During her mornings at The French Laundry, she will be cutting vegetables and find that, although it’s quiet around her, “I am freaking out in my brain because I am having flashbacks of all the noise and how it felt to be there.… I am looking around me and I am like, ‘These people have no idea how it is.’ I am looking around at the other commis and even the morning sous chef and it’s like, ‘You have no idea what it’s like to cook in front of five thousand people that are screaming your ears deaf and you have to concentrate,’ and I am, like, ‘Damn, Adina.’ I can’t believe that I have been through that.” Guest had learned what countless commis and candidates had before her—Bocuse d’Or memories, like wines, cheeses, and certain meats, intensify with age. Despite the occasional bouts of culinary post-traumatic stress, she feels grateful for the experience, which she says left her feeling like more of an adult. She says that she may even try to become the American candidate at some future date.
