After thousands of hours of preparation, the competition day was at hand. The suspense began the second Peters and Turone began their well-choreographed dance at 8:40AM on the second day of the competition. They were guided minute-by-minute by Tessier, who remained perched outside the kitchen firing almost telepathic guidance.
“It’s kind of like squash,” says Ming Tsai, who’s been involved with Bocuse fundraising and support efforts since the Foundation started, about the hours of cooking.
The only time the noise level seems to diminish during the Bocuse d’Or is when a Crucial Detail platter makes the rounds. Martin Kastner of the Chicago design firm famous for creating the serviceware at Alinea was asked to design Team USA’s meat platter in 2015. When it was presented, a hush fell over the grandstands. “I remember thinking this is either really good or really bad,” Kastner recalls. The response proved positive; Tessier’s platter took top prize for the meat course.
In 2008, Paul Bocuse asked Boulud, Keller and Jérôme to start the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation (now called the ment’or Culinary Foundation). The mission was to get Team USA to the podium—ideally to take the gold—and offer sponsorships, grants and stages so young American cooks could afford to compete. (Kaysen, who as a competitor before the foundation started, had to raise his own funds, find his own training space and build his own team from the ground up.)
Years before the American flag was raised outside Paul Bocuse’s flagship restaurant in Lyon, the chef was a young soldier fighting in World War II. He took a bullet from the Germans, and was sent to an American field hospital for a life-saving blood transfusion. “After that, he felt he had American blood in his veins and from that day on, he felt he owed something to the U.S.” says his son Jérôme, now president of the Bocuse d’Or.
