Boulud and Keller: What it Takes for American Chefs to Compete in France

While many of Chicago's leading chefs gathered this past weekend in Millennium Park to inaugurate Chicago's gourmet food and wine festival, restaurateur Charlie Trotter headed south to Orlando to help support another fledgling effort. Summoned earlier this year by the son of legendary French chef Paul Bocuse, Trotter's colleagues Daniel Boulud from New York's Restaurant Daniel and Thomas Keller from the French Laundry have been spearheading an attempt by leading American chefs to field an American team that can end up on the platform at next year's famed Bocuse d' Or international culinary competition in Lyon, France.

Trotter was one of the few American chefs with nationally-recognized restaurants who had a horse in the race. Earlier this year, a panel of chefs organized by Boulud and Keller had selected Michael Rotondo, Trotter's chef de cuisine, as one eight finalists in the competition to represent the United States at the Bocuse d'Or. Like several of the young chefs there, Rotondo was an experienced chef but a rookie in international competition.

The two-decade-old event, which takes place every other year in Boulud's home-town, is considered the premier international cooking competition. Created by Paul Bocuse, who is regarded by many as the public face of French gastronomy, the competition is credited with helping transform the image of chefs from domestic workers to professional artisans. Unlike the leading international pastry and bread competitions, however, the Bocuse d'Or is a place Americans have never fared well.

The French, whose leading chefs are nursed on competitions like these, have thus far dominated the event. But as Boulud and Keller knew, the country that is trying to have the United Nations declare its gastronomy a world treasure is not invincible. Well-funded teams from the Scandinavian countries have regularly upstaged them.

Americans, however, have never even cracked the top ten despite the increased quality of high-end American gastronomy and the numerous accolades received by the country's leading chefs. It's an anomaly Boulud, a Frenchman who sees himself primarily as a New Yorker, according to his staff, and Keller, a Californian with successful outposts in New York, have been working furiously to eliminate.

"This is a small opportunity for American chefs to represent the level of American cuisine globally," Boulud said, noting that it builds on the efforts of James Beard, the lion of American chefs, and the James Beard Foundation.

The two have spent the better part of this year recruiting young chefs and sponsors to help support the historically under-funded American effort. Aided by an advisory board of marquee chefs, they put out the word this spring to Michelin-starred and highly-rated Zagat's restaurants, as well as to members of the luxury Relais and Chateaux hospitality group. Boulud has even pressed several members of his own staff into almost-full-time service while Keller turned over a facility near his Yountville restaurant to build a dedicated kitchen for the finalist to train.

"We're light years ahead of where we were only two years ago," Gavin Kaysen, who represented the U.S. in 2007, told me. "It's a luxury to practice with equipment you're used to," he said, "but we were clueless about what we would actually be using in Lyon." Kaysen, who is now the chef at Cafe Boulud in New York, said that at the time he was competing, he had to purchase and install some of the competition equipment in the hotel where he worked just to familiarize himself with it.

Boulud and Keller have already tackled that problem. The finals in Orlando were held in a facility identical to the Lyon kitchens and the training kitchen adjacent to the French laundry is also identical to the Lyon set-up.

By early summer they had assembled a roster of competitors that included not just Michael Rotondo from Charlie Trotter's staff, but Timothy Hollingsworth, Keller's sous chef from The French Laundry. Top Chef's season three winner, Hung Huynh, who had worked at Keller's three-star Per Se in New York, also got the nod.

Word got out early that Monsieur Paul, as Bocuse is almost universally known, was so eager to support Boulud's and Keller's efforts that he planned to travel to Orlando to watch the competition. It was the only time the eponymous Bocuse has ever attended the competition to select the American contestant. Luxembourger Lea Linster, the only woman ever to win the Bocuse d'Or, also made the trip.

For Trotter, who has been a judge in past competitions, the trip to Orlando this past weekend was a victory for the long-term. Although Rotondo did not perform well enough to grab the top spot to represent the United States against other national teams - he only snagged the bronze - the who's who of judges at the competition voted him the "Most Promising Chef." That means he's likely to be one of the first off the bench Boulud and Keller are trying to build for upcoming Bocuse d'Or competitions.

"The judges saw all the foundations of cooking in Rotondo and a creativity about presenting food," Kaysen said. He said it reminded him of 1999 in Lyon when the winner sent out his dishes on a triangular platter which the judges had never seen before. "You just knew he was going to win," he said.

So while winner Timothy Hollingsworth banks $15,000 and settles into the rigors of Olympic-style training, spending the next four months locked up perfecting his meat and fish dishes in the spanking new training kitchen, Rotondo will sock away $10,000 and pack his bags for a sabbatical he will be spending apprenticing in three-star restaurants in France. Exactly which restaurants, he'll have to decide, according to Boulud. Not a bad break from the Las Vegas desert where he is currently working at Trotter's Restaurant Charlie.

Comments

[Eric8869]

Charlie Trotter has nothing to do with TOP CHEF Chicago - so people like Rocco Dispirito are on the show instead of a Chicago Chef. Then he flies away during an event in Chicago. WTF????

Try and support the city you live in. Not just take the money and run.

[Flora Lazar - Huffpost Blogger]

Think big! If Charles Trotter and his colleagues from New York and California are successful in elevating the profile of American cuisine internationally, it WILL help Chicago. These competitions are not money-makers. They are done at great personal and financial sacrifice. The prize money can never justify the investment these chefs have made.

[Eric8869]

yes but imagine how many more people would know the name charlie trotter if he had been on Top Chef.

It was embarassing - all those episodes without a Chicago Chef in sight. (except Rick Bayless)

It's just like Chicago is always covered - list of best restaurant, best this, best that ....5 of the places are NYC, a couple LA and maybe one Chicago. We are underreprented and passed over constantly. Trotter needs to help Chicago out on the public stage.