First things first, I have to say that Valrhona did organise the whole thing perfectly, and that made it very easy for all of us to get comfortable and put our stress on the side. We all arrived by plane in Paris the day before the competition, and were picked up by the Valrhona team at the airport. We where brought to our hotel in Versailles and got some time to fresh up and check our luggage before all heading of for dinner at Gordon Ramsey au Trianon with the Valrhona team. the food was great, the company even better and the atmosphere was so relaxed you would almost forget their was a competition the morning after.
Then it was D-day and suddenly all the stress that was gone lost the day before found its way back in to everybody's body. And of course everybody wanted to get it over with so they can relax again, but we first had to have a meeting on how everything will go during the day, and have official photo's, and have are material checked up by the judges, set-up our working station and finally have a little lottery draw to see who will go first in to the arena to battle it out. For me number 3 came out which meant that I had to start 30min after the first one went in.
Finally my time was there. I went in the room and honestly I was quite confident in what I had to do. I've had practised a lot at work and even took holiday for a week before the competition to prepare myself for this day, but of course, that doesn't mean a thing since you are in a different pastry kitchen, with different material, more stress and stuff you need to share with each other. And of course just like everybody i had a few setbacks but nothing major so I managed to get the 7 plates out in 4 hours as planed, with 1 minute left to put my sorbet on the plate.
So there it was, finished, nothing left I can do but wait and see what's gonna happen. For the first time I had the chance to look around and I thought the level was very high, all six of us had amazing looking dishes so I was really worried. But like I said, there was nothing left I could do but wait and see.
The theme of the competition was "Madagascar and its flavours" and we had to use Manjari chocolate. I wanted to be different then the rest so went through great lengths in finding myself some unique products to create an amazing dessert. The dessert named "Terre Inconnue" with means "Unknown Territory" should refer to my quest of being different then everybody else and the products that I've used in the dessert. The dessert was a combination of Manjari chocolate, Tanariva chocolate, palm sugar, coconut vinegar, Palm juice and spiced rum.
A few hours after the competition they come and tell us I will take a bit longer because the can't decide the winner, which made all of us even more nervous then we already were, but anyways finally they came the a conclusion and my dessert came in 2nd, which was a disappointment but on the other had, knowing the level was extremely high and the experience was amazing this was a good result for me.
After the necessary champagne and talks with all the people involved, we went back to to hotel to fresh up and dress up because we had a celebration dinner with the judges and the valrhona team at the 2 michelin star restaurant "Carré des Feuillants" in the heart of Paris. It ended up becoming a long night since we decided to go for beers after dinner.
The morning after we all woke up with a hangover but since all of us had a flight in the evening some of us headed in to the city to go and visit our heroes. Pierre Hermé, Patrick Roger, Ladurée, Victor & Hugo, La Pâtisserie des rêves, Sadaharu Aoki,...We did all of them and ended up having a great last day together before heading of to the Airport and going all back to our own busy lives.
Conclusion of all of this, is that I can't wait to compete again and hopefully make it to Madrid this time, Let's see!!!
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