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

part soup, and part parfait. We will only be playing with the texture. The rest is TFL all the way.”

Chef Keller paused, then nodded his head and said simply, “Okay.”

That was the moment I knew I had to leave The French Laundry.

I was so excited to explore and push new boundaries with food that I was in danger of compromising the vision that chef Keller had crafted over many years in his kitchen. I wanted to experiment and take risks, and I would need to risk failure and imperfection to move forward. Chef Keller had taken those same risks over and over early in his career, but now he and The French Laundry were at a different stage of maturity. Every day in that kitchen was about striving for perfection through refining years of ideas that were known and comfortable. The team continued to finesse dishes and increase the level of sophistication, but it was done in a set style.

I mentioned all of this to chef Keller, and while he was too generous to say so, I knew he could feel the conflict as well. Maybe he recognized the new instability I was feeling, the renewed creative energy, and realized it was time for me to go. He probably saw that I was no longer a soldier fighting his fight.

Two months of uncertainty went by and I contained my urges to mess with his dishes. I spent my free time trying to figure out what to do. I wasn’t the chef de cuisine, but I was certainly in a position of leadership, and I felt confident that if and when Eric left I would be the heir to that coveted throne, right under chef Keller. I loved everything about The French Laundry: the people, the place, the food, and the memories. I learned more there than I had ever hoped to in one restaurant or from one chef. But I had to forge ahead on my own. I had, after all, seen my mom and dad do the very same thing. They took that leap and it paid off.

Thomas, armed with an espresso in one hand, put his other on my shoulder as we walked into the dining room on a sunny October morning. We tucked into the downstairs alcove for some added privacy, and I began to talk right away so I didn’t waste his valuable time.

“Chef. I have been thinking about leaving, about trying to find my own kitchen to run. I wanted to hear your thoughts about that.”

Thomas smiled at me and nodded his head. This was not a surprise. “If you think you’re really ready, I mean really ready, then you should go. But you need to understand that it is going to be incredibly difficult.

“What we have here is an amazing restaurant, built over many years. The infrastructure is in place and we are fortunate to have everything we need. If we need a Pacojet, we buy it. If we want new china, we buy it. And the staff, the staff is amazing both in the front of the house and the back. All of the things you take for granted here, well, they don’t exist in many other places. Those are the things that allow The French Laundry to be among the best in the world.

“I know how frustrated you get when things are less than perfect, and I am telling you that it happens here far less frequently than almost anywhere else. You have to ask yourself if you really want to leave all of that behind so soon.”

He paused for a moment, but I didn’t say anything, so he continued. “I assume you’re talking about being a chef de cuisine, right? I mean, you are not opening your own place. So you are going to have to find an owner who is willing to let you have carte blanche. And knowing what I think you want to do . . . well, it will be extremely difficult to find that person. Especially for a chef who has no experience and no reputation.”

“I know, Chef, thank you,” I replied. “I want you to know that I really appreciate that you understand all of this. The Laundry means a tremendous amount to me. I just think it’s time for me to try my own thing.”

He encouraged me to keep him in the loop on any developments as they happened and asked me to give him ample notice if I did find anything solid. I could tell that he figured this could take a while.

Indeed, I had no idea where to even start looking. Where do you find a fully operational restaurant that has all of the materials necessary to run at a four-star level, minus a chef? Most of the genuinely great restaurants in the United States were chef owned. While there might be an outside chance that one of them would consider hiring a chef de cuisine from the outside, that person would still have to cook in the style of the chef owner. I knew that a situation like that wouldn’t work for me.

I was using the best restaurant in the country as a model for my ambitions. I knew exactly what I desired in terms of standards of operation, protocols, purveyors, and even cooks. What I lacked was a building suited for a great restaurant and an owner willing to let me complete my vision. And as Thomas said, who the hell would bet all of that on an unknown young chef with no reputation who never really ran a kitchen on his own?

For a couple of months I scanned the Internet, visiting hospitality headhunter and job-posting sites. I sent out a few e-mails and put out a few feelers to people I knew in the industry. Nothing.

The typical postings were for executive chef jobs in hotels and resorts located in far-flung places like the Caribbean, Mexico, or, if you were lucky, Florida. There were a few private chef