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

consuming. The foie gras had to be cleaned, cured overnight, rolled, poached, and rerolled. The restaurant processed between eight and ten lobes a week, but Rich and Stephen returned from the walk-in carrying a giant plastic tub filled with milk and twenty-four lobes of foie gras bobbing about. Chef suggested we let the liver temper while we butchered the rabbits. As Rich broke off and started making the thousands of gnocchi for the morel course, and Stephen began to prepare the coffee semifreddo for the signature dish “Coffee and Doughnuts,” Chef and I started to break down and french the rabbit loins.

When it finally came time to put out the 205 plates, the resort’s kitchen staff lined up to help. There were nearly twenty guys. “Great,” I thought, “we will rock this out quickly.” Then chef Keller told everyone except the four of us to go away. He did this for each of the three events, and though it made for a crazy stretch of breakneck plating, we knew that each and every one of the dishes went out perfectly.

Chef Keller, it seems, never let the bar drop no matter the situation. In the restaurant, or out.

After the final event Rich and I returned to our room to decompress and clean up before heading out for dinner. We sat giddy with excitement on the balcony of our suite overlooking the ocean. The events had gone smoothly and we were about to board a plane, fly to the big island, and eat dinner at Alan Wong’s.

“We are taking an airplane to dinner. With TK. How cool is that?”

We had grown pretty comfortable with each other and sat there talking for a while. We couldn’t believe the way the guests and the staff treated chef Keller like a star. We had never seen a chef as a celebrity, and clearly Thomas Keller had become one.

Blais asked me if I thought I would stay at the Laundry for the long haul.

“Yeah, I’ll be there for a while. But it’s a stepping-stone for me, not the end point.”

“Really? What do you mean?”

Having been in his shoes not too long ago, I could understand how hard it was to wrap your head around life beyond the Laundry. It was the pinnacle of gastronomic excellence, not only in America but also—as I learned the hard way—in the world. But I knew that I wanted something more. I wanted a place that was mine. That was what I grew up with, and that is what I knew.

“I have a lot more to learn from TK. But even as I’m frenching rabbit for what I know will be an amazing dish, I can’t help but think about how I’ll do it differently. I’m over buttered-out reductions, not because they aren’t great but because there is something beyond them. I want to use it all but leave it behind, if you know what I mean. I want to do my own thing.”

Blais looked at me like I was posing and being a cocky bastard, but he didn’t say anything. He was ambitious, too, and had landed here well. And we were about to hop on a plane to go to dinner. Anything seemed possible.

I wasn’t just running my mouth, though. Even in the thrall of The French Laundry I tried to do as Thomas instructed—to see the big picture.

And while I couldn’t see the details, I could see how things might fall in place.

Mark was the chef de partie on the garde manger station and would soon be moving to fish to replace Phil, who was leaving to join chef Daniel Patterson’s restaurant Babette’s in Sonoma. Mark emerged as one of the strongest cooks on the team, and I was happy that he would be the one training me for my shot on the line. He was like a drill sergeant, incredibly focused and serious. There was only one way to do something—his way. The bain-marie was in the same spot every time, and the spoon and palette knife handles always faced the same way. The mise en place rail was set up in the same order every day at the exact same time. The section ran like a machine because it was consistent and almost mechanical. “This is the way Chef likes it. Do it this way,” was the only explanation ever given.

I wouldn’t argue with him. He obviously knew what he was doing, made clear by the way he interacted with chef Keller. Mark spent a week training me on the station and then moved on to work fish.

Finally, I was on the line.

Traditionally garde manger stations are removed from the hot line, but at The French Laundry it was one of the four stations surrounding the stove and directly behind the expediting station where chef Keller stood every service.

The Laundry had two menu options: the nine-course chef ’s tasting or the five-course prix fixe, in which the diner chose among several options in each category. I was responsible for between six to ten dishes, all of which I had some familiarity with from producing the mise en place for them. Other ingredients I had cooked before with chef Keller, such as the veal tongue and beef cheeks that made up the dish “Tongue ‘n’ Cheek.” I locked into the work quickly and with the support of Eric, who was on the meat station to my immediate right, and Mark, who was coaching me from across the stove, the transition from prep cook to line cook went smoothly.

At the end of service each night the cooks would huddle around the chef’s pass and go over the orders and menu changes for the following day. One night, a few months into my time on the line, chef Keller let us know that a very important group of journalists would be in town for a food journalism symposium at CIA Greystone that weekend, and that a group of them would be dining at the restaurant the