Knives at Dawn by Andrew Friedman Read Free Book Online Page B

d’Or USA) to perfect all aspects of my dishes, including their timing, presentation, and taste.”

    O N COMPLETING HIS REMARKS , Keller turned the floor over to Michel Bouit, the man who had served as the executive director of the Bocuse d’Or USA for the past twenty years, and whose energetic stride to the center of the room concealed a bruised ego. If the new Bocuse d’Or USA had jettisoned anybody on its way to the future, it was Bouit, who was not consulted about the change of stewardship until things were well under way. Although he later said that he had no hard feelings about how things played out, Bouit didn’t appreciate that the first moves were made without his knowledge while he and Bergin were gearing up for the selection of the next American team. He was also outraged when he found his name slotted in alphabetically with the other members of the newly formed advisory board, which he took as a slap in the face, albeit an unintentional one, after twenty years. According to Bouit, he made his upset known and was elevated up away from the pack and listed as “Honorary President,” a role in which he would advise the new guard and assist with logistics and lodging on the ground in Lyon.
    French-born but an American citizen since 1975, Bouit put the politics of the past few months aside as he greeted the room with the unbridled enthusiasm of a ringside announcer: “Good evening!” he exclaimed. “Are you excited?” Then he summarized the twenty-year history of the American effort at the Bocuse d’Or. In 1987, there was no competition to represent the United States; Chef Fernand Gutierrez of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago had simply tapped a sous chef from one of the hotel’s cafés, Susan Weaver. “Fernand went to her and said, ‘Susan, guess what, you are going to Lyon.’ That is how it happened.”
    In reality, Weaver’s Bocuse d’Or saga was a bit more complicated than that. According to Weaver, who today is chef-partner in several restaurants owned and operated by Lettuce Entertain You in Chicago, Gutierrez’s vision “was for me to be able to prove myself as a woman.” To avoid any pushback from the event organizers in those unenlightened days, Weaverand Guitierrez filled out all of her candidate paperwork under the name S. Weaver.
    â€œIt was the only way to do it,” recalls Weaver. “Because if they had known that I was a woman chances are it never would have happened … they did not know I was a woman until I went.”
    In preparation for the Bocuse d’Or, Weaver did five practice runs of her fish platter (salmon was the main protein selection) but only three of her meat (Bresse chicken), because “I never expected to go to the final.” (Whereas today all teams present both fish and meat platters, in the first year the fish platters served as the initial round, dubbed the “semifinals”, and only the top eleven chefs went on to prepare their meat platters in the finals the next day. This was changed after many eliminated candidates groused over rehearsing two courses only to serve one.)
    â€œHonestly,” Weaver said, “I thought,
Okay, this is the semifinal; let’s really work this and make it really strong and if by some fluke I get into the finals I have something prepared
. But it wasn’t detailed and finessed.”
    When she arrived in Lyon, although nobody outright dissed her, Weaver remembers that she wasn’t treated seriously. “But I think at that point in my career, it wasn’t new to me. It was part and parcel of how things were. For me, it was put your game face on, put your head down as best you can, and try not to embarrass yourself. At that time I was a sous chef at the Ritz-Carlton. I was making burgers and French onion soup. I was up against the top chefs in the world … I was working hard. I did not have the experience or the position