Do You Smell What The Rocket Is Cooking?
ESPN The Magazine|May 07, 2018

We joined Houston’s big man and resident Francophile Clint Capela for a test of his culinary skills and to find out what he’s stirring up for the playoffs.

Sam Alipour
Do You Smell What The Rocket Is Cooking?

“Bonjour!” chef Clemence Gossett says. Clint Capela’s eyes nearly spring from his skull. “You’re French!” the Rockets’ 6-foot-10 Swiss center exclaims, before they jabber in their go-to tongue. He knew he’d be spending his day off in LA facing me in a bake-off at the Gourmandise School inside the Santa Monica Place mall—it was his idea— but he didn’t know it would be with a real live French person in charge. Now he feels confident. “You will get destroyed,” Capela tells me. “How about loser washes dishes?” I say, to which he replies: “Let’s do it. I know you’re a microwave guy.” This is true.

4 P.M.: LA CLASSE COMMENCE 

In a hands-on demo, Chef Clemence shows us everything we need to know about making quiche—a French pastry I’ve never tasted but imagine to be like a deep-dish pizza with eggs where the tomatoes are supposed to be. Advantage: the big guy. Capela’s love affair with French cuisine dates to his birth in Geneva, the French-speaking Swiss city where he grew up after his African immigrant parents parted ways. Capela discovered basketball at 13, and the game discovered Capela two years later, leading him to a training academy—and all the quiche he could eat—in Chalon-sur-Saône, France. It’s clear that Houston’s 23-year-old hoops wunderkind left his heart there. “I love everything about French culture,” he says, before falling into reverie about Paris, healthy savories and romantic rituals. “On dates, I do dinner, a movie and I bring flowers sometimes.”

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