Maxime Bilet has perhaps one of the most exciting jobs in the food industry at the moment. Since March 2008, he has held the position of head chef of development for Intellectual Ventures, former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myrhvold’s Seattle-based company. There, he works on a cookbook that centers on modern culinary techniques and technologies, with revolutionary photographic techniques to illustrate the textual material and recipes. He does everything from shopping for the ingredients used in each dishes to styling dishes for photo shoots. Once a week, an expansive tasting with Myrhvold takes place. The structure and content of the cookbook is constantly evolving; accordingly, the publishing date also varies, but the team expects the book to come out in 2010.

    Bilet made his way to Seattle via London. There, he worked for famed chef Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck, first as a prep cook then as a lab cook in the chef’s development kitchen. Chris Young was the head chef of that particular kitchen, and when he moved to Seattle to lead Myrhvold’s cookbook project, he asked Bilet to come along. Before London, Bilet was the executive chef of Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar in New York—a position he obtained a year after graduating from ICE. Bilet, who first earned a bachelor’s degree in English and American literature and creative writing from Skidmore College, does not come from a cooking family, but definitely from one that appreciates fine dining. He describes a meal enjoyed at Jean-Georges in New York while only 12 as a source of inspiration for his chosen career, along with Thomas Keller’s cookbooks.

    His literary background, along with his fluency in both French (he is half French, half American) and Spanish were contributing factors to his hiring, since they prove tremendously helpful for the research involved in such a project. He works 60 to 70 hours, in addition to weekends spent sourcing products, going to the farmers’ market, and writing. When not in the kitchen or the lab, Bilet takes advantage of the Pacific Northwest geography to go hiking.