Turns out, in addition to being a world-beating chef/restaurant owner, with seven restaurants in New York City alone (including Michelin two-star Daniel) and six others in cities like London and Singapore, Daniel Boulud is a world-beating cooking coach.
That's a major reason the long-moribund American super chef team suddenly has mad game.
They compete in a storied and intense affair called Bocuse d’Or, named for French legend Paul Bocuse, and better understood to the uninformed as the “culinary Olympics."
Twenty-four national teams threw down last January in Lyon, France, as they do every two years.
The crowd gathered more Michelin stars than have assembled in one place ever before, hundreds of them all told.
Pebble Beach Food & Wine chief David Bernahl—who celebrates the start of the eighth PBFW today—attended as Boulud’s guest and compared the national-song-singing atmosphere to a World Cup match.
“Just crazy,” he says with atypical brevity.
The American team has long been the Golden State Warriors of the Bocuse.
Losing pretty much was what they did.
It's not all their fault: unlike the other teams competing, the U.S. squad doesn’t receive a teaspoon of government funding.
This year, as it's been for the Warriors, things were different for the Americans.
Find out why—and what they cooked—with the today's piece "Cal Stamenov and Daniel Boulud highlight Pebble Beach Food & Wine and memorable week of food."
At PBFW, the same Bocuse team recreates a dinner only the contest's judges (the presidents of the teams from each country) tasted, following a Friday cooking demo with the same theme.
The events mark two pinnacles among nearly 50 different epicurean experiences.
Boulud seemed like he was still soaring when I caught up with him this week for a Q&A.
Then again, I've never seen him without a smile.
The man is visibly and audibly in love with what he's doing.
Why gives festivals like PBFW import?
For us, it’s exciting to gather with friends from the business. It’s seeing customers and winemakers and suppliers and making people happy.
What are you proudest of as part of the Ment'or program?
We have done very important things. The competition is a small part of the program. Ours was designed to be able to offer grants to young chefs. This year we offered $30 grand to study regionally and nationally.
We also have four competitions going on nationally where they can earn a purse as well. And we have four young culinary doing stage [or apprenticeships] in my restaurants.
It’s about having the opportunity to give back to the young chef who is not really a chef yet but is exemplary, having shown great direction already.
What's the most meaningful part of your career these days, and has that changed from other points in your career?
The most meaningful part of career is cooking.
Cooking is about emotion and passion and pleasure and nostalgia, some time. Food that can inspire you.
You can reinvent yourself with it.
It’s about generosity and about taste. It’s about sharing, about the how food can bring people together.
The most relevant part of being a chef is not only to offer your talents through the cooking, but to offer your knowledge and advice through mentorships.
How has being in PBFW's hall of fame-of-sorts, as a Lexus Culinary Master [with Christopher Kostow and Masaharu Morimoto, among others] changed your career?
I have a Lexus in New York, for sure. They are committed to being associated with excellence. Cheffing is part of a good lifestyle. You eat out, you have to drive there!
You take Anthony Bourdain to a school and they are eating beautiful stuff. Why do French kids seem to have better tastebuds than American kids; how can we make a similar switch?
We did the thing where we went to my home school and they were really eating well.
I also went to Daniel [the NYC restaurant] with the New York Times. We made a video of 7-year-olds trying a tasting menu.
The kids were from a Brooklyn public school, and had never stepped into a restaurant like Daniel.
It was incredible. (Check out "What Happens When Second Graders Are Treated to a Seven-Course, $220 Tasting Meal" here.)
Chefs are concerned and doing their best to support young kids to eat better.
What’s important is for parents to take their children to serious restaurants. The kid will never forget the meal, and they will start to learn to appreciate good food.
That could get expensive.
Maybe it’s a bistro, a very affordable price range. But chef-driven places.
And the parents who really cook with their children will really show them too.
My parents cooked for me every day. Eight or ten people. Always a beautiful roast chicken, a beautiful soup.
How does you eat at home?
My wife cooks for me.
I love to make soup, actually.
I like one-pot meals: a stir-fry, for example a chicken casserole, a braise of meat, or vegetables only. I like pasta also. Maybe with seafood.
What's the most important lesson cooking imparts?
The most important lesson food teaches me: We respect ingredients. We respect nature. We respect taste. We respect technique.
A lot of discipline and concern comes with food.
We want to know the trackability. To know who we are cooking for. Not only about making food and serving food, it’s about who is behind the ingredients and who is behind the meal we’re gonna serve: the chef, the dishwasher, the prep cook, and who is in front, from the service to the customer.
Food is incredible magnet for the soul, the mind, the body.
That sounds like a message of connectivity.
There is that connectivity that food brings. After someone enjoys a meal, there’s the memory. People have incredible food memories. It’s about passion, memories and connectivity.
Best and worst part of being a celebrity chef?
[Laughs.] I don’t know. Maybe the best part is you can do Instagram every five minutes.
The worst part is when you have to do Instagram every five minutes.
I don’t do so many. If I do, it's two a week. I don’t need to tell the world where I am more than that.
What's your favorite authentically American dish?
A burger.
What goes into one that makes those great food memories.
When burger starts to enter the kitchen of a chef, the burger gets serious. It's not fast food any more. I think a lot of chefs have pride in their burger.
Where is French food going next?
Basically it’s like the Wheel of Fortune; once in a while it hits a particular place then it goes away and comes back. We just keep rolling. I think French food will always be there. It has 400 years recorded in books.
What’s important with French food is the message: It has been adapted and adopted by every cuisine—fresh ingredients from the market, seasonal, local.
So many references are taken from the French model, and now the French cooking will constantly reinvent itself the way it has for so many years.
You find the highest ranked restaurants can be Japanese or Italian or anything, but many have the French model with technique, organization, old gastronomy—which was definitely a French word to begin with. That’s how France is still a role model for gastronomy, the way America is a role model for casual food.
French is soulful, regional, casual, rustic. And French cuisine is a great role model for urban chic bistro.
When do you feel most alive?
When I am cooking with my chefs, sharing something wonderful together, and we are sharing the complicity of making people very happy.
That is what drives me every day.