Knives at Dawn by Andrew Friedman Page A

physical preparation through to its logical conclusion. Finding the exercise room at Disney’s Beach Club Resort hotel (where all competitors were staying) locked and dark, he did what chefs do: he adapted, jogging along the footpath that encircled the resort complex, past the sandy shores of a lagoon, and along the deserted boardwalk on the other side.

    Back in his room, Sbraga showered, then treated himself to a room-service breakfast and threw on a baggy white Nautica sweatshirt. He checked himself in the mirror, his face a reflection of all the work that had brought him to this day. Sbraga had shed almost twenty pounds during training. He was an athlete again, a competitor. He was also clean-shaven; he’d shorn off his beard before turning in last night, to surprise his opponents and make them wonder what this guy had up his sleeve.
    By six fifty-five, the four two-person teams who were to square off that day had gathered in the lobby: Sbraga and Patel, Rosendale and Warren, Rotondo and Jennifer Petrusky, one of his sous chefs; Whatley and Johnson. The vast, garishly lit space was otherwise deserted save for the desk clerk, and it was dead silent. The teams kept their distance, yawning and pacing about under the seahorse-themed overhead lamp or walking circles around the potted palms on the fringes of the room. On the circular sofa under the seahorses, Jennifer Pelka pecked away on her laptop.
    Three thunderclaps, in quick succession, rang out in the lobby, shattering the calm. It was Sbraga, smacking his hands together violently, then plunging them deep into the pockets of his sweatshirt. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he had earphones in, flooding his cranium with the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan’s greatest hits. Sbraga’s high-school wrestling team used to spark up the CD on a boom box before meets, but it was a strangely appropriate selection for this day as well; just as many rap and hip-hop songs are about the rhyming prowess of the singer, cooking competitions—certainly one with a visual component like the Bocuse d’Or— are about the chef’s showing off his skills, making lyrics like “I be tossin’, enforcin’, my style is awesome,” the perfect underscoring of what was about to go down at the World Showplace. As others watched Sbraga, he again yanked his arms free of the sweatshirt and clapped his hands loudly, looking fierce, ready to rumble.
    Just a few feet away stood Richard Rosendale. His overnight preparation was different from Sbraga’s: after touring their kitchen the day before, he and Warren convened in Rosendale’s hotel room. Working off a digitalphoto he’d snapped at the Showplace, Rosendale sketched out how they were going to rearrange the equipment to create a more optimal layout. (He’d also taken the step of speaking to one of the electricians to be sure he wouldn’t trip a circuit breaker and to see if there’d be enough cable, although he’d brought plenty of heavy-duty extension cords along, just in case.) Then Rosendale quizzed his assistant, quick-firing questions about the sequence of tasks he had to execute over the five-and-a-half-hour battle. If Rosendale noticed Sbraga’s theatrics, he didn’t let on. And even if he had noticed them, they would not have made an impact. Rosendale was in familiar territory, and his philosophy was that it’s all about what you do in your own kitchen that wins the day. Any energy directed outside those four walls was wasted.
    Minutes later, the teams had split into two chauffeur-driven vans and were rumbling along the back roads of suburbia to the World Showplace. In one of the vans, Pelka swiveled around in the passenger seat and asked Percy Whatley about his preparation.
    â€œThe garnishes took a long time,” said Whatley.
    Pelka nodded. On the radio, The Romantics sang “That’s What I Like About You.”
    â€œPlayed around with the cod,”