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

dead silence in the room. It was palpable. Nearly sixty people were in shock; a few quietly cried. Employees who were hired two days earlier and had never even met Grant didn’t know how to act at all—they had just walked into a shit-storm. Nathan Klingbail, a chef who was with Grant at Trio, then worked at Schwa, and then recently came to Alinea, looked up at me, mouthed the word “Sorry,” and ran out the back door of the restaurant.

“Is everyone still there?” Grant said after a long minute of silence. “Does anyone have any questions?”

No one said a word. I piped up, “Grant, we’re all here and everyone has heard the news. I’m sure that I’m speaking on behalf of the whole staff when I tell you that we intend to redouble our efforts to make sure that Alinea is better than ever. And of course you’ll be back here in a few days.”

“Well that’s all I’ve got. Again, thanks to Curtis for his years of dedicated service. I’ll check in with the doctors here tomorrow—they’re supposed to be the best in the world—and will be back in a few days.” With that, he hung up.

Ever yone’s eyes turned to me. I didn’t know what to say. “Obviously, the situation is not good. In fact, I’m not going to lie, it’s really bad.”

“Could he die?” someone asked.

“It is in fact more likely than not. And so far the recommended treatment is gruesome. We are going to decide what to tell the press, but until we hear from Sloan we don’t want to say anything. So I ask you for now to keep this as quiet as possible.” I waited a few moments, but nobody said anything. With that I left the room. I simply couldn’t say anything else. I was watching the death not only of a man, but of his life’s work.

I walked outside to get some air, only to find Nathan in the alley. He looked up at me with tears streaming down his face. “Nate,” was all I could muster. I walked over to him and he turned away. “You think I haven’t cried over this, Nate?”

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I’m not very good with this kind of thing.”

“Who is, Nate?” I gave him a hug. He wiped his eyes with his chef’s towel, thanked me, and strode back into the Alinea kitchen to go back to work.

I arrived at Heather’s apartment in New York early in the week and we spent the better part of it eating our way through New York. I was limited to soft and wet foods that were easy to chew and that slid down my throat with minimal effort. But we managed to have fun on our tour. I wasn’t sure what the Sloan appointment would hold for me so I figured I should spend as much time as possible doing what I love before seeing the surgeon.

“What do you want to do for dinner tonight?” she asked one afternoon. “Do you want to cook for us?”

Most people would think that was a strange request, but she knew that I was staring down the Sloan appointment the following morning with a great deal of anxiety. “Yeah, I do. Perfect.” If there was one thing that could take my mind off of a 7:00 A.M. visit at a major cancer hospital it would be cooking a five-course meal for seven people. I had four hours to run to Whole Foods for groceries and to cook. It would be a unique challenge, because I could only eat soft foods.

Heather arrived home a few hours later to find me just starting the potato gnocchi dough for the fourth course. She gave me a big, long hug, turned off the heavy metal music I was playing through her stereo from my iPod, and rolled up her sleeves.

“The tomatoes looked nice, so I figured I would do some gnocchi and basil.”

“Awesome. I love gnocchi.”

“Yeah, plus it’s soft and that’s about all I can handle these days. Thomas showed me how to make these when I first got there. You have to work fast or else the dough begins to soften and becomes difficult to shape. When I first started making them they were this size,” I said, pointing to one I had just made as a demo that was the size of a typical gnocchi, “but then we had the idea to make them the size of arborio rice. So I would roll them tiny, like this.”

“No way.”

“Yep. It took forever to get the amount we needed. We used them for a truffled gnocchi risotto that garnished a salmon chop. It’s pretty funny when I think about that now—chops made from fish, risotto made from gnocchi, ice-cream cones with salmon tartar inside, dishes called ‘Tongue and Cheek.’ Makes sense that we play with food at Alinea.”

I continued to roll out dozens of the tiny gnocchi.

“I remember all of us sitting around at the end of service one day after Thomas, Stephan Durfee, Richard Blais, and I went to Hawaii for an event in 1998. Thomas was excited by some of the indigenous ingredients, like moi and fresh hearts of palm, so he sourced the products to use back at the Laundry. We were working on a dish for the vegetable menu and were focusing on the fresh palm. Mark Hopper mentioned that when you push out the center the remaining piece looks like marrowbone. Someone else thought out loud about filling the center of it, so that it looks like marrow. Mark got excited and said, “Yeah. We can make a filling out of marrow beans. Get it?”

A new dish was born, from a pun based on an inside joke. But it worked.

I finished up the gnocchi and started explaining to Heather the rest of the menu. I wanted to roast some baby beets and serve them with shaved fennel and orange segments. I had also bought some