The Best Craftsmen in France

I watched a documentary the other night that was just amazing.  It was about the Meilleurs ouvriers de France or “The best craftsmen in France”.  It’s a competition, held every four years in any manual field, where professionals compete for the title of the year’s best work.  The program I saw focused on the Meilleurs ouvriers de France in cooking, and it is an extremely grueling concourse.  Whoever wins gets to wear a blue, white, and red banded collar on his chef’s coat for the rest of his life, that, along with the admiration of the rest of his colleagues in the field.  It is a huge thing.  Veteran chefs go into training with previous Meilleurs ouvriers de France winners for years before entering the concourse.  For years, on top of everything else they have done – that’s commitment.  Then, once the concourse starts, previous winners stand over them and judge quite harshly, while taking notes on the whole process.  This is not your reality TV program, this is the real thing.

Outside of my love for cooking, what really drew me into this is the passion that each of the chefs have.  They wake up thinking about their work and are inspired to do better by everything around them; a simple walk turns into inspiration for something new.  They are awe inspiring as they try to achieve absolute perfection -  not just in the finish product, but in the process of creating.  There is a transmission of ideas; these chefs share their techniques with each other so the profession as a whole will continue and get better.  How’s that for teamwork?  They collaborate for the patrimony of art, so the French cuisine will continue to be what it is.  Watching this makes me want to make the best dinner possible every time, even if it is just spaghetti.