Hawaii’s young chefs will have a better chance of career-building through a new partnership between the Hawaii Food &Wine Festival and the Ment’or BKB Foundation.
The partnership boosts opportunities to intern with one of more than three dozen luminary chefs across the country, giving Hawaii’s young chefs broader horizons and life experiences.
Such internships generally are unpaid, but “we will be providing funds in 2017 for two chefs to receive awards to stage with mentor chefs,” said Denise Yamaguchi, the festival’s chief executive officer. “Stage,” pronounced “stahj” in this case, means to intern. Applications will be available in the spring.
Formerly known as the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation, Ment’or BKB is led by chefs Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller and Jerome Bocuse, hence the BKB in the new name.
Bocuse is the son of legendary French chef and restaurateur Paul Bocuse, founder of Bocuse d’Or, the international culinary competition staged in Lyon, France, every two years.
The younger Bocuse owns and operates Les Chefs de France and Le Bistro de Paris restaurants at the France Pavilion at Walt Disney World’s Epcot in Florida, in addition to running the restaurant empire his father, now 90, established.
The senior Bocuse has the longest-running three-star Michelin rating in the world, at 50 consecutive years, his son said.
“The history of the foundation was first to have a team put together to represent the United States in Lyon,” Jerome Bocuse said. At the 2015 Bocuse d’Or, the U.S. won second place, and its culinary team for 2017 is preparing with chef-mentors from the foundation.
The foundation also is about training younger culinary talent for ongoing excellence in the industry, he said.
“We give them grants and other career opportunities … so that maybe one day we’ll see a young chef competing with the big dogs in Bocuse,” he said.
Grant applicants can choose chef-mentors from among the foundation’s Culinary Council members — a roster of who’s-who chefs, from Grant Achatz and Jose Andres, to Michael Mina, Jacques Pepin and Wolfgang Puck, to Alan Wong and Roy Yamaguchi.
Applicants’ choices must be well thought out, Bocuse said. “They have to explain the reason why they want to go there, what they intend to learn, what they intend to do, basically their motivation.”
He is excited about his first trip to Hawaii for the October festival.
The first time his father was in Hawaii, Roy Yamaguchi rode ashore on an outrigger canoe to greet the master chef with a lei, Bocuse said. His father remembers and talks about it still. It is through Yamaguchi that the younger Bocuse has become familiar with island-style cuisine, and he is eager to try even more flavors of the islands while here.
Bocuse said his father has always had great affection for the United States. “In the second world war, he was shot (by Germans) and he was saved in an American field hospital, and received American blood. Since that day, he always flies the American flag above the restaurant in France. If it wasn’t for the Americans, we’d all be German today.”
Send restaurant news and notes to erika@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4303. Follow her on Twitter @eriKaengle
