Pastry Chef Flown in on Iraq Mission .....................
May 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:44 a.m. ET
KUWAIT CITY (AP) -- Pastry chef Yves Reynaud, with French
colors on his collar, flew in a U.S. Air Force transport to
Baghdad on a vital mission. Any search for peace goes
better with cream puffs.
History is often in the details, such as the dramatic
culinary operation mounted by Reynaud's ad hoc aid group,
which he might well call Patissiers Sans Frontieres
(Pastrymakers Without Borders).
Last week, 350 Iraqis and Americans met for a two-day
conclave in Baghdad on how to lead Iraq out of chaos -- but
the freshly liberated capital is in such disarray that no
one could find food to feed them properly.
``They asked if we could help, and I told them we could,''
said Reynaud, pastry chef at Kuwait's Crowne Plaza Hotel.
``I wasn't that afraid. I've been baking in war zones for
much of my life.''
Reynaud took over the whole operation, not only the Black
Forest cake and gooey meringues but also the steak au
poivre and the Daoud Pasha lamb stew.
Almost everything was prepared in Kuwait and sent in
refrigerated trucks, with an armed escort, on a 36-hour
ride to Baghdad. Then Reynaud and his 24 helpers boarded an
aircraft.
Counting breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee break, the
flying kitchen crew produced 1,400 servings.
``A few elders worried there might be pork, and some people
balked at unfamiliar things, but mostly I think it was a
hit,'' he said. In any case, diners gave him rousing
applause.
Tall, slim and graying at 48, Reynaud is the very picture
of a French patissier. He wears a tall white toque, small
France flags on his white tunic collars and de rigueur
black clogs.
He learned his art in Provence, near Montelimar. Then,
feeling wanderlust, he took his show on the road. He worked
five years until 1983 at the Caravelle in Benin on the
troubled West African coast.
After a year in France, Reynaud got restless again. He
finished the 1980s in Dubai and then went to the collapsing
Soviet Union in 1991 to the newly opened Metropole,
Moscow's first five-star hotel.
``We were having an aperitif on the terrace when the tanks
rumbled by,'' he said. ``That livened up the day.'' Moments
later, Boris Yeltsin scrambled atop one of those tanks to
declare Russia free.
Reynaud moved on to the Zagreb Intercontinental, and
Croatia exploded in warfare around him. After two years, he
shifted to Indonesia, in the hectic heart of Jakarta.
For six years, he and his Scottish wife ran a pastry shop
and bakery in Fort Williams, Scotland. But the cold drizzle
and the calm were too much to handle.
In 2000, the couple packed up their two sons, then aged 6
and 9, and came to the Kuwait Crowne Plaza. There, despite
16-hour days and catering parties for 1,000 people, he
relaxed and took his boys to the beach.
About his only hardship in the thriving but alcohol-free
emirate was suffering through fine dinners with nothing
more than bootleg homemade wine. Then another war landed in
his lap.
``When I was asked to do this trip, I told my family only
that I would be in Iraq,'' Reynaud said. ``But my older son
is at that age. When he found out it was actually Baghdad,
he said, 'Cool.'''
After French President Jacques Chirac refused to back an
immediate invasion, Reynaud caught some half-amused ragging
from hawkish colleagues. Kuwait, hardly fond of Saddam,
mostly backed the war.
``I don't see why the Americans couldn't have waited a few
more weeks and gotten everyone else behind them,'' he said.
But, he added, his domain was pastry, not politics.
Still, the Baghdad banquet included one of his favorites, a
pastry made of egg yolk and sugar syrup. In French, it is
called pate aux bombes.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company. |
