Sixty Great Chefs + Versailles = An AVERAGE Meal?

VERSAILLES – The generals in crisp white uniforms plotted their strategy in the grand Hall of Battles in the Palace of Versailles. They were there not to recall the military victories of France’s past depicted in the graphic paintings lining the walls, but to celebrate the ritual of dining.

Inspired by the United Nations designation last year of the French meal as part of the "intangible cultural heritage of humanity", 60 of the world’s big-name chefs gathered at Versailles on Wednesday to help prepare a $1,270-a-head dinner for 650 guests in black tie, fancy dress and a fair amount of fur and feathers.

The dinner was a public relations extravaganza for the Relais & Chateaux hotel and restaurant group, which brought in its own chefs and paid $114,000 to rent Versailles for the night. (The cost of electricity, water, security and staff members was extra.) Les Grands Tables du Monde sent several chefs of its own.

Versailles is the most glorious chateau in the world, the place where Louis XIV raised fine dining to an art. But it is also a museum without a kitchen. A long, white marble corridor with sculptures of kings and noblemen had to be lined with 17 portable work stations, each consisting of one table, one oven and one electric burner, but no gas or running water.

“Let’s be honest,” said Patrick Henriroux, chef of the two-star Michelin La Pyramide in Vienne near Lyon. “This is not about creating in a kitchen. It’s more like cooking on a camping trip.”

As vice-president in charge of the grand chefs for the group, Mr. Henriroux was camp director. He organized his high-profile and potentially high-maintenance gastronomic greats in teams of three before deploying them to their humble work stations. With so many knives, “I had to make sure they got along,” he said.


Daniel Humm of New York’s Eleven Madison Park paced up and down the long corridor. Hélène Darroze, one of only two women among the five dozen chefs, was hugged and kissed a lot. Marc Meurin of Le Château de Beaulieu bonded quickly with his kitchen-mate, Philippe Mille of Les Crayères in Reims. “We’ve been great friends for an hour already,” Mr. Mille said. For their brief time together, three-star Michelin chefs Marc Haeberlin, Michel Troisgros, Jean-Michel Lorain, Annie Féolde, Jean-Georges Klein, Patrick Bertron, Régis Marcon and Eric Pras and all the two-stars, one-stars and no-stars worked as equals.

By most accounts, even their collective talent could not overcome the logistical hurdles. Most of the raw materials had to be pre-cooked and prepared off-site by the caterer Potel et Chabot. The chefs were asked to offer inspiration from their signature dishes, but their task was less to cook than to slice, dice, heat and accessorize food wheeled in on metal racks or stacked in white boxes.

Adding to the complexity of the meal, each chef prepared one course for about forty people. The cold appetizer chefs chose scallops or lobster; the hot appetizer chefs sea bass or morels, and the hot main course chefs duck or saddle of lamb.

One chef ranted that the 2002 Dom Pérignon Millésime Champagne was insufficiently chilled. Another searched fruitlessly for more squares of Savoy cabbage.

Guests muttered that the caviar dollops on the lightly smoked sea bass were too cold, the gelled Breton lobster claws too bland and the canard de Challans too naked. “Where were the great sauces to celebrate history and tradition?” said Jean-Claude Ribaut, the food critic for Le Monde. “Everything was a little flat, just average.”

Louis XIV might not have been entirely surprised.

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U.S. Chefs to Honor French Dining at Versailles

Four star chefs from the United States are slated to take part in an international salute to the French way of dining in April at Versailles, the one-time home of French kings, just outside Paris. Thomas Keller and Eli Kaimeh of New York's Per Se, Patrick O'Connell of The Inn at Little Washington in Virginia and Daniel Boulud of New York's Daniel are among 60 "grand chefs" assembled for this dinner by Relais & Chateaux, a global network of about 500 hotels and gourmet restaurants.

This April 6 dinner in honor of French gastronomy marks the inclusion last November of the "Gastronomic Meal of the French" on UNESCO's list of  Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The dinner for 650 guests paying 890 euros ($1,200) each will take place in Versailles' Gallery of Battles.

Read more about the event here.

French Chefs Team Up to Safeguard Gallic Gastronomy

(Reuters Life!) - Worried that France's global gastronomic influence may be on the wane, 15 of its top Michelin-starred chefs are cooking up a plan to put it back on the menu and enlist the help of the state to promote it.

Critics of French cuisine argue that for too long it has rested on its laurels, not moving with the times to use alternative ingredients and adapt to a changing culinary world order as new chefs push the boundaries.

With that in mind, the who's who of French cuisine, including Alain Ducasse, owner of London's famous Dorchester and 26-Michelin star holder Joel Robuchon, gathered at the Eiffel Tower on Tuesday to unveil the country's first chef lobbying group -- the College Culinaire de France.

"We are in a time when everyone is working for themselves," Robuchon, who operates restaurants in Las Vegas, Monaco, Hong Kong and elsewhere, told Reuters TV. "We wanted to create a group that works together for the excellence of French gastronomy and export it overseas where it is still unknown."

The catering industry alone in France accounted for about 50 billion euros ($68.66 billion) in 2009 and is the fourth biggest private sector employer taking on almost 500,000 people each year.

Unlike other sectors, the chefs argue that the authorities have taken it for granted and left it to fend for itself.

"We want them (authorities) to take note and if possible help economically such as through marketing," Alain Ducasse told Reuters. "We have a beautiful past and we can look forward calmly, but competition exists and we shouldn't forget that."

The chefs' art, once dominated by a French swagger, has changed after thousands of budding cooks learnt their trade in France's top kitchens, only to ply their trade elsewhere and take the culinary experience to new levels.
For Guy Savoy, one of the chefs considered to have nurtured the lighter and more modern French cuisine, part of the problem is a sense of guilt about promoting France's heritage.

"It's not arrogant or pretentious to say France is the global essence of gastronomy ... it's the reality and we have to stop punishing ourselves just because one or two countries have a few cooks that make a lot more noise than a few thousand French chefs. This (association) is an attacking team."

The final straw was perhaps at this year's Bocuse d'Or -- the Oscar's of the cooking world held biennially in France's gastronomic capital, Lyon. French chefs were nowhere to be seen as the top three chefs all came from Scandinavia.

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Alice Waters Awarded French Legion of Honor

She's won a James Beard Award and a Bon Appetit lifetime achievement award and has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. But for Alice Waters, recognition by the French Legion of Honor was really special.

"I learned everything in France," the Chez Panisse chef-restaurateur said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "An aesthetic. The way I serve a meal. The way I think about food. Period."

Waters received official notice from the Embassy on Tuesday. As "Chevalier," she joins a string of high-profile celebrities in the ultimate French insiders' club; "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, singer Celine Dion and fashion designer John Galliano are members. But there are not many chefs, let alone American ones. That's because chefs and farmers of distinction are generally awarded the merit agricole, said Christophe Musitelli, the French cultural attaché in San Francisco. The last celebrity chef inducted was Julia Child in 1991, he said.

"Alice has brought to this country a way to think about cuisine," Musitelli said. "It's not only the cooking but the philosophy, the emphasis on organic, the support of Slow Food. For us, she's a very important figure."

Oh. And Chez Panisse is the destination for local French foodies.

The date and location of the induction ceremony has not yet been decided, Waters said: "They said we could do it in San Francisco or France. And I thought, 'Oh, France! That would be nice.' "

-- Jane Black

Julia Child's Legacy, Beyond Tools and Techniques

By HOLLY RAMER (AP)

CONCORD, N.H. — From the timesaving tools and French techniques she loved to a famously dropped dinner, Julia Child left a lasting impression on a generation of cooks.

In the forthcoming biographical movie, "Julie & Julia," Meryl Streep channels America's first celebrity chef. As the movie opens, chefs and food magazine editors remember the real Child's vast contributions to American home cooking — a scholarly yet accessible approach to recipes, an enthusiasm for efficiency and above all, a spirited sense of fun.

At the most basic level, Child introduced home cooks to their stoves, knives, pots and pans, said chef Jacques Pepin, Child's longtime friend and collaborator.

"We're in a country where we have to cook very, very fast with the microwave or very, very slow with Crock Pot cooking. Then you have the regular stove that's lost in the middle," he said.

He said he most remembers Child's great love for life and the great pleasure she took in cooking as well as eating.

"You often see people cook and never taste. For her, it was cook, taste, cook, taste, cook, taste. With a little sip of wine on the side," he said.

Chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse said Child emphasized that cooking was important but need not be serious business.

"I think of her sense of humor, her joie de vivre about cooking and really about her interest in gastronomy — her academic insistence on writing the recipe right," said Waters. "It was curiosity and exploration and learning all folded together to make food an art. That's what she did."

And she gave novices the confidence to try, added Art Smith, former personal chef to Oprah Winfrey. He made a whole meal out of blanched asparagus for his first girlfriend after watching Child on TV.

"Julia Child was not only an amazing cook but taught America that it could learn to cook," said Smith. "That spirit continues to this day, and this why we have great cooking shows."

Tina Ujlaki, executive food editor at Food & Wine magazine, said she often thinks of Child when she has kitchen mishaps.

"I don't think, 'What would Julia do?' I just do what she would do: Keep on going," she said. "That was a really big part of the Julia liberation. Not only did she teach the techniques ... she said, 'It's OK. Relax. It doesn't have to be perfect."

That said, there are certain processes or gadgets that Ujlaki associates with Child. "I can't cut up a chicken without thinking of her and how lovingly she would cut it up," she said.

And Child did not shy away from modern appliances or tools if they made cooking easier, she said. She put her blender to work on a variety of classic soups and once told Ujlaki that she even used a stand mixer to make mashed potatoes for a crowd instead of the food mill she favored for smaller amounts.

"She probably used more gadgets than they used in typical French cooking," she said. "She was always very quick to embrace anything that made sense, but I don't think she had silly gadgets or gizmos. She didn't like clutter."

Her kitchen tools reflected her utter lack of pretense, said John Willoughby, executive editor of Gourmet magazine.

"If something worked well, for example, she really couldn't care less if it was traditional or not; efficiency in the kitchen was always to be embraced," he said.

The food processor is a perfect example, he said.

"When it was first introduced, I remember thinking that I probably should just ignore it, since chopping things by machine rather than by hand couldn't possibly be right. Then Julia endorsed it, and like hundreds of thousands of other American cooks, that convinced me to give it a try. Think of the millions of hours of chopping that she has saved by her openness to new ideas."

Child had a sure, unpretentious confidence in knowing who she was and what she loved, said Christopher Kimball, publisher of Cook's Illustrated magazine.

"She wasn't hopping around like so many food magazines doing the hot, latest thing," he said, recalling how he joined Child to watch the 2000 election returns on a small TV in an alcove off her kitchen. "It was just about the food and the company," he said.

It's all about the whisk for Lucinda Scala Quinn, editorial director of food at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Quinn cooked her way through Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as a teenager, discovering the many uses for whipped egg whites and cream, from meringue to Swiss buttercream to butter.

"The alchemy of it all and the magical transformational possibilities of that one tool, the whisk, ... has never ceased to amaze me," she said.

Tanya Steel became a fan of Child's at an even younger age, after declaring at age 8 that she would not spend the rest of her life eating her mother's awful cooking.

"I literally learned every single thing from Julia Child," said Steel, editor-in-chief of epicurious.com, the online home for Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines.

Like others, Steel cites Child's ability to make cooking accessible and fun as her chief contribution to the culinary world. But in terms of technique, she counts roasting as the one that has meant the most to her over the years. She's passed the technique on to her own children, who tackled their first roast in honor of Mother's Day earlier this year.

"The one technique that became my infallible, go-to technique is roasting because the most basic thing turns out the most delicious dinner," she said. "I roasted a chicken about 10 different times based on watching her on the 'French Chef' until I felt like I had gotten it right."

Eve Felder, associate dean for culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America, said Child's legacy lies in taking the mystique out of fine cooking techniques that up until her time were not available to home cooks.

"I can't tell you the number of friends I have who self-taught themselves by going through her books," she said.

Felder, a former chef at Chez Panisse, remembers feeling in awe as Child toured the restaurant's kitchen.

"She just had such a spirit. Not only her physical size, but her emotional size, and the fact that she just embraced life."