Knives at Dawn by Andrew Friedman

American dining. Hanning began more than a half-century earlier. “In 1952, Kentucky Fried Chicken opened up,” he recounted, his German accent making the factoid sound automatically ironic. “And in 1954, the Burger King.” Sensing confused delight in his audience, Hanning said, “You’re going to ask, ‘Where is that going to fit in with the Bocuse d’Or?’ Just bear with me.”
    He continued: Julia Child’s
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
(which he charmingly misnamed
Mastering the French Cooking of Julia Child
) in 1961.
    â€œIn ’64 to ’74 I did some terrible misery,” he said, getting personal. “Today they would call it
slavery;
in those days they called it
apprenticeship
,
culinary apprenticeship
.” This brought one of the great laughs of the night from a room in which so many people had experienced the personal sacrifice it took to become a chef.
    Hanning picked up his timeline: Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley and the first-ever Starbucks in Seattle in 1971. From his folder, Hanning produced a menu from L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, commonly refered to simply as “Restaurant Paul Bocuse.” “And here he signed, Monsieur Paul Bocuse, 1971. Eating at his restaurant …” The audience was silent, then he hit them with the sucker punch: “That was like taking out a mortgage.” Chuckles broke out across the room.
    Hanning continued ticking off milestones: the first Spago in 1982, Charlie Trotter’s restaurant in Chicago in 1987, and up to the present day. As hespoke, the laughter subsided and the parlor took on a hushed tone, suitable to a sermon. His message was unmistakable: American food had come into its own, and many of the people in that room had been a part of the evolution.
    â€œThen I would also like to thank the
millions
of unknown heroes in this industry, who will never get the recognition, but who help to make us look good. And there’s a
lot
of people out there, who wake up every morning, different cultures, different upbringings, different heritages, and we should never forget this.”
    Hanning again broke the seriousness conclusively with: “We should also never forget all those guests who come and spend all this big money.”
    It had been the first speech of the night, but it set the tone for the evening and the weekend, putting the mission of the Bocuse d’Or USA in historical context. There would be a battle played out over the next two days, but the competitors would enter—and leave—the arena as colleagues with a common goal: bringing that golden Bocuse home to America.
    Hanning’s remarks were bookended by the evening’s final speaker, Damian Mogavero, CEO and founder of Avero, who recounted the story of the Judgment of Paris, the 1976 blind wine tasting that put ten of France’s best wines against ten from California, with a stunning result: California won! (The events had recently been depicted in the movie
Bottle Shock
.) Mogavero, a food and wine enthusiast, had purchased and brought along one bottle of the winning red wine from that long-ago showdown, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon, and while he couldn’t procure any of the winning white—1973 Chateau Montelena California Chardonnay—he had managed to get his hands on a magnum each of the 1971 and 1972 vintages.
    Small samples of the wines were poured, and the guests lined up to savor a sip, to experience what victory tasted like. And, for a fleeting moment, the candidates were reminded that, although the odds against them were long, anything was possible.

2
Knives at Dawn
    Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.
    â€” FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
    K EVIN S BRAGA RAN .
    It was minutes before 6:00 a.m. on the morning of Friday, September 26, the first day of the Bocuse d’Or USA competition, and Sbraga wanted to see his