The Bocuse d'Or is a chef competition. Not just any chef competition, of which there are many, but the chef competition. Its organisers, who take it at least as seriously as Sebastian Coe takes London 2012, like to compare it to the Olympic Games, and you can see why: the flags, the competitive spirit, the lucrative sponsorship money. But is this accurate? No. At the stifling indoor arena outside Lyon where the competition is staged, it takes me all of five minutes to grasp that this is a contest of an entirely different order. To do it justice, you should picture, not the Olympics, but the bastard child of the Eurovision Song Contest and MasterChef (assuming, that is, everyone and everything in MasterChef had first ingested 30 Red Bulls and, possibly, quantities of hard drugs). Then, for good measure, remember how baffled It's a Knockout made you feel. Now you're getting close. Among many other words you might use to describe it are: camp, noisy, cut-throat, surreal and completely barmy. Oh, yes – and long. It's very long. I look at my watch. Only another 16 hours to go.
Let me set the scene. To my left, are the massed ranks of the supporters of team Iceland, most of whom are dressed in Viking helmets and blonde braids. To my right, are the screaming, hysterical fans of team Japan, each and every one of whom has a Rising Sun bandana wrapped around his or her head. And behind me, staring into the middle distance impassively, is Albert Roux, the man who brought Le Gavroche to London; he is, I gather, here to support the British team (though they will compete tomorrow). What on earth is he thinking? Don't ask me. His expression is as unchanging as a bouchon menu, even when a Dutch supporter in an orange fright wig blows his plastic football horn – toot! toot! – about an inch from his ear.
Down below us, beyond a sparsely populated VIP area, and a narrow walkway in which photographers and cameramen are penned like geese, is the stage, at the back of which are 12 open kitchens – or, as the organisers have it, "contest laboratories". Above each kitchen is the national flag of the team presently inhabiting it (today it's the turn of Indonesia, Argentina, Poland, Iceland, Belgium, China, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Australia and Japan; tomorrow, it will be Sweden, Uruguay, Denmark, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, the USA, Italy, Malaysia, Spain and Norway). From our seats, we can see the chefs' toques moving around and, at a push, their hands, but not a lot else; for the money shots of knives moving through salsify, and potatoes through sieves, we must rely on strategically placed cameras, and a big screen. And for details of ingredients and methods? On stage, wielding their microphones with alacrity, are our grinning, gurning "hosts": Angela May, a toothy American TV presenter, who speaks only in English, and Vincent Ferniot, a mustachioed fellow in chef whites, who uses French except when he is flirting with her ("We have 'eard about Scot-eesh monks," he says, at one point. "But not about Scot-eesh monk-feesh!" Cue manic laughter from Angela). Their babble never lets up. Lucky, then, that it's so often drowned out by the sound of the 3,000-strong crowd.
The Bocuse d'Or is the brainchild of Paul Bocuse, France's most esteemed living chef, the genius who gave the world soup aux truffes VGE (so-called because he once fed it to President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing) and the heavenly truffled Bresse chicken, cooked inside a pig's bladder that is still served at his celebrated Lyon restaurant, L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges. The competition takes place every two years – the first was held in 1987 – and it has complicated rules. Those competitors who make it through the heats to the final must each cook one meat dish, and one fish (this year, they must use two Scottish monkfish weighing about 5kg each, four crabs and 20 langoustines, and two 3kg saddles, and one shoulder with kidneys, of Scottish lamb). These must be served with a minimum of three "garnishes", and on a designed-for-the-occasion silver plate (110cm long if it is rectangular, and 90cm if it is round). The fish dish must be served exactly five hours after the chef first begins work on it (teams are staggered at 10-minute intervals), and the meat dish exactly 35 minutes after that. Fourteen portions of each dish must be arranged "artistically" on the silver tray, which are then paraded past the judges before being served. Candidates must also prepare two plates to be photographed officially, and used as a guide for servers. Sixty points are available for each dish: 20 for presentation, and 40 for taste. Each team consists of a chef, a commis (who must be under the age of 22), and a "coach" – a third chef who does not cook, or even enter the kitchen, but who has been on hand to help and advise during practice runs, and is there for encouragement on the day (for the entire 5 hours and 35 minutes, he is not allowed to step off the pink mat which lies beside the pass of each contest kitchen).
Anything else? Bizarrely, there is. Each team must also design its own promotional poster. Earlier, upstairs in the press room, I looked at a few of these. Finland's devilish-looking Matti Jämsen appeared with a halo of Scandinavian berries above his head. Ludwig Heer, of Germany, had been photographed reading a newspaper (he will be making headlines, you see). The British had draped themselves in union flags, thrown a few carcasses over their shoulders, and styled themselves – roar! – as the Three Lions.
Ah, yes. The British team. This is why I'm here. The British contestant is Simon Hulstone, chef-proprietor of the Michelin-starred Elephant, in Torquay. This is the second time that Hulstone has entered the Bocuse (he was chosen for the job by the Academy of Culinary Arts); he secured his place at Lyon with a strong performance at the European finals in Geneva, where he came fourth. I went to Torquay to see Simon as he did his final practice run for last month's competition: the ninth time he'd cooked and presented his two dishes. It was a confusing experience. For one thing, I couldn't quite understand why a Michelin-starred chef with a business to run (and in a recession) would want to spend so much time on a folly like the Bocuse. Why was he doing it? "Well, they asked me, and I might not get the chance again," he said. What did he feel about the dishes he was going to enter? "I'm thoroughly sick of them!" For another, there was the food itself. A Bocuse platter, designed for effect and to be easily divided between 14 judges, is more like a tray of canapes than a hot dinner. Hulstone's lamb, for instance, is to be served with textures of beetroot, a couscous "domino" with cucumber ketchup and watermelon, a charlotte of asparagus and pea, plus fois gras bon bon. His fish, meanwhile, will be poached in dashi, and served with wild fennel pollen, a bombe au crabe, langoustine and caviar "buttons", a "Medusa" of monkfish liver and crispy shirazu, and a royale of Jerusalem artichoke, truffle and pea.
Hulstone believes that this year, Britain stands a chance of making it on to the podium for the very first time. It's not only that he did so well in Geneva. His team is also well-prepared and well-funded (his commis is Jordan Bailey, sous chef at the Elephant; his coach is Nick Vadis, who is executive chef at Compass Group, the world's "leading food services organisation", which, in case you're wondering, is longhand for "we do staff canteens"). Certainly, he hopes to be in the top six. To make his entry stand out, he has a couple of tricks up his sleeve. "The food is usually tepid by the time the judges taste it," he told me. "So I'm serving a trawlerman's pie with my fish, and a shepherd's pie with my lamb, both of which will be separate from the platter, and hopefully hot." More nattily, as these pies emerge from the kitchen, they will be surrounded with swirling dry ice, which will smell respectively of essence of the sea, and of heather. Hmm. What do I think? I think that everything he gave me to eat in Torquay tasted delicious. On the other hand, I had nothing with which to compare it. It's only now I'm here at the Bocuse, and watch the first few dishes emerging from their kitchens – there goes Poland, with its langoustines arranged to look like synchronised swimmers – that I realise what he is up against. From my seat, it looks as if Salvador Dali himself had pulled on a pinny and got to it with the mouli and the wooden spoon.
Should we really take this stuff seriously? Wandering outside into the VIP hospitality area, I spy Thomas Keller, the chef at three-Michelin starred the French Laundry in Napa, California, who is one of the 24 judges of the Bocuse d'Or (there is one for every country competing, though the points they award their home side do not count in the judging). I grab him and, with a satirical look on my face, ask him what on earth this thing is about. Oh, dear. He isn't playing. "It's about Bocuse," he says, earnest as a curate. "He's our role model, our icon, someone I was so thankful for as a young cook. So, to get a phone call from him asking me to be a judge of the Bocuse d'Or… to go from being a 21-year-old who was mesmerised by him, to him actually knowing my name... It's, like, wow!" Wow, indeed.
Day two. Yesterday was mad, but today is madder. It's results day, so the hall is even more packed; it's much noisier, too. Some of the more fancied teams are competing today, and their supporters are demented. The Swiss fans are jangling cow bells and blowing on an alpine horn; the Italians keep blasting a police siren; the Danes have six snare drums. I've no idea how the chefs concentrate. No wonder the much-fancied Dane, Rasmus Kofoed, practised to the sound of deafening hip hop.
In the hours before the judges arrive on stage – they come out in their toques and whites one by one, to pompous music, some of them punching the air, like boxers – the press are allowed to hang around by the competition kitchens, and to interview coaches, chefs, and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity. It doesn't take me long to discover the putative narrative of the day. Everyone agrees that while the Scandinavian countries will do well, the team that most wants to win is the USA. And what backing they've got. Not only is their budget rumoured to have been around $1m (the British team, by contrast, raised £60,000 in sponsorship, and spent no more than £35,000); Angela May has just read out a "good luck" telegram sent to them by President Obama. When I stroll up to their kitchen, I see that their coach, Gavin Kaysen, has three stopwatches to hand, plus a minute-by-minute printed schedule ("25 mins: roll liver; 2 hrs 10: chop spinach; 3hrs: unmould savarin"). How's it going? I ask. "Wonderfully," he says, smoothly. You really want to win, don't you? "Yeah, we do." When Kaysen, the chef at Cafe Boulud in New York, competed in 2007, he was said to have been the victim of a sinister French dish washer who ate his garnishes, and finished only 14th (allegations of dirty tricks are always rife at the Bocuse). This year, he has taken no chances. He and his chef, James Kent, even practised unloading their kit until they could do the job in just 38 minutes; thus they avoided having to leave anything in the kitchen overnight where it might "disappear".
The day rolls on. I try to talk to Simon, but he has been afflicted by the strange temporary deafness that is so common – or perhaps merely so necessary – in Bocuse chefs. So instead, I tackle the British judge, Brian Turner. He insists that, based on what he tasted yesterday, Simon should be able "to podium". (What is this strange new verb? At the Bocuse, everyone uses it.) For the record, Turner – the slightly prissy Yorkshireman you might remember from This Morning with Richard and Judy – always eats breakfast before starting out on the eating odyssey that is the Bocuse "just to get my palate going a little bit". After this, there is nothing to do but return to my step, and wait. And wait. And wish that I had brought earplugs with me. Even once the platters start appearing, you're not close to the finish line: it takes a full three hours for all 12 countries to serve both their dishes. What do Simon's look like? Good, though even from here I can tell that his dry ice unaccountably failed to froth and fume.
At 6pm, after a break of about two hours, during which the judges can confer, and we are allowed to go to the loo, we return to our seats for the big finale: the results. In spite of my aching backside, and my extreme hunger (strange that during the biggest culinary competition in the world, opportunities for eating are so limited), I feel quite excited. I've found a perch in the middle of the American fans, who are jittery with expectation, and I'm just along from Simon's supporters, with their union flag T-shirts and their football-style songs, written specially for the occasion. More importantly, the great man himself, Paul Bocuse, has now appeared, an expression of benign impassivity on his 85-year-old face.
You've seen the Oscars; you know the drill. What follows next involves many manufactured pauses, and three large black envelopes. The major upset is that the USA has not won, nor even managed "to podium" (they came 10th). And on the podium? It's a total victory for the Scandinavians. The Bocuse de Bronze goes to Gunnar Hvarnes of Norway, the Bocuse d'Argent to Tommy Myllymäki of Sweden, and the Bocuse d'Or to – yes, it was 50 Cent what won it – Rasmus Kofoed of Denmark. As for Simon Hulstone, I'm on my way to the airport before I find out that he came 13th. In the gloom of his supporters' coach, I read his mournful tweet on my mobile phone. "Gutted," it says. "Sorry all. We tried. Thank you for such amazing support." I think of his couscous dominoes, his wild fennel pollen, and his caviar buttons – where, I wonder, are their remains now? – and feel first rather sad, and then, exceedingly sleepy. OFM
