Knives at Dawn, Andrew Friedman
Knives at Dawn, Andrew Friedman
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Knives at Dawn
America's Quest for Culinary Glory at the Legendary Bocuse d'Or Competition

Author: Andrew Friedman

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Unabridged: 11 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/02/2010

Categories: Cooking, Nonfiction


Synopsis

The Bocuse d'Or is the real-life Top Chef, a biannual cooking competition in France featuring teams from twenty-four countries vying for the top honors. Named after Paul Bocuse, one of the greatest, most influential living chefs, the Bocuse d'Or has become the most sophisticated and closely watched cook-off in the world. Ironically, though American cuisine now rates among the best in the world, a U.S. team has never placed among the top three in the competition. In 2008, under the auspices of renowned chefs Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller, the two-person U.S. team of Timothy Hollingsworth and Adina Guest trained in a specially outfitted facility in preparation for the 2009 competition with the goal of a best-ever showing for the United States.

With unparalleled behind-the-scenes access, Andrew Friedman follows the American contestants and other hopefuls as they spend months training to cook and serve their dishes just once, over the course of five and a half tense hours, in an arena filled with a thousand screaming spectators. Along the way, he paints intimate portraits of Boulud and Keller, two of the leading culinary figures of their generation, revealing their hopes and aspirations for their protégés as well as for American cuisine. Through this compelling sports-meets-cooking story, Friedman explores the clash of culinary titans and cultures in a real-world kitchen stadium and ratchets up the suspense of who will reign supreme.

About Andrew Friedman

Andrew Friedman is coauthor, with James Blake, of Breaking Back, a New York Times bestseller. He has written for the Wall Street Journal and O, The Oprah Magazine, among other publications, and is a contributing editor to Tennis magazine. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Erin on February 01, 2011

Oh, where to begin... I had high hopes for this book. As a foodie-lite with a chef for a husband, Top Chef is one of the few television shows that we watch on a regular basis. I've been interested in the Bocuse d'Or since it was mentioned on the show and this book sounded like a good read. I was wron......more

Goodreads review by Amy on April 16, 2012

I listened to this as an audiobook, which was interesting because of the accents that the reader chose to use. It brought a little more life to book than I think I would have otherwise gotten had I read it to myself. Overall, I very much enjoyed it. I was surprised that written descriptions of the f......more

Goodreads review by Brian on January 04, 2010

This is a seriously in depth look at the Bocuse D'Or competition, and more specifically, why the USA has never done well there. It focuses on the most recent competition in 2009, and follows the US competitors from qualifying and all the way through the contest itself. The level of access to the che......more

Goodreads review by Ms.pegasus on February 18, 2013

The Bocuse d’Or was founded in 1987, and is held every other year in Lyon, France. Each country’s team (a chef and one assistant) is assigned a meat and a fish to be prepared and presented in the space of 5-1/2 hours. It is apt that all of the library subject headings for this book contain the word......more

Goodreads review by Kimberly on May 06, 2012

My friend Liz gave this to me for my birthday so I jumped into the whole new crazy world of intense cooking competitions. Wow. I had no idea. Knives at Dawn written by Andrew Friedman tells the story of well known chefs, Daniel Boulud and the French Laundry's Thomas Keller, working to improve the Uni......more