Philip Tessier on Taking Home the Silver at the Bocuse D'Or

The two months leading up to the event, we were working six to seven days a week, 16 to 18 hours a day. It was pretty intense. But there was still a mystery ingredient we wouldn’t find out about until right before the competition, and a market we had to shop in the night before. We could practice, but there were a lot of variables.

We had been developing different techniques for preparing vegetables, sauces and...