King of the Sugar Mountain

On the Cinco de Mayo, I saw a documentary about a pastry contest, or more precisely a "test", called the Kings of Pastry. Every 4 years, a number of pastry chefs, trained in the French tradition, try to prove their mastery of everything from lollipops, verrines, wedding cakes, tartes, and every sort of pastry over the course of 3 gruelling days. It is not a contest as there can be several winners. The winners may call themselves Un des Meilleur Oeuvriers De France or M.O.F. and wear a chef's outfit with a blue, white, red (i.e., the colours of the French flag) striped collar.

Over the course of the documentary, we learn that some pastry chefs have spent 12-16 years (3-4 tests) trying to get their MOF. For this year, we follow 3 chefs including Jacquy Pfeiffer from the French Pastry School in Chicago, Regis Lazard from Switzerland and Phillippe Rigollot from Maison Pic in Valence. However, the director revealed after the showing that she followed several chefs. Of the 3 profiled chefs, only Rigollot got his MOF.

The best scenes from the documentary involve the chefs using intricate pastry techniques, hashing out the details of their creations, and critiquing the final results. Unfortunately, these scenes were few and far between. We are left with the drama of chefs being stressed from daily practices, which isn't that dramatic in the grand scheme of things, and camera pans of a bewildering and overwhelming collection of pastries with no insight into the differences to their quality.

After the movie, I had dinner at Chimichanga. It was a 30 min. wait as the restaurant/lounge was packed because of Cinco de Mayo. It also lived up to the area's sobriquet of "Yonge and Eligible" as there was an astounding display of flesh, gelled hair, white teeth, and tight clothes. What a difference from my area which runs more to tasteful tattoos, skinny jeans, and ironic mustaches.