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

were instructed to yank it from the wire with our fingers, a maneuver with a crumbly coda. She felt sure that a shard of hers had gone missing. She later found it—inside one of her pumps.

Those first few paragraphs were horrifying. It said nothing of the four-star service we were aiming for, the elegant rooms, or the sensual aspects of the food.

The rest of the article was a take on how a few restaurants in the country, including minibar, Moto, wd~50, and Avenues, were exploring molecular gastronomy. The title was, “Sci-Fi Cooking Tries Dealing With Reality.” As I read it I began to panic. There were mentions of Graham Elliot Bowles using Pop Rocks and Altoids in his food. Words like “gimmickry” and “mad scientist” littered the article. These were precisely the comparisons we were trying to avoid.

And then I got to the inevitable quote from Charlie Trotter.

“If it’s truly valid, I’ll be delighted to have this conversation with you in two years.” He went on to call it “child’s play” and, to paraphrase philosopher Jeremy Bentham, explained that “I want to make sure our young colleagues are not literally producing something that is merely nonsense upon stilts.”

“FUCT, indeed!” I thought. I was pissed off. I wasn’t a chef, or even part of the industry, but I would never, ever publicly flog someone who is taking such a huge business risk in my industry and putting their heart and soul into it. In sports that’s called a “locker-room quote”: you pin it up on the wall of the locker room to get your team amped up to kick the other team’s ass. In my mind I had already fired up the laminator so I could put that up on the wall of our employee changing room. I picked up the phone to call Grant. He didn’t answer. I called four more times. No answer. I drove to Alinea.

I found Grant standing at the pass looking at the article. He had clearly read it twenty times. He was beside himself and angry.

“Chef,” I said, “that is huge coverage for a restaurant on its first day. And while a ton of it is awful and they lumped us together with chefs that are doing something completely different, in the end Bruni came around and hedged himself. Look:

But at its best, Alinea was spectacular, sometimes in utterly traditional ways. What made those frogs’ legs memorable was not their moody habitat but their succulence.

And sometimes Alinea was spectacular precisely because it dared to be so different. Mr. Achatz puréed foie gras and molded it into a thin, hollow cylinder, which he then filled with a sweetened rhubarb foam and served cool. The temperature, texture and architecture of the dish turned the emphatic wallop of the liver into an ethereal whisper.”

Grant looked at me and his eyes were on fire. “Dude, you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Do you know how many times the New York Times dining critic reviews restaurants outside of New York? Never. Never at Trio. Once at The French Laundry, and it made the place. This was our shot. What the fuck was he doing reviewing us on the first night? Who does that? And all that crap about Pop Rocks and Altoids, and, and . . . Trotter! What the fuck is that?”

I tried to answer, but Grant stormed off to the front dining room. I had to agree. When the Times photographer came in, we had high hopes that Melissa was going to do a puff piece on our opening. But we didn’t expect an overview of avant-garde cuisine in America, with Alinea at its center, penned by Bruni. Grant came back in.

“And you know what? Trotter has never once eaten my food. Never once. He had reservations at Trio a few times and canceled every time. How can he say that?”

“Well,” I offered up, “perhaps the New York Times hasn’t featured him much despite his success, and he’s simply jealous. Or he’s threatened. You won’t be part of the old-boys club until they’re forced to admit you. Then they’ll come running.”

Grant stormed off again.

And then the e-mails and phone calls started pouring in.

Friends who I hadn’t spoken with in years e-mailed me from California, Colorado, New York City, even Colgate. All of the e-mails were the same: Is that your restaurant in the New York Times? Amazing pictures. Great article. I can’t wait to try it. Congratulations.

I forwarded all of the e-mails to Grant, along with a note that read, “I guess people just look at the pretty pictures and don’t mind Bison Bongs. And the phones are ringing like crazy.”

Grant was already back to work. There would be no convincing him that the New York Times article wasn’t a disaster. But he realized better than I did that Trotter was right about one thing: Alinea would be a marathon, not a sprint.

I arrived at the restaurant around noon. We had been open only a few weeks, but already my role was diminishing. I felt more in the way during service than I felt needed, and the final construction elements that were cobbled together in order to open on time had been tightened up. For the moment, there wasn’t much for me to do, so I turned my attention to seeing how the business was progressing. Our primary concern until now was the push to get open. Now it was time to focus on making Alinea a business.

I set up my laptop in the front dining room and poached some Wi-Fi from our neighbors. A man, about fifty, abruptly entered the room, seeming agitated and rushed. Wearing a gray suit, a bit rumpled, he looked like he was going to sell me something, so I didn’t introduce myself.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I’m here to see Grant.”

“Do you have an appointment? Is he expecting you?”

Grant appeared quickly from the kitchen, stepped between me and the salesman, and led the man upstairs. I went