Free Knives at Dawn by Andrew Friedman

to the chefs as it would be to the dining public, like the All-Stars game or a fantasy football league come to life. Eight years before the Bocuse d’Or entered their lives, they had conceived a joint project in Las Vegas that hadn’t panned out, and as recently as February 2008 they’d made a speculative visit to Dubai for another project that ultimately fizzled.
    Now that they were together, the differences in their personalities came into heightened relief, not least of which was Boulud’s impulsiveness versus Keller’s studied caution; Boulud, a fan of Formula One racing and a notoriously adventurous driver (“Don’t ever get into a car with Daniel,”warns Roland Henin), likes to fling himself and his team headlong into things. Keller likes to look at all the angles, ask questions, reflect, reflect some more, sleep on it, then make up his mind.
    â€œHe commits himself 100 percent, sometimes
too
early,” says Keller of his friend. But Keller understands the impulse; it’s the same one that led him to say, “
Oui, Chef
” to Paul Bocuse. “That is what chefs do. We are not in the industry that says
no
. We always say
yes
to people.”
    This yin/yang dynamic was on display when Boulud discussed the Bocuse d’Or with Diane Nabatoff, executive producer of his HDTV show,
After Hours
. According to Boulud, on hearing about the Bocuse d’Or, Nabatoff said, “Do you want to do a show?” and the two of them began discussing a limited documentary series tracking the Bocuse d’Or USA.
    From that conversation, things progressed rapidly. Pelka recalls being on a ten-day cruise with her family at the beginning of July 2008, during which time she was uncharacteristically out of touch with her e-mail. When she returned, she went through her in-box and found a raft of messages from Nabatoff about an upcoming meeting at the Food Network, the Monday of her return at twelve noon.
    â€œI didn’t know anything about the presentation, what we were pitching and where we were going,” said Pelka. Boulud was out of town that week, so Pelka wandered into the meeting cold. The show wasn’t green-lit, but Nabatoff managed to interest Bravo network, home of
Top Chef
, in a documentary series of eight or twelve episodes (the number would be determined at a later date) for which they were prepared to finance one on a speculative basis.
    To satisfy the sudden need for filmable activity, Pelka suggested taping a planned press conference to announce the candidates at db Bistro Moderne, Boulud’s casual restaurant on West Forty-fourth Street. She also came up with another camera-ready idea: an orientation session for the candidates to be held on Thursday, July 24, at The French Culinary Institute (FCI) in downtown Manhattan, a briefing followed by an abbreviated cook-off of sorts, but with no winners or losers; rather it would be a chancefor the organizers to offer constructive criticism prior to the Epcot event. Arrangements were made with the FCI, the idea being to sit the candidates down and give them a taste of what they’d gotten themselves into.
    There was just one problem: Boulud hadn’t run the idea of the series by Keller or Jérôme Bocuse, and neither was on board: “I didn’t think that it was appropriate,” said Keller. “It was our first time. I didn’t know how things were going to go. I didn’t know how the house was going to turn out. I didn’t want cameras in our face at The French Laundry … even in Orlando I didn’t think it was appropriate. These are young kids that haven’t had the opportunity to get the exposure to that kind of environment. Let alone this is their first time in any competition and you are going to throw this in on top of them. Are we trying to sell a documentary on the Bocuse d’Or or are we trying to send a team there?”
    Sports-fan Jérôme Bocuse circulated an