaneously from an unannounced selection of ingredients) or putting up buffet platters. These sessions lasted until about two in the morning, and included a critique by his supervisors, who offered no leniency. “The expectation was perfection all the time,” said Rosendale.
    Though the next installment of the Olympics was set to start on October 19, just a few weeks after the event in Orlando, Rosendale was attracted to the opportunity presented by the new Bocuse d’Or USA. “I really want to see an American win,” he said. “We have way too many talented chefs not to have placed any higher than we have.”
    Rosendale could have been channeling Kaysen when he said that the reason the United States hadn’t done better in the past wasn’t the candidates, but the resources. “People underestimate how much it takes, not just the commitment from the candidate but financial resources. When you’retrying to figure out what one of your garnishes is going to be and trying to figure out how you’re going to pay for that via a fundraiser, [it’s] a very difficult thing to do.
Plus
your day-to-day job.”
    That’s what attracted Rosendale to the Bocuse d’Or USA in 2008: with the involvement of Boulud and Keller, and the attendant money that had rolled in, “the United States has its ducks in a row,” he said.
    A S THE APPLICATION DEADLINE neared, on the evening of June 23, in Yountville, California, in the kitchen of The French Laundry, Timothy Hollingsworth, a sous chef with an all-American visage, brawny build, and tousled sandy blond hair, looked at the ticket in his hand and called out to the kitchen brigade, “Ordering two tasting menus.”
    â€œTwo!” called back the cooks stationed around the room. It was a uniform response. A military response. The commander had spoken and the troops would execute his order. The immediacy and intensity of the callback—and it
always
came with comparable force—left no doubt of that. As Keller himself says, “It is a command-response environment in a kitchen.”
    Different kitchens are organized differently, but each of them has a chain of command. At The French Laundry in June 2008, Corey Lee was the chef de cuisine, and Devin Knell the executive sous chef. There were two sous chefs: Hollingsworth and Anthony Secviar. On any given night, any of these men might be expediting—executing “his” menu (more on this in a moment)—and any of the others might be stationed at the SAS (sous chef assistant station), acting as first lieutenant. After that came the chefs de partie. These were the people who worked the kitchen that year, and cooked the food that is almost unanimously considered the best in the United States and among the very best in the world. At the top of the kitchen’s unwritten org chart was Chef-Proprietor (Chef Patron in the classic French vernacular) Thomas Keller. Although Keller no longer cooked or expedited in the kitchen with any regularity—a concession, he says, to thetoll it took on his body—his restaurants continued to operate in his image, run by people who for the most part idolize the chef and his role in the industry, some of whom had spent years at The French Laundry working their way up from commis to line cook to chef de partie to, in the case of Hollingsworth, sous chef.
    The two prep rooms just beyond the kitchen were lit, but nearly silent,