*Not strictly true. No chef, no matter how gifted or speedy, can do everything at the last minute. In Saulieu as in Lyon or Laguiole or Lembach, there is always plenty of kitchen activity—cleaning, gutting, peeling, weighing, and all the other inevitable preparatory chores that come before the coup de feu—the moment the cooking starts. What Bernard meant to emphasize was that no dishes were cooked before they were actually ordered. Sometimes he took flight on the wings of his own rhetoric.