Knives at Dawn (44 page)

F
INALLY, AT A BOUT A
quarter past six, the pomp of the awards ceremony commenced. Hall 33 was by then packed quite beyond its capacity; the media pit was a zoo, and the stairway that led to the media center was crawling with spectators watching the action from outside the hall itself.

Three circular podiums had been hauled out on stage, the winners' circle, or
circles
. After all the necessary introductions, the various teams emerged from the wings, along with their presidents, with each group hoisting its flag. Some teams exuded confidence in the moment, like Skeie, who held his aloft as though charging into battle. Hollingsworth, on the other hand, held the Stars and Stripes at his side.

In the audience, Pelka and Laughlin held hands, their seriousness undercut
by Pelka's attire: the 2009 red, white, and blue sunglasses and a flag draped cape-like over her shoulders. Desperate for information, she made eye contact with Jérôme Bocuse. She assumed that Paul Bocuse knew who the winner was, and that one would think that if he knew then Jérôme would find out.

This led her to wonder about who knew what down there on the stage. Daniel Boulud would not make eye contact with her—was he hiding something? Keller seemed impassive, maybe blue. “I don't think Thomas knows,” she thought. “Or he knows and it's not what he wants.”

When she finally locked eyes with Jérôme Bocuse, he nodded in her direction. She shrugged and he looked away. When he looked back, she surreptitiously held up one finger. First place?

He shook his head, “No,” and looked down.

“Oh, man,” she thought, believing that first place had been within reach.

She held up two fingers.

At this, Bocuse nodded slightly, which she took to mean “Yes.”

“Oh, my God,” she said to Laughlin. “Jérôme just told me that we came in second.”

“Do you really think so?” said Laughlin. “Second is amazing.”

After consolation prizes were handed out for Best Promotional Poster (Brazil) and Best Promotion (Czech Republic), it was time for the award for Best Fish, which was presented to Jasper Kure of Denmark. He accepted his little goldfish statue with obvious disappointment, which was even more evident when it was announced moments later that he had also won Best Meat and had to hold up a little cow and pose for pictures with
those
sponsors. A ripple of confusion went through the media section—had there been a rule change? How could one country win both those prizes and not take the gold? (The answer is that those awards are for the best fish and meat outside the top three finishers.)

Then came the top prizes. When it was announced that France won the bronze, the first time it had failed to win gold or silver, anything seemed possible.

“Holy shit,” thought Pelka. “We won.” She squeezed Laughlin's hand even tighter.

There was just one thing: on the dais, Hollingsworth and Guest looked scared to her, almost miserable, which pretty much summed up Hollingsworth's feeling at the moment, standing up there for an extended time, sure that he hadn't placed.

Pelka's feeling was magnified when Jonas Lundgren won the silver and took up his place on the podium. By the time Paul Bocuse emerged to read out the name of the winner of the Bocuse d'Or, nobody knew what to expect. But as it turned out, it would be an anticlimactic resolution as a familiar victor was announced: Norway!

Pelka let go of Laughlin's hand and almost instantly began sobbing into her cape, but as Skeie and his commis dashed up to the highest pedestal, attaining his lifelong ambition, it was difficult to begrudge him his victory. He had wanted this since the age of twelve, and had devoted much of the past two years to attaining it. As confetti rained down on him and the Norwegian national anthem began to play, he held the trophy aloft and howled.

Later, when the score sheets were distributed, Hollingsworth would learn his fate: a sixth place finish, the same as Hartmut Handke had pulled off in 2003. Where the three top medalists had earned scores of 1,020, 994, and 993, Hollingsworth had amassed 911 points. For all of the problems in the kitchen, he wound up in rarefied air, among the half-dozen who had crossed the 900-point threshold: the remaining eighteen candidates scored between 669 (South Korea) and 891 (Iceland).

When Pelka reunited with Jérôme Bocuse in the competition area, he informed her that
nobody
, not even Paul Bocuse, knew the results before they were announced; he had merely been telling her what his best
guess
was with his head shakes and nods.

In their own way, others had a more painful ending: Jasper Kure, who placed fourth, missed the podium by an excruciating seven points, even though he had the top meat score of any team, including the medalists. France, meanwhile, had been one minute late with its fish platter, earning a
twelve-point penalty, which ended up making the difference between second and third place. There are those, Gavin Kaysen among them, who believe that Mille was crucified for the sins of the past, for other times—like the one depicted in the 2007 documentary—when late finishers were
not
punished for much more severe infractions. Asked for comment, Mille refused to complain. “I have to respect the rules,” was all he said of the matter.

As for Luke Croston of Australia, who had come back to the Bocuse d'Or to better his twelfth place finish of 2007 … he once again came in twelfth, perhaps due to that disintegrating cod; he would never know exactly.

For his part, Roland Henin was at peace with the outcome for Team USA: “Even if we were to do a bronze, it would have been somewhat pushed,” he said later. “It would have been fabricated. It would have been almost unfair and just unreal and I was in a sense—I don't want to say
happy
— I was
fine
with the fact that we didn't do a bronze, simply because we didn't deserve a bronze. We got what we deserved, and I want to be clear about that. We got what we deserved. We were not at the bronze level. Period. Had we had a bronze I would have definitely lost faith in the judging process.”

Similarly, Laughlin, while sad for her boyfriend, was, “a little bit relieved. Just in that I thought if the U.S. team can come in here, and if Tim can come in with limited practice and exposure to this type of competition and get on the podium, then what does that say for the whole Bocuse d'Or organization? I had never really questioned the integrity … but we had kind of formed this bond with Paul Bocuse and his staff.… I was almost relieved that at the end of the day that it just comes down to these numbers.… The general feeling was not relief, of course, but sadness for Tim because I know he would feel that he disappointed people and that was what was hardest for me, that he would feel that he let people down.”

She wasn't far off: Hollingsworth felt stung by the already-nagging feeling that he knew he had been capable of doing better. For a guy who had been raised by his father to abhor shoddy workmanship, who had spent seven years questing for perfection on a daily basis, who relentlessly pushed himself to do his best and to bring out the best in those around him, and
who was the go-to guy at The French Laundry, the realization that he didn't fulfill his potential was a bitter pill to swallow.

There was another argument to be made, and it was an obvious one with a much less punitive message: with just three and a half months to do
everything
, with just five full practices under their belt, while still basically working their regular jobs, Hollingsworth and Guest had matched the best-ever result by an American team headed up by a veteran competitor who had trained more than a year. They had come in eight spots higher than Kaysen, who had logged more than fifty practice runs. Kaysen insisted that the sixth-place finish, while short of the podium, was a resounding validation of Hollingsworth's talent. “It's technique. He knows how to season. He knows how to cook,” said Kaysen. “All of the other stuff is the fluff that gets you on the podium. That is the foundation of the competition. The competition was built for that.”

But that logic only went so far with Hollingsworth, who knew he was being evaluated by a different yardstick: “Everybody thinks you had three months off, paid,” he said, referring to media coverage of the team's preparation. “Therefore it's like, yeah, you can kind of feel that way, but you can't because that's not what other people think.”

Keller, who had the prescience, way back at The French Culinary Institute briefing the prior July, to indicate that he didn't necessarily expect a win for the USA in 2009, again took the long view, putting the result in perspective: “What happens to a chef that wins or loses a cooking competition?” he reflected at a later date. “It doesn't really define who that chef is or who that chef is going to become. I think it's a moment, an experience in each one of our lives that we could appreciate and enjoy. Because we were
chosen
for this. We were
asked
to do this and we agreed to do this. We do that for the experience of it and you try to do the best you can. Is it ultimately going to define who I am or who Timmy is or [who Geir Skeie] is? No.

“We are defined every day by what we do and
re
defined every day by what we do. It is a day-to-day thing. Cooking is a day-to-day thing and it is a commitment that you make. So if you win the Bocuse d'Or yesterday, that
was yesterday. What are you going to do
today
? It's not a piece of art that lasts forever. You could paint a piece of art, it becomes a masterpiece, and you may never paint another masterpiece as long as you live but at least that masterpiece is still there and it lasts forever. Food is not like that … you win the whatever—Bocuse d'Or, James Beard, whatever accolades you win—once you win it, it's over. You won it for the work that you did the day before.

“So what are you going to do tomorrow?” he asked.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, D
ANIEL
Boulud drove to his parents' home. Jennifer Pelka was in the car with him. On his cellular phone was Georgette Farkas, his publicity director back in New York, asking for direction on how to spin the U.S. result.

“You can't jump into the pool and compete with Michael Phelps,” Boulud told her. He and Keller and Jérôme Bocuse, they had all taken this on with little time and long odds against them, that was the spin.

Once he was done with the call, he continued to drive along the highways, the same ones he'd navigated as a young cook. He squinted into the sunlight.

“Disappointment in life can be motivating,” he said. “When I opened my first restaurant that was Restaurant Daniel on Seventy-sixth Street, it was after I spent six years at Le Cirque and I was twice four-star review. I was expecting maybe my first restaurant to get three stars because I wasn't trying to be fancy or anything, but very good. The review was two stars and the staff was devastated. For me, I felt, you know, this is not going to knock me off my horse.
We gonna show them the best fucking two-star they have ever seen if that is going to be the verdict
. And eight months later, we had four stars again. So in a way I think that it is a motivation. I think this should not knock us off.”

He continued: “What I think is that Timothy did an amazing job,” he said. “And I tell you in my own notes of tasting the food and taking notes on the food I really felt that the people who were on the podium weren't the one that impressed me most with taste. When you have twelve different
judges and all of them are judging very unevenly how can you just guess right?”

“But, Chef, what do we have to do better?” asked Pelka.

“We have to have time to train!” Boulud shouted. “The Norwegian [chef] had a year to think about his dish and a year and a half to train! … It is a very hard game to play and I think we played very well.”

Hollingsworth helped pack up boxes that morning at L'Abbaye, then retreated with Laughlin, declining to go out to dinner with the group that night. He turned twenty-nine that Friday, January 30, and commemorated the milestone with dinner at Restaurant Pic. Still very much pushed out of shape by the past several months, Hollingsworth had to skip dessert. He just didn't have the appetite for celebration. Not yet. He needed some time.

That Sunday, he and Laughlin boarded a flight back to New York, and then on to San Francisco. They arrived late in the evening, with seven bags in tow, heavy bags stuffed with extra French Laundry cookbooks, kitchen equipment, their clothes, and so on. It was the first time in weeks that they were not on a schedule, not having people around telling them where to be or what to do.

They also didn't have any transportation. The competition was over, the committee was on to the next one, and nobody had thought to provide a courtesy car for the returning candidate. And so, Timothy Hollings-worth, who had found instant fame, been profiled in the pages of
The New York Times
and
Food & Wine
, boarded a bus back to Napa. Once there, he and Laughlin called on some friends to give them a ride home. They didn't go out. It was late. The trip had been hard.

And, besides, he had to be at work in the morning.

A
DINA
G
UEST HAS FLASHBACKS
.

During her mornings at The French Laundry, she will be cutting vegetables and find that, although it's quiet around her, “I am freaking out in my brain because I am having flashbacks of all the noise and how it felt to be there.… I am looking around me and I am like, ‘These people have no idea how it is.' I am looking around at the other commis and even the morning sous chef and it's like, ‘You have no idea what it's like to cook in front of five thousand people that are screaming your ears deaf and you have to concentrate,' and I am, like, ‘Damn, Adina.' I can't believe that I have been through that.”