Toqueland

Bocuse d’Or USA 2010: “I Like Being Under the Fire”

Michael Clauss Has Followed His Own Star... Right to Hyde Park

[With this article, Toqueland has completed its goal of profiling all 12 finalists who will be competing in the Bocuse d'Or USA at Hyde Park this weekend.  For profiles of the other candidates, click here. Best of luck to all the candidates!]

 

Michael Clauss, in the Lounge at Restaurant Daniel

(photo courtesy Michael Clauss)

One of the more intriguing aspects of the Bocuse d'Or is the tension between what a chef candidate wants to cook and what he or she has to cook.  Most seasoned observers of the competition will tell you that if you don't cook from the heart, the final dishes will be diminished; the insincerity will register in the eyes and on the taste buds of the judges.  This creates a unique tension for non-European candidates because food etched in a classic French/European style tends to win at the Bocuse d'Or.

After interviewing Michael Clauss, chef of The Daily Planet in Burlington, Vermont, recently, I was struck by how naturally he seemed to fit into this matrix--the chef has a deep background in French cuisine, and has followed his instintcts (and as you are about to learn, his heart) to his current places or residency and employment. I'll be interested to see how that all adds up on his platters this Saturday.

Clauss was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, but his family moved to Vermont when he was three.  They lived on a converted dairy farm where they engaged in all kinds of enviable culinary activities, such as cooking freshly killed deer over a woodburning stove or making fresh pasta (his mother was the daughter of Sicilians) every Sunday.

Clauss himself began cooking in high school, then attended the Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1995.  He externed at the Equinox Hotel in Manchester, Vermont, which led to working in Chantecleer, a small restaurant in East Dorset, Vermont, owned by a Swiss chef of French descent, where he got a crash course in classic, often rustic, cooking:  chateaubriand, frog’s legs, Dover sole, and so on.  There were only about eight entrees on the menu, supplemented by six or seven specials a day, which Clauss says was satisfying from a creative standpoint. He ended up staying there for 9 years. 

From there, Clauss moved around a bit:  a stint as sous chef and banquet chef at Tribeca Grill; two years as an instructor at the New England Culinary Institute in Northern Vermont; and then an extended stay in post-Katrina New Orleans, cooking for volunteers.  

Bocuse d’Or USA 2010: The Hard Way

Mark Liberman On Going it Alone

[Between now and the Bocuse d’Or USA finals this Saturday, February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

 
 Mark Liberman

Last fall, Mark Liberman was convinced to apply for the Bocuse d’Or USA by Roland Passot of San Francisco’s La Folie, a member of the Bocuse d’Or USA Culinary Council and former Liberman employer, who called him on a weekly basis to sell him on the value of entering this contest.

“At first I wasn’t that interested,” recalls Liberman.  “I’d never competed before.”  But as Passot wore him down, Liberman began to think that the competition would be “a good opportunity, a good challenge.” 

Liberman is a San Francisco native who was raised in Marin and Sonoma counties.  He started his professional kitchen life at 15, as a dishwasher and prep cook, then attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, moving on to stages at Daniel and Aureole after graduation. 

From there, he went on to apprentice with Passot at La Folie.  After paying off his college debts, Passot set him up with a stage in Paris—at the Michelin two-star Le Carre des Feuillants —and from there gigs in Burgundy, Nice, and Lyon.  It was great experience, but came at a price—he wasn’t compensated for his labor (the things young cooks do in their quest for knowledge) and ran out of money, so came home.

Liberman worked for a time at Charles Knob Hill, then rejoined the Dinex Group (Daniel Boulud’s company), as saucier at DB Brasserie in the Wynn Hotel, which in turn led to an 18-month job as chef de partie at Robouchon at the MGM Grand. Craving a non-French change of pace, he then worked at Valentino, also in Vegas.

Then Liberman made his move: an opportunity came up to be the executive chef of a new restaurant in Palm Beach.  He’d never seen himself in Palm Beach, but it was an opportunity to work with his brother, a beverage/wine director and mixologist.  He became the opening chef of Forte, and the early reviews were positive.  But when the economy tanked and the restaurant shifted gears, he pushed off.

Liberman’s road to the Bocuse d’Or has been strewn with landmines, but he seems to have survived them all, beginning with his application getting lost in the mail, requiring him to fill out all the paperwork a second time, which was no small task.

Bocuse d’Or USA 2010: Stepping Up

Jennifer Petrusky, a Commis at the 2008 Bocuse d’Or USA, Returns as a Chef Candidate

[Between now and the Bocuse d’Or USA finals this Saturday, February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

Jennifer Petrusky

(photo courtesy Charlie Trotter's) 

Jennifer Petrusky will be making a return to Bocuse d’Or action this weekend.  Petrusky, who was commis to chef candidate Michael Rotondo, of Restaurant Charlie in Las Vegas, at the 2008 Bocuse d’Or USA, will be competing this year as a candidate, with James Caputo, a cook from Charlie Trotter’s, in the role of commis. 

Rotondo and Petrusky placed third in the 2008 event, nabbing the bronze medal, and Rotondo was also awarded a sort-of "most likely to succeed" prize, identifying him as a potential future Bocuse d'Or USA candidate.  At the time, I was working on my book Knives at Dawn, and was able to watch the teams from a judge’s-eye perspective—standing right in the competition kitchen windows.  Petrusky was a rock solid commis, an impression that I know many judges shared, so it will be interesting to see how she fares in the hot seat.

Bocuse d’Or USA 2010: A Symphony of Movement

Danny Cerqueda on Life Beyond Mystery Baskets

[Between now and the Bocuse d'Or USA finals this Saturday, February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

Danny Cerqueda

(photo courtesy Catherine Kelly) 

The first time Danny Cerqueda, executive sous chef of Carolina Country Club in Raleigh, North Carolina, competed in a culinary contest was in 2003, in the La Chaîne des Rôtisseurs’ young commis competition—a regional showdown in which the candidates are presented a mystery basket (unannounced selection of ingredients from which they have to cook) and have to fashion a three-course meal, with four portions for each course. 

“I did horribly,” Cerqueda recalls.  “I thought I knew what I was doing and I think I came in last place.”

Cerqueda picked himself up off the canvas and jumped right back in the next year, training for and winning the regional event, then placing fourth at the national contest. He went back again in 2006, posting the same results. 

The experience lit a competitive fire under Cerqueda, who participates in one or two culinary competitions per year, mostly in events organized by the ACF (American Culinary Federation).  In many ways, the 29-year-old Atlanta native is the quintessential American competition cook:  He hails from a country club (historically, most of our Bocuse d’Or and International Culinary Olympics competitors have come from private clubs or culinary schools), and finds great value beyond the competition itself.

Bocuse d’Or USA 2010: “I Wouldn’t Mind Going First”

Philadelphia’s Jim Burke Embraces the Pressure

[Between now and the Bocuse d’Or USA finals this Saturday, February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

 Jim Burke, with his back against the wall.

Jim Burke, of Philadelphia’s James restaurant, was so busy with the holiday crush at work, that he didn’t even notice when the finalists for the Bocuse d’Or USA were announced in early December, and his name wasn’t on the list.  He found out he hadn’t made the cut when he got a call from a member of the organizing staff, shortly before Christmas, asking him if the Bocuse d’Or USA Committee could re-review his application because somebody had dropped out and they needed to fill the slot.

Burke said “yes,” and got right back to work.  He didn’t discover until mid-January that it was Kevin Gillespie, of Top Chef fame, who had withdrawn.  But it didn’t really matter, because Burke was already making up for lost time, preparing for battle himself. 

So just who is this mystery man who was handed a belated shot at Bocuse d’Or glory?

Burke is the chef-owner of James in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who began his career at The Marker at the Adams Mark Hotel and spent two years at Vetri, considered by many to be one of the two or three best Italian restaurants in the country.  Taken with Italian cuisine, he traveled to the small town of Alme, outside Bergamo, where he worked for Paolo Frosio at the Michelin-starred Ristorante Frosio, then spent more than a year working in restaurants and vineyards to further his intuitive feel for Italian food.  Back in the States, he became executive chef of Vivo Enoteca in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and then of Angelina, a Stephen Starr restaurant in downtown Philadelphia.  Today, Burke is executive chef of his James restaurant in Philly, where he serves what he describes as “modern American cuisine with Northern Italian influences.”  He owns and operates the restaurant with his wife, general manager Kristina Burke.  The restaurant has been well received locally, and in 2008, Burke received one of the best feathers a young chef can have tucked in his toque when he was named a Food & Wine Best New Chef.

Burke has never participated in a culinary competition before, but was a jock in high school, playing basketball, baseball, and football.  He had always been vaguely interested in the Bocuse d’Or, having seen “random TV shows” about it and being drawn to the “hoopla” that surrounds it.  Like many of those who have applied since 2008, Burke was inspired to actually apply by the new Bocuse d’Or USA guard of Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, and Jerome Bocuse.  “The caliber of chef involved was irresistible,” he says.  “Thomas Keller.  Daniel Boulud.  When they get behind something it changes the attitude of a lot of cooks.”

Although Burke got a late start in his preparation, he also got lucky in finding a commis. When approached about being re-considered, Burke mentioned to Alison Buckley, director of competition and events for the Bocuse d’Or USA, that his only concern was finding an assistant in time.  Before he knew it, Buckley had reached out to the CIA, who sent a student his way:  Simon Solis-Cohen, who is from Philadelphia and had eaten at James.  The two met the next day and Solis-Cohen was in, arranging for a three week leave from school.  (By the time we spoke in mid January, Burke said that Solis-Cohen was back in Philly full time and that they would be practicing every day until they left for Hyde Park.)

Burke seems remarkably unfazed by the short time frame he’s on.  “I know it’s incredibly rigorous and intense and I want to challenge myself,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re capable of until you put yourself against the wall.”  The only intimating element for him is the people who will be watching him perform under pressure: 

“I’ve done plenty of cooking demos and little talks, but mostly they were in front of housewives…not Thomas Keller.  Not Daniel Boulud.  Not potentially Paul Bocuse.”  

To prepare himself, Burke spent time on the Bocuse d’Or USA website, and also on the French mothership’s site, “trying to see the style of the platters and get a feel for what the competition will be like.”  But he acknowledges that visualization will only take him so far.  “Anything I find out now will be nothing like when it’s in my face.”

Despite the short notice, Burke has prepared what he calls an “ambitious” menu.  Unsurprisingly, he and Solis-Cohen hadn’t done any timed trials by the time we spoke in mid-January.  But he was optimistic that would change before the competition in Hyde Park and that they’d get a few full run-throughs in. 

Although he was the last chef to start prepping, he’d happily be the first one to present.  “The Saturday teams starts at 6 a.m.,” he says.  “Much as I hate getting up early, I wouldn’t mind going first, getting done, letting everyone else worry about it.”

- Andrew

Bocuse d’Or USA 2010: Private School

Jeremie Tomczak Is Learning Plenty Every Day
[Between now and the Bocuse d’Or USA finals this Saturday, February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

There Is No Finish Line: Jeremie Tomczak
(photo courtesy Jeremie Tomczak)

Jeremie Tomczak, Executive Chef, Event Operations, at the French Culinary Institute, first began thinking about applying for the Bocuse d’Or USA in the summer of 2008, when he witnessed his colleague, FCI instructor Rogers Powell, training for the US team selection event held at Epcot Center in Orlando that year.

“It was pretty cool that he was so dedicated to it, and putting in this time,” recalls Tomczak. “You can see the contestants learning.  When you put that level of commitment in, you probably get more out of it in one day that you normally would in a week.  That’s why I got into this field.  Because you never stop learning.  You never get bored.”

Tomczak, 33, grew up in Wisconsin and has always been around the restaurant business in some way or another.  He didn’t know he’d make it his career, or move to New York City, until he attended cooking school in Madison.  One of his instructors was from New York and had worked at Picholine.  The teacher arranged a trip for 15 students to Manhattan and it was a revelatory jaunt for young Tomczak.

"We just went to a whole bunch of restaurants—Picholine, Windows on the World,” he remembers today.  Of the dear, departed Windows, he says:  “I’ll never forget it, just being in up in that space, seeing the whole city.  It had a big impact on me as to where I had to go next.  Automatically, I said, ‘I’m moving to New York City.’”

After he finished school, Tomczak externed for Laurent Tourondel at his since shuttered jewel box, Cello, on the Upper East Side.  Tourondel offered him a job, but Tomczak couldn’t afford to stay in Manhattan just yet.  He returned home to Wisconsin and an old part-time job with UPS, while also working at Nadia’s restaurant in Madison.  Eventually, he socked away enough dough to move back to New York City in 2002, but didn’t have a game plan.  He showed up with a backpack and checked into a hostel, but couldn’t land a job.  As the last of his dollars was draining from his back account, he scored an interview with Aquavit’s Marcus Samuelsson.

"If I don’t get this job, I’m going to move back to Wisconsin,” he told the chef.

Bocuse d’Or USA 2010: The Long Road Back

John Rellah, Jr. Will Be Following His Own Vision This Weekend

[Between now and the Bocuse d'Or USA finals this Saturday, February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

 
Going Back to Basics:  John Rellah, Jr.

In September 2008, John Rellah, Jr. drove himself and his cooking equipment all the way down from the Tri-State area to Orlando, Florida, to compete in the Bocuse d’Or USA team selection event at Epcot. 

The drive down was fine—Rellah had cooked for some of the best chefs in the country, like Gray Kunz at Lespinasse, and had been an executive chef in his own right for years, and was full of optimism.  But after failing to win, place, or show, or even to nab one of the booby prizes like best meat or best fish in Orlando, his drive home was a long, solemn affair, and his thoughts were consumed with what had gone wrong.

The thing that nagged at him the most was the feeling he’d been given bad direction by some of the Bocuse d’Or USA advisors, who urged the finalists to “cook American.”  Personally, Rellah didn’t believe that was a solid foundation for success in Lyon, at least not based on his own research, and that it was a bad way to go in Orlando. “I don’t think [chef and Bocuse d’Or judge] Philippe Rochat wants to taste maple syrup,” he said at the time.  But he went with the suggested plan of attack, preparing an American themed menu, and as he autopsied his loss, he thought that had a lot to do with what went wrong.

On that same drive, he decided he wanted to try again, and that he would stick to his own instincts the next time and present what he thought would do well in Europe.  By the time he pulled up in the driveway of his home, where he lives with his wife and two young children, he already had ideas for what he wanted to cook in 2010, if he made the cut and was selected as a finalist again.

Bocuse d'Or USA 2010: Timing Is Everything

Twelve Years After His First Bocuse d’Or USA, Christopher Parsons is Back

[Between now and the Bocuse d'Or USA finals this Saturday, February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

  

Christopher Parsons in the Kitchen at Catch

(photo by Roger Galburt)

For a sense of how much the Bocuse d’Or USA has changed over the years, look no further than the case of Christopher Parsons, executive chef of Catch restaurant in Winchester, Massachusetts, who will be competing this weekend at the Bocuse d’Or USA finals at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York.

Parsons competed in the Bocuse d’Or USA once before, at the regional semifinals at the CIA in St. Helena, California, in 1998, when Parsons was in his late 20s.  Back then, the Bocuse d’Or USA was much less well-funded than it is today, and candidates had to finance their own travel to the contest.  Parsons, then working at Arizona 206 in midtown Manhattan, was short on funds, so his dad pitched in, buying the young cook a plane ticket with his frequent flyer miles.  His father also made a much larger contribution to the effort: although commis (assistants) must be no older than 22 in the international competition in Lyon, there was no age limitation for the USA event at the time.  So Parsons bought Dad a chef’s coat and deputized him.

“He’s a [surgeon],” remembers Parsons.  “So I had him do all the butchering.”

This time around, the choice of commis was anything but a last-second decision.  Parsons had always wanted to go back to the Bocuse d’Or USA, but his schedule didn’t align well with the biennial team trials.  Now that he has his own restaurant—with all the support that provides—and is still, by his self-evaluation, young enough (39) to cook fast, he thought perhaps the time was right.  The only impediment was identifying a wingman.

Bocuse d'Or USA 2010: "The Stress is a Wonderful Experience"

Luke Bergman Just Wants to Put a Smile on the Judges' Faces

[Between now and the Bocuse d'Or USA team-selection finals on February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the finalists as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

Luke Bergman ... doing what he loves most.

(photo courtesy Luke Bergman)

 

There's no shortage of chefs who began cooking in their family's home, but there aren't many who started for reasons as downright noble as those that first pulled The Modern's Luke Bergman into the kitchen.  The Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, native has two younger brothers, one of whom was born with Down's Syndrome.  To help his single, working mother pick up the slack around the house, he learned how to cook for the family.  "The day I turned sixteen," Bergman recounts today, "I had my car, had a credit card to go to grocery store, and right away I was shopping for whole family."

Though it was pragmatism that motivated him initially, Bergman wasn't lacking for kitchen mentors.  His mother was a good cook, and as a young boy he studied her moves around the stovetop.  His grandmother was a culinary Francophile who would go Gallic when she visited from Washington, DC, and he fondly remembers thir housekeeper, Dorris Williams, a Jamaican who schooled him in the flavors and techniques of her homeland, such as how to make jerked meats. 

Bergman wasn't terribly interested in college.  After winning a contest sponsored by the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale, he matriculated there.  He attended for four months, while working at La Veranda restaurant in Pompano Beach full time.  His home schooling had served him well--he liked his work more than his classes, but didn't immediately think to become a chef.  (He remembers watching Food Network personalities like Emeril Lagasse, but "nobody knew it was going to be as big as it is now.")

During a family vacation in Colorado, Bergman's mother picked up an air of malaise about her son. 

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Mom, I love cooking," he told her.  "I didn't know I was going to like it so much."  He felt he was learning more at La Veranda than he was in school. 

"I want to go to the best cooking school in America," he told her, referring to the Culinary Institute of America.  (Telling the story today, he says that he "had a vision that I needed to go there.")  She was fully supportive and when they got back to Florida, he withdrew from the Art Institute.  His mother brought him up to New York City and then up to Hyde Park.  A month later, he was enrolled.  "Then it was on," he says.

Bocuse d'Or USA 2010: A Rite of Passage

Eleven Madison Park's James Kent On the Value of Preparing for the Bocuse d'Or

[Between now and the Bocuse d'Or USA team-selection finals on February 6, Toqueland will profile as many of the twelve candidates as possible. For profiles of the other candidates, click here.]

  

A Process of Self-Discovery: James Kent in the Kitchen

(photo courtesy James Kent)

I don't have hard numbers to back this up, but I feel confident stating, based on the research for my book Knives at Dawn, that most of the candidates who compete in the Bocuse d'Or are sous chefs. There are good reasons for this: prep and line cooks don't have the experience or sense of culinary self to head up a team (they are appropriately chosen as the commis, or assistant), while full-fledged chefs and executive chefs, generally speaking, can't be spared for the time it takes to prepare and train for the Big Event in Lyon.  (This isn't always the case; there are a few bona fide exec chefs in the mix for Hyde Park, such as John Rellah, Andrew Weiss, Percy Whatley, and Michael Clauss, executive chef of The Daily Planet in Vermont, whom I just interviewed the other day for an upcoming profile.)

Sous chefs occupy a curious position in the professional pecking order.  Many of them have the managerial and expediting chops to be chefs--they do, after all, run kitchens during service--but their own style isn't necessarily formed to the point that they are ready to essay their own menus.  Generally speaking, that's because the food they put out--often for years at a time--is somebody else's.  Even the specials they might devise have to hew to the style of the guy or gal they work for, or else the menu won't fully gel.

James Kent, a sous chef at Eleven Madison Park, is learning what many past Bocuse d'Or candidates have learned--that the Bocuse d'Or offers a valuable exercise in determining where their chef ends and they begin.  For whatever the reason, observers of the Bocuse d'Or will tell you that if you don't cook from the heart in the competition, then your food will suffer.  Accordingly, chef-candidates aren't generally sent into battle with instructions to simply execute food conceived by, say, Daniel Humm, who happens to be a Bocuse d'Or USA advisory board member and Kent's chef at EMP.

And so, on New Year's Day, when Kent cooked the working draft of his Bocuse d'Or USA menu for Humm (for whom he's worked for three years) for the first time, it was a Big Moment.  "This is Chef’s restaurant, and this is Chef’s food," says Kent of the dynamic most days at EMP.  "All of us have our say, but ultimately he’s the one who likes it, or changes it."

Not so on January 1st.