Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (leveled readers .TXT) 📗

It turned out I didn’t need to. A couple of days after returning home Heather e-mailed. She explained that Will had assigned her to talk to me about the tempura shrimp served on a vanilla bean that we had contributed to the Trotter dinner.

“Thank you, Will,” I thought to myself.

We bounced some subtly flirtatious e-mails back and forth, and after our time together in Spain and our conversation about the Trotter article, I knew I definitely wanted to see her again. Our e-mail exchanges soon gave way to much more efficient g-chats. I hinted about coming to New York to visit her, and she made it clear that she wanted to eat at Alinea in the near future. In March, a couple of months after we met abroad and countless chat sessions, she stopped in Chicago on her way to a cheese tasting in Wisconsin.

Heather ate at Alinea with her friend Alina—yes, just one letter off—who was working at Gourmet in the marketing department. The meal sealed the fate of our relationship. She told me that the emotionally charged meal was the best of her life. To my good fortune, I was able to impress her with creativity, passion, and delicious food, and the fact that she not only understood those things but enjoyed them made me even more attracted to her.

The conversations increased over the next couple of months, and when I was invited to fly to London to attend the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony put on by Restaurant Magazine, I asked her to come with me. I knew the invitation was way over the top for how well we knew each other, but I figured it would be exciting and fun for both of us. After a bit of deliberation she declined. So I told her that given the fact that she was not going to fly to London with me on a whim, I would change my flight plans and travel from London directly to New York and lay over for a day or two. She didn’t know it, but I had a plan. Our birthdays were only three days apart. If I came back directly after the awards we could meet in New York and celebrate. I made the flight changes and booked a reservation at Per Se.

I decided to stay two days in New York, arriving on April 26, one day after my thirty-third birthday. After reaching the hotel I immediately went out and bought three giant handfuls of deep purple calla lilies, one of her favorites, to fill the room and ordered up a bottle of champagne on ice for when we returned from dinner. Our first night we decided to go to Mas, a restaurant owned by Galen Zamarra. Galen was good friends with Keith, and I had met him when Keith brought him to Trio once before. I arrived early and incredibly nervous, grabbed a seat at the bar, and waited for Heather to arrive from work. An infatuated night in Spain was one thing, and the subsequent chatting online was another, but reorganizing my international flight itinerary with the sole purpose of spending time with this woman took things to a different level.

Shortly after she arrived and the first glass of champagne disappeared my nerves subsided. Things were as natural in person as they were over the phone.

The next night we went to Per Se. I knew what to expect, but I was excited for Heather to experience the perfection and creativity. The maître d’ welcomed us and showed us to the kitchen so we could say hello to chef Benno. Settling into our table, clearly the best one in the house—it was close to the fireplace and offered sweeping views of the entire room and Central Park—I heard a familiar voice from behind.

“Welcome to Per Se, Chef.”

I turned my head slightly to confirm my suspicion—it was Michael Minello. Michael started as a commis on my first tour of the Laundry and quickly became one of the people in the brigade that “got it.” Chef, Eric, and I quickly took a liking to his quick wit, sense of humor, and most important, his cooking ability. He stayed on and worked his way through many of the stations before deciding to slow the pace of life down a bit and transition to the front of the house. When Per Se opened in 2004, he was part of the opening diningroom team, and he’s been there ever since, having risen in the interim to the position of captain. I stood to shake his hand and give him a hug. It was great to see him. After I introduced Heather he confirmed any allergies and dislikes, subtly inserting some inside jokes from our time together cooking, and told us that the sommelier would be over shortly to sort out our wine plan.

After pouring glasses of Grand Siècle and confirming that we did in fact want to let him pair the wines with the courses he slyly remarked, “Good choice—we have some special bottles open for you, and it turns out we had a Grand Cru Burgundy tasting with a few DRCʹs at lunch here today, and sadly some of the bottles still have wine in them.”

What a shame, Heather and I said in unison.

The meal was the most emotional I had ever had in my life. Part of it was the excitement of the circumstances—the spontaneous change of plans to come and see Heather—while another part of it was nostalgia: tasting flavor memories that were some of the most prominent and important in my life, like the cornet, oysters and pearls, and coffee and doughnuts. And of course, I had begun to recognize that I could very well be falling in love.

It was great to see Heather experience some of my favorite bites of all time. Chef Benno had crafted a menu that was both familiar and altogether new, dishes like Quail in a Jar, Degustation of Kona Kampachi,