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

great rapport with chef Keller and was marked for sous chef. I figured whatever I told Eric would eventually filter its way up to Chef.

One morning Eric walked into the kitchen to find me rolling sweet potato agnolotti for the garde manger station. He said good morning as he passed, began setting up his station, and then slid next to me. “Ever been to Hawaii?”

“No, you? I hear it’s amazing.”

Eric looked at me and smiled. “I’m sure it is.”

Thirty minutes later I passed chef Keller as he was on his way into the kitchen. We shook hands and he pulled me aside. “We have an opportunity to do an event in Maui in a few weeks. I was talking it over with the cooks last night after service and Eric suggested I bring you. He knows it’ll be a busy trip, and he’s been happy with the work you’re doing. So what do you think? Want to come to Hawaii?”

Chef and I discussed the trip in detail and he filled me in on the events for the week. It was, in fact, going to be a lot of work. I could tell he was very concerned about leaving the restaurant. I had never seen him miss a service. Chef had already decided to bring the pastry chef Stephen Durfee along, and he asked me who else we should bring.

I was working closely with a new extern at the time named Richard Blais. He fit right in with the personality of the restaurant, taking the all-or-nothing approach and showing a good amount of natural talent despite still being a CIA student. I suggested we bring him along. He worked mornings, so it wouldn’t impact the service team, and I knew he would kill himself to get the job done while we were there. Plus, I liked him and we got along well.

The suggestion was unorthodox to be sure. The trip was a golden ticket among the cooks. A weeklong trip anywhere with chef Keller was the stuff of envy, but throw Hawaii in the mix and people would be fighting over it. Typically, such perks were reserved for chefs with the most seniority. Bringing an extern would ruffle some feathers, but it was the way to least upset the flow of the restaurant. Chef Keller agreed with my suggestion.

Rich and I spent the next week organizing, prepping, and packing the mise en place for the event. Stephen and Rich left a day ahead to unpack the boxes and set up so that Chef and I could spend one more day at the Laundry making sure everything was set there.

Chef Keller and I got off the plane, recovered our bags, and hopped into the awaiting convertible for our ride to the resort. I felt uncomfortable being around him outside the kitchen. Here we were, sunglasses on and cruising in a convertible in one of the most beautiful places in the world—and I didn’t know what to talk about. I wanted to ask him about his career, The French Laundry, the risks he took to make it happen, and the secrets he held about cooking, but I censored myself, knowing he must get asked those things a million times. We enjoyed the thirty-minute drive in silence.

We pulled up to the Kea Lani resort and were met by two women in hula skirts and white tops. They handed us cold towels to cool our foreheads and offered us fresh-squeezed guava juice.

This was unreal. Thomas Keller was being treated like a rock star.

I was rooming with Rich, and after getting a key of my own, Chef and I made plans to take an hour to relax before heading into the kitchen to check on the food that had been shipped ahead.

As I was about to put the key in the door it swung open quickly. “Dude. Man. This is off the hook. You have to see this.”

Blais was bouncing up and down and pulled me into the room and led me to the back door. It was March 1998, and El Niño had interrupted the migration pattern of the humpback whales, forcing them closer to shore. “The whales are coming right out of the water. Check that shit out!”

I stepped out onto the patio and watched one whale after another breach the water. We stood for a few minutes surrounded by palm trees, warm air, and the whales and I couldn’t help but think I was the luckiest cook in the world. Except maybe Richard, who was here on his externship.

The weeklong event required us to prepare a demonstration, a lunch, and a dinner. Each event had nearly two hundred guests in attendance. We flew 2,500 miles and were cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen with makeshift equipment and a skeleton crew. Most chefs would create a menu that was low-maintenance in that situation, one that would allow them to spend more time on the beach sipping mai tais. Chef Keller did the opposite. His pursuit of perfection extended beyond his restaurant. The menu he created was the polar opposite of safe—it was highly ambitious. The lunch menu included a rabbit course that required the tiny racks to be meticulously frenched, a morel and asparagus course garnished with thumbnail-size gnocchi, and the first course on the dinner menu was a foie gras torchon.

The four of us arrived in the kitchen to find the resort kitchen team sitting on stools while prepping. We exchanged glances, confirming our mutual derision for such heresy and isolated an area of the kitchen where we could work by ourselves. Chef Keller immediately grabbed a bucket, filled it with soapy water, and began to scrub the area where we were working. A couple of members of the resort kitchen offered to help, no doubt as the management sensed that the famous chef should not be cleaning, but chef Keller politely declined. “I think we’re in good shape, thank you.”

The task of deveining foie gras for the torchon preparation was extremely time