Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

“Yes, it’s that bad. It’s terrible. He’s completely screwed. They are talking about removing his tongue and part of his jaw, most of his neck. Then chemo, then radiation.”

Joe looked at me for a long moment but said nothing. “I’ll get the staff together at three.”

“Thanks.”

At 2:30 I got my laptop and called Grant on iChat. We thought it would be good for the staff to see him, to know that he was still functioning, still walking and talking. “Hey. How’s it going out there?” I asked.

“It’s going. I’m at Heather’s place.”

“Cool.You know what you’re going to say to them?”

“Yeah, I’m all set, I think.”

“Okay . . . I’ll ping you at about five to three.”

The front-of-house staff gathered up their side work—folding napkins and de-linting the chairs and banquettes—and sat down. The entire kitchen staff, all twenty-six chefs, came up the back stairs and before entering the dining room took off their clogs and lined them all up neatly in a row.

My laptop sat on the beautiful black service table in the middle of the dining room. Joe was up front looking glumly at me. I avoided making eye contact with anyone, and at this point, everyone could see something was wrong. I had never addressed an all-staff meeting; usually it was Grant.

I pinged Grant on iChat and nothing happened. The wireless was new and was having issues, so I logged in again and got a sketchy connection, with his voice cutting in and out. He called my cell.

“What’s up with the connection?”

“Ever yone’s here, Grant, but it just isn’t working right. Let me get a phone in here.”

We struggled for fifteen minutes to find a cord long enough to bring in a speakerphone. I was getting impatient and was worried how this would all go down. Grant kept calling my cell, and I kept ignoring it. Finally, I just yelled out, “Ever yone downstairs to the front dining room.” The room—“the teens”—is designed to hold sixteen diners. We had fifty-six people standing along the back wall, perching on tables, and a bunch of the chefs sitting cross-legged in a semicircle around a small black Panasonic speakerphone. I called Grant.

“Hello?”

“Grant, sorry. I have everyone here. We’re crammed into the teens around a speakerphone.”

“What the hell?” he said, laughing. Everyone laughed. But everyone also sensed that this was important and different. Not to mention a bit absurd. Some people were staring at the phone. Others were just looking around, wondering how they would catch up in time for service.

“Okay. So I want to first recognize chef Curtis Duffy. Curtis spent time at Trotter’s, then came over to work with me at Trio. He, along with John Peters, was the chef that helped me build the original Alinea menu, worked on the food lab, sourced everything, and has been invaluable in what we have done along the way. As you may know, he will be moving on to take a job that will allow him to spend more time with his new baby and his wife. On behalf of everyone at Alinea, we owe him a debt of gratitude for all that he has done.

“Chef Jeff Pikus will be taking over as chef de cuisine. Jeff has also been with me since the Trio days, and in fact pretty much started his culinary career there. He is tremendously dedicated and hardworking, and I am certain the kitchen will not slow down at all under chef Pikus.”

I thought to myself, “What the hell is he doing?” He’s trying to make this sound like a normal meeting, but meanwhile everyone is looking at me wondering why the hell they’re staring at a phone that they can barely hear, listening to routine—albeit big—changes in the kitchen.

“Next, I want to welcome chef . . .” Grant continued on, welcoming the stages who were visiting from Europe for the week and apologizing that he could not be there to greet them personally. This wasn’t moving along very quickly.

“I want to take some time to talk about menu changes that we were going to put in place this week but will move to next week. . ..” He was losing the crowd. People were literally looking at their phones, or folding the napkins without listening at all. Grant finally paused for a few breaths. We were nearly thirty minutes into the call.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I asked everyone to be here today, why I’m talking to you through a telephone. Of course, I wanted to talk to you via the video so you could see that I’m here and fine, but that didn’t work out.

“Anyway, three years ago I noticed a small spot on my tongue. It was nothing. I went to the dentist, they took a biopsy, and it came back clean. But it never really went away.” Everyone was listening now; the mood changed instantly. He continued, “About a year ago it started bothering me again, but who has time for these things. . ..” He continued on, telling the story. By now some people were starting to tear up, to cover their hands over their mouths, hiding their dropped jaws.

“After meeting with the doctors at Masonic, Nick did his magic and pulled some strings and got me into Sloan-Kettering tomorrow. We know at this point that I have cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, on my tongue. It’s not good, in fact it’s stage four. But I’m seeking the best care possible and want to assure you of one thing . . .really just this one thing: Alinea will continue on being the best. It has to. If there is one thing you can do for me it is this: keep doing your jobs, keep Alinea there for me, keep this dream that I had, that we all share, alive. At some point I’m not going to be able to be there, but I want to know—I need to know—that it will be there for me when I get back, okay?”

There was