5:15 am, coffee, check, blog, check, laundry, check. This morning we need to leave by 7:30 to drop Ty at the mountain and then head to Denver for Lori’s appointment to get her hair colored. Can’t have her going to the islands as a brunette!
We should be done sometime around noon and then will rush up the hill to get ready for our wine dinner at 7 pm. We need to leave around 4:15 to get Lorenzo and Jen and then drive to Keystone before taking not one, but two gondolas up to the restaurant which is perched at 11,000 feet. The dinner is a tribute to the famous French Chef Paul Bocuse. He died January 20th at the age of 91 and was the most important chef in the World in the post war era. Based in Lyon France, he had a 3 Michelin Star restaurant for decades and was awarded the top medal in France as a cultural ambassador to the Country. The chef tonight, from the famed French Laundry in California, is recreating his famous dishes which we are pairing the wines with. For example, the soup was one he made for the French President and is made up of truffles, mushrooms and foie gras and sold for 106 Euros a bowl. There’s more but it’s an extensive menu that I’m sure will be great. Lori and I will eat selectively and skip the wine but the dinner is all sold out at $200 a person. Should be fun.
If I have it figured right, Jag should be on a plane sometime this afternoon starting to make his way home. He has 3 planes to take before he’ll land in Denver tomorrow evening. We were driving down early tomorrow to take Lorenzo and Jen to the airport for their 4 pm flight but now they’ll take a shuttle so we don’t have to leave so early. This really helps as we haven’t even thought about packing!
Time to get moving. Have a great day and a month from today is St. Patrick’s Day! God Bless. Here’s some more on Chef.
Paul Bocuse
| Paul Bocuse | |
|---|---|
Bocuse in Stavanger 2008
|
|
| Born | 11 February 1926 Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or, France |
| Died | 20 January 2018 (aged 91) Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or, France |
| Website | http://www.bocuse.fr/ |
| Culinary career | |
| Cooking style | Nouvelle cuisine |
Paul Bocuse (pronounced [pɔl bokyz]; 11 February 1926 – 20 January 2018)[1] was a French chef based in Lyon who was known for the high quality of his restaurants and his innovative approaches to cuisine.
A student of Eugénie Brazier, he was one of the most prominent chefs associated with the nouvelle cuisine, which is less opulent and calorific than the traditional cuisine classique, and stresses the importance of fresh ingredients of the highest quality. Paul Bocuse claimed that Henri Gault first used the term, nouvelle cuisine, to describe food prepared by Bocuse and other top chefs for the maiden flight of the Concorde airliner in 1969.[2]
Contributions to French gastronomy[edit]
Bocuse made many contributions to French gastronomy both directly and indirectly,[3] because he had numerous students, many of whom have become notable chefs themselves. One of his students was Austrian Eckart Witzigmann, one of four Chefs of the Century and chef at the first German restaurant to receive three Michelin stars.[4]Since 1987, the Bocuse d’Or has been regarded as the most prestigious award for chefs in the world (at least when French food is considered), and is sometimes seen as the unofficial world championship for chefs. Bocuse received numerous awards throughout his career, including the medal of Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur.[3]
The Culinary Institute of America honoured Bocuse in their Leadership Awards Gala on 30 March 2011. He received the “Chef of the Century” award.[5] In July 2012 the Culinary Institute of America announced in the New York Times that they would change the name of their Escoffier Restaurant to the Bocuse Restaurant, after a year-long renovation.[6]
In 1975, he created soupe aux truffes (truffle soup) for a presidential dinner at the Élysée Palace. Since then, the soup has been served in Bocuse’s restaurant near Lyon as Soupe V.G.E., VGE being the initials of former president of France Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.[7]
Restaurants[edit]
Le Nord, one of Bocuse’s chain of brasseries in central Lyon
L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, Bocuse’s main restaurant in Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or, the place of both his birth and death
Bocuse’s main restaurant, l’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, is a luxury establishment near Lyon, which has been serving a traditional menu for decades.[3] It is one of only 27 restaurants in France to receive a three-star rating in 2017 by the Michelin Guide.[8] He also operated a chain of brasseries in Lyon, named Le Nord, l’Est, Le Sud and l’Ouest, each of which specialize in a different aspect of French cuisine.[9]
Paul Bocuse’s son, Jérôme, manages the “Les Chefs de France” restaurant which the elder Bocuse co-founded with Roger Verge and Gaston Lenôtre and is located inside the French pavilion at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT.[10][11]
Bocuse was considered an ambassador of modern French cuisine.[12] He was honoured in 1961 with the title Meilleur Ouvrier de France.[13] He had been apprenticed to Fernand Point, a master of classic French cuisine. Bocuse dedicated his first book to him.[9]
Institute Paul Bocuse Worldwide Alliance[edit]
In 2004 the Institut Paul Bocuse Worldwide Alliance was created.[14] In 2014 the Alliance brought together students of 14 nationalities for a course in Lyon school and university.[14]
Death[edit]
Bocuse died of Parkinson’s disease on 20 January 2018 in Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or; in the same room above his restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, in which he was born in 1926.[15][16] He was 91.
Works[edit]
- Paul Bocuse’s French Cooking, translated by Colette Rossant (Pantheon Books 1977)[17]
- Bocuse a la Carte, translated by Colette Rossant (Pantheon Books 1987)[