Day 41 of 60 | Bonjour, Paris! 🇫🇷✨
Alright team… today I’m putting you to the test.
I’ve posted six dishes below. Three were plated by a Master Chef who’s spent over 20 years cooking in Michelin-starred kitchens… and two were plated by a guy who, just five weeks ago, cooked his very first dish following an actual written recipe - yours truly!
Try to guess which ones are mine. Seriously - take a moment, look closely, and trust your instincts. If you hesitated even for a second on any of them… then it means I’m officially improving. If you found it easy, no surprise cause I have a ton of room for improvement! 
Every single day at École Ducasse pushes me way outside every comfort zone I’ve built over the last 28 years as an entrepreneur. I’m not negotiating a real estate deal. I’m not writing an investor memo. I’m not leading a team through strategy. I’m holding tweezers and trying to make a carrot shaving sit exactly, and I mean exactl, where I want it to go!
And if it slides half a centimeter, I calmly tell myself:
Do it again, Eric!
Until you get it right!
There’s something humbling and beautiful in being a beginner again at age 55, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with classmates who’ve spent years in kitchens, and learning from a Master Chef with two decades of Michelin discipline glide through a plate like he’s conducting a symphony… while I’m over here celebrating because my purée didn’t explode off the spoon.
But here’s the part that surprises me the most:
I’m loving every second of it.
I love the challenge.
I love the precision.
I love the feeling of looking at a plate and knowing I did that - not perfectly, not effortlessly, but with intention, effort, and improvement.
And I especially love that Lori and I are living in a foreign country for the first time not as tourists, but as temporary locals. Navigating early mornings, late classes, grocery shopping in French (comical), and learning that Parisians take their pastries very, very seriously.
These 60 days are changing me.
Not because I’ll become a professional chef, but because I’m re-learning what it feels like to start from scratch again and to be humbled again.
So - go ahead.
Look at the plates.
Make your guesses.
It won’t make me feel bad in the least if you easily get it, right!
But more importantly… let this be your reminder that it is never too late to begin something wildly outside your comfort zone. Never too late to be a rookie. Never too late to surprise yourself.
And if a guy who sliced his finger on an orange and used to think “mise en place” was a French luxury car can even come close to making it challenging for you to pick the right dishes versus a Michelin level chef, even for a moment…then you can start anything you’ve been putting off.
Now, place your bets! I numbered each of the competing photos. Just type in the comments which ones you think are mine. And classmates, please refrain from participating since you know the answers! 😉🔥
