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

next evening. Among them were some of the most influential writers in the country: Ruth Reichl, head critic for the New York Times, Phyllis Richman, and Corby Kummer.

Not only did we have the most important critics in the country coming in, but they were all sitting at the same table. Chef Keller led the discussion about the menu we would prepare for them by asking the group what they would suggest. We spent an hour writing a menu that would showcase a broad variety of the best dishes we could prepare.

The next day we all arrived early knowing how busy the night would be and how critical it would be that everybody was ready to go when service started. We also knew that chef Keller would be tense and a bit edgy, especially if he sensed that the kitchen was unprepared.

I was rolling out pasta when he arrived. He walked briskly past me, reached out his hand and squeezed my elbow as a hello gesture that did not interrupt my work. Two steps past, however, he stopped abruptly and turned toward me. “We should do a different pasta course for them tonight. What do you want to do?”

“Are you kidding me?” I thought. Why the hell was he asking me, a twenty-three-year-old cook who had been on the station for a few months, to come up with a course?

I said nothing but immediately ran to the walk-in to see what ingredients we had available that were not already on the critic’s table menu. I settled on foie gras, chanterelles, sage, and Swiss chard. I went back to chef Keller and proposed the dish. “Chef, how about a single foie gras tortellini garnished with chanterelles, Swiss chard, and sage? Maybe an acidic brown butter emulsion, spiked with sherry or banyuls vinegar.”

“Sounds good. Don’t make them too big; they’re getting a lot of food.”

“Yes, Chef.”

I rolled the pasta and worked on the emulsion and garnishes first so we could taste the finished product in plenty of time to make adjustments.

When service started the kitchen was buzzing with energy. Mark looked across the stove at me and gave me a serious nod while his eyes stayed focused on mine. It was his way of saying, “Don’t be the guy to fuck it up tonight.”

Chef Keller was typically unflappable. But this table had him keyed up. And nobody wanted to let him down.

The service sped up and the team locked into a rhythm. Chef Keller would call out an order, “Order in, four tasting.”

The cooks fired back the order in unison like an adrenaline-fueled football team on Super Bowl Sunday: “Four tasting!”

We were all on top of our game, and Chef knew it. About halfway through the critic’s menu he gave his classic “tell.” Whenever chef Keller was happy and things were cruising along, he would click the heels of his wooden clogs together. The sound must have brought him pleasure, like the clink of two wineglasses during a toast. He would only pull that out when the kitchen was rocking.

I was dipping into the oven to grab a stack of warmed plates when I heard it. I stayed low but picked my head up to see if I could catch Mark’s eye across the stove. He was looking at me, giving me the nod again, but this time with a big grin on his face.

After the last course went out, Chef went to the dining room to say hello to the table. Eric, Mark, and I cleaned the kitchen and anxiously awaited word from the dining room. “What did they say, Chef?” we asked in unison.

He smiled. “They liked it. I think they really liked it. That was a big one, guys,” he said as his heels clicked together once more. “Thanks, guys. Go get some rest. That was a long day.”

It is hard to overstate how exciting that day was and how good it felt that we pulled it off so well.

A week later the cover page of the New York Times dining section featured a review, by Ruth Riechl, of the meal: IN NAPA VALLEY, A RESTAURANT SCALES THE PEAK.

The article heaped praise on the restaurant and chef Keller, but one line gave The French Laundry the mythic aura that it carries to this day:

Today his restaurant in Yountville, still called The French Laundry, is the most exciting place to eat in the United States.

CHAPTER 10

The praise from Ruth and the Outstanding Chef Award from the James Beard Foundation that followed in May catapulted chef Keller and The French Laundry to legendary, destination-dining status. The phone rang and did not stop. Reservations became impossible to get for lunch and dinner, a total of ten services per week. It became common to have a hundred patrons for dinner and eighty for lunch.

Chef Keller arrived around 10:00 A.M. on the weekends, expedited lunch service, then rolled right into butchering fish or cleaning foie gras as soon as lunch was broken down. The team prepped frantically until service, and most of the staff meals were eaten from deli containers while monitoring sauces as they reduced or garnishes as they cooked.

In addition to the immense pressure brought on by the onslaught of popularity, chef Keller was in the process of opening his second restaurant, Bouchon, and had begun work on The French Laundry Cookbook. The man did not stop moving for a second. One day he overheard a cook complaining about being tired and sent him home. “You’re tired? Why don’t you go home and sleep, then.” That became the running insult that cooks would jab at a yawning coworker or when they sensed a lull in productivity.

While all of the cooks were talented, a core group emerged. Mark, Eric, Greg, and I were the guys who chef Keller would rely on to anchor the busy services, train incoming cooks, or lay on a few extra courses for a special table of guests. There were a few unspoken rules: chef Keller was God;