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

sound like yourself. Restaurants are like girlfriends; you just gotta find the right one. You didn’t fail, you just haven’t found the right partner yet and were smart enough to realize it. You’ll figure it out.”

His words rang hollow.

I decided to visit Cindy at Michigan State in an effort to connect with someone who knew me well. We talked for hours about my goals and desires and came to the conclusion that I needed to connect with food again. I had to find something that would get me excited about cooking. I needed to go see the Michelin three-stars for myself, to experience the perfection that Trotter was trying to emulate and that Stallard had spoken so passionately about.

Cindy and I planned a trip to Europe. It would be a culinary tour for me, museums and cathedrals for Cindy.

Jim Stier, one of my best friends from high school, was stationed at Mildenhall Air Force Base in London, so that was our first stop. It had been nearly four years since I had seen him, and it was great to catch up. He spent a few days playing tour guide in London, and we hit the usual tourist attractions: Big Ben, Parliament, and the pubs. In return I treated us all to dinner at Midsummer House in Cambridge. During the meal I tried to explain to him why it was important for me to take this trip and to experience some amazing restaurants. While he understood the logic, he couldn’t understand the bill. “Holy shit, Grant! That’s more than I spend in a month on food.”

“It doesn’t matter what it costs. I have to find that holy grail. I am visionless,” I said. They looked at me like I was being melodramatic.

We said good-bye to Jim the next day and took the ferry from Dover to Calais, then headed by train directly for Paris. Cindy had a full schedule planned for us there. Like me, she was in her holy land, and we visited the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower before making our way by train to Reims for our first three-star meal.

The Michelin Guide was first published in 1900. It started in France, and it ranks restaurants from one to three stars. It is an honor to get mentioned in the guide with even a single star. Any starred rating means that it is a fine restaurant certainly worth the reservation. But the highest rating, three stars, denotes exceptional cuisine “worth the journey.” It is the very essence of a restaurant worth traveling to find, and only a handful of chefs ever achieve the honor.

I was both nervous and excited as we walked into the door of Gérard Boyer’s Les Crayères. This was it. I was in France and was ready to get my mind blown by my first three-star experience. I managed to save enough money from working throughout high school and from the Amway to make this a blowout trip. There aren’t a whole lot of ways to spend money in St. Clair or Grand Rapids, and I was going to spend it all right here on my fine-dining education.

We must have looked ridiculous, especially to the French. We didn’t speak the language well, and despite my knowledge of cooking, were totally in over our heads in terms of dining. Plus we were both twenty-one, and I looked fifteen.

I tried to compensate by ordering expensive wine and the largest of the tasting menus, plus an additional à la carte dish of truffes en croute, a 550 French franc supplement that was a signature dish.

But after all that, the meal was just okay. The service was unremarkable and condescending. They made it clear that we had no business eating there, and that inevitably colored the food.

I wasn’t terribly disappointed, though. This was just the start. I had booked three three-star experiences during our trip. Les Crayères, Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, and Georges Blanc in Vonnas. I had it in my head that Blanc was going to be the meal of the trip, the one that jolted me back to life. He is a fourth-generation member of the Blanc family of restaurateurs and innkeepers, and, like me, worked side by side with his mother in the restaurant. He took over the business at twenty-five and slowly transformed it into one of the best in France. He was awarded a third Michelin star in 1981. Here was a guy that I felt I could relate to: humble beginnings, grand ambitions. And because of that I wanted to go big. I booked a room in the inn despite the extravagant cost of nearly $600 a night. I was putting all of my eggs into the Blanc basket.

We arrived at the Vonnas train station and asked the conductor for directions to Georges Blanc. With a raised eyebrow he looked us over but said nothing. We repeated the name again, making sure he heard us correctly. “It is about a fifteen-minute walk, not especially far.” We decided to hoof it.

We grabbed our giant backpacks and set out through the town. It was an unusually hot day and we were wearing shorts and T-shirts. By the time we arrived in the Georges Blanc lobby we were panting and dripping with sweat. The receptionist looked puzzled at first, then genuinely concerned about having two American students wander in by accident. She figured we were lost and needed directions.

“Bonjour. We have a reservation,” I said.

She looked horrified. “Here?”

“Oui. Je m’appelle Grant Achatz.”

She frantically searched the reservation book, running her finger over my name at least half a dozen times before she regained enough composure to see it.

I gave her my credit card and she reluctantly handed over the key. “Do you, um, need help with your . . . luggage?”

“Non, merci,” I said as I hefted my North Face backpack over my shoulder, “we can manage.”

We took showers, put on nice clothes, and went for a stroll through the garden at the back of the