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    The Last Person They See
    1 bite · 2 chews

    The Last Person They See

    A 1" warm gruyère gougère filled with truffled béchamel — served by hand in the wings, thirty seconds before the walk-on

    Encore's customers use the voice-of-the-customer survey to name individual employees. "It is an AV tech miking them up when they're nervous. It's the last person they see before they walk on stage. That's our star."

    Why this bite? The AV tech is the star. A warm bite handed over in the wings, thirty seconds before showtime.

    The Story

    He gets most animated not about strategy but about the person in the ballroom — the tech who steadies a nervous speaker, the producer who builds the thing that only existed in somebody's head. That is the celebrity in his account, and the unsolved problem he admits to is whether a whispered reassurance can be made to travel across 2,200 venues. This bite is served the way that moment happens: warm, small enough to eat in one motion, offered quietly by one person to another right before the lights come up.

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    Prep: 35 minYield: 12 pieces (1" gougères)

    Ingredients

    • Gruyère gougère shells (1")
    • Truffled béchamel
    • Parmesan
    • Black truffle shaving
    • Fine sea salt

    Preparation

    1. 1.Pipe and bake 1" gougères; cool slightly.
    2. 2.Fill each with warm truffled béchamel.
    3. 3.Dust with parmesan and warm briefly to set.
    4. 4.Shave truffle over the top and serve immediately, by hand.