Joe Ray

February 1, 2007 - Associated Press

LYON, France
On a snowy night in this food-crazed city, San Diego chef Gavin Kaysen walks into his hotel with his assistant, Brandon Rodgers, who is wearing a white hoodie with a big “USA” scarf dangling out in a way that makes him look like Rocky Balboa.

“We’ve gotta touch the podium,” says Kaysen, referring to Wednesday’s Bocuse d’Or culinary competition, with a stereotypical American cockiness that borders on the comical. “You don’t come to get second or third.”

With all hope of cultural sensitivity seemingly thrown cleanly out the window, Kaysen announces what he’ll be preparing for what may be the biggest culinary competition in the world.

“Bacon and eggs and chicken wings,” he says, making the meal sound more like a post-bar crawl dream meal than something you want to serve to a panel of judges made up of the world’s best chefs.

Chef Gavin Kaysen has the eye of the tiger at the Bocuse d’Or culinary competition. (AP Photo/Joe Ray)

Crossing the ocean to come to France, it would seem that if you’re bent on bringing religion to the pope, you might want to do it with something he’d like to eat. And if Kaysen wasn’t smirking, you might secretly hope Team USA got the whuppin’ they seemed to be setting themselves up to receive.

Well, the podium went untouched by Yankee hands.

Instead, the Americans took a very respectable 14th place out of 24, missing the top 10 by just 4 percent of the total score; France took first (of course), followed by Denmark and Switzerland.

PORTIONING OUT ALL THE STOPS

Supporters of team USA whoop it up at the Bocuse d’Or awards in Lyon, France. (AP Photo/Joe Ray)

The Bocuse d’Or works like this: Chefs from 24 countries have 5 1/2 hours to create a no-holds- and no-expenses-barred perfect meal.

It’s also a freakin’ zoo.

For an entire day, the chefs work in an against-the-clock pressure cooker to prepare masterpieces in kitchens that are like glorified shoeboxes. While they battle to remain focused, thousands of fans dressed like they’re in the cheap seats at a football game scream encouragement.

Team Iceland’s fans wear fuzzy red and blue Viking helmets. Team Japan comes in kimonos and has custom-printed rice spoons, which they use as very effective noisemakers.

In the space between the chefs and fans is a combination press pit and judges’ area, where camera crews and photographers elbow their way past each other to get under the chef’s noses. Many contestants even enlist sports psychologists to help them deal with the pressure.

Despite all the work, the food they prepare will cross very few lips.

Team USA supporters. (AP Photo/Joe Ray)

“Customers would come into El Bizcocho,” says Kaysen, referring to the San Diego restaurant where he is the chef, “and ask me to make what I was going to cook at Bocuse. And I’d tell ‘em it would cost about five grand per head.”

They tended to stick with the tasting menu after that.

For the chefs who compete, those aren’t the only costs involved.

“Four weeks ago, my wife told me I was completely, emotionally gone,” says the 27-year-old chef.

“When I won the national competition (that brought him to the Bocuse), it was like somebody sent me a check for minus 150,000 dollars,” which explains the event sponsors but not why he put his life on hold to prepare for this competition.

Then he brightens up and you understand. “You get five and a half hours to show off what you love to do,” he says.

“I’ve been able to perfect eight recipes,” says Kaysen. “Regular chefs can’t take the time to do that.”

Learning to make things perfect happens at a level most laymen consider obsessive, but would make most chefs green with envy.

“I couldn’t figure out the best way to make a ballotine (a boned, stuffed and tied piece of fish, meat or poultry), so I went to a French butcher and spent a day figuring out how he did it.”

HAUTE BAR CUISINE

Team Japan supporters are ready for ‘game day.’  (AP Photo/Joe Ray)

Along with the ballotine, Kaysen and Rodgers brought some top-notch style and products to Lyon after all.

So “chicken Wings” turned out to be a beautiful tapas-like “garnish,” with a bite of chicken on white beans wrapped in a bright red tuile of California tomatoes. “Bacon and Eggs” was a hollowed-out cube made of alternating flat squares of cooked egg whites and yolks, with smoked bacon hollandaise and asparagus tips poking from the top.

About 60 American foodies paid big bucks to make the trek to watch Kaysen and Rodgers give it their all, and they can’t understand why the Bocuse remains relatively unknown in the United States outside of the culinary community.

“This is like the Olympics,” says a beaming Bernard Guillas, a French-born transplant who is now the executive chef for the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club and who has cooked with Kaysen in the past. “It’s like the Iron Chefs cooking with gold.”

“I told (Gavin) I’d come to France if he won the Bocuse selection competition, and afterward he called me on my cell phone to say, ‘Get your ticket!’”

Fans John and Pat McGill from Temecula, Calif., know Kaysen’s cooking from El Bizcocho and share the incredulity.

Mr. McGill, a family law attorney who “deals in the end of love,” summed up how much they appreciate Kaysen’s cooking. “We were going to go to Ireland for our anniversary, but we came here.”

When it was all over, Kaysen didn’t seem disappointed in the result. A busload of supporters greeted him with a big ovation before heading back to the group’s hotel.

“Thanks for coming,” he says, with gentlemanly grace and an exhausted grin. Then he spied some bread being handed around and got his mind back on food.

“What are you eating?”

asap contributor Joe Ray is a freelance food and travel journalist based in Paris. He can be reached via his Web site, www.joe-ray.com.