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

more,” I pushed as I wrote headers with the city names side by side to create columns. I then wrote the numbers one through five below each city.

“Los Angeles . . . and maybe Boston,” Nathan said with an inflection that suggested uncertainty.

“Okay,” I said, “does everyone agree?” The group stared blankly at me, afraid to give the wrong answer on their first day.

John Peters spoke up, “Well, Chicago, right?”

I smiled a bit as I wrote down “Chicago” in the fifth spot and nodded my head. “Let’s find out. Now I want you to list the very best restaurants in each of these cities. Let’s start in New York since that will be the easiest.”

The cooks started naming restaurants, and whenever I heard one that was generally agreed upon I wrote it down. The list looked like this:

New York

1. Daniel

2. Bouley? Ducasse? Lespinasse?

3. Le Cirque

4. Jean Georges

5. Le Bernadin

It didn’t take long for me to realize that this exercise was going to do much more than I anticipated. My original hope was that by the end of the discussion I would be able to inspire the team and help them believe we could accomplish great things on par with these great restaurants. But the discussion also allowed me to understand the personalities and overall gastronomic knowledge of each cook. This was a young group overall, and with the exception of Chris Sy, who clearly spent much of his free time reading cookbooks and scanning food posts on the Internet, none of them had heard of many of these restaurants on the list. If they did know them by name, they had certainly never eaten at them.

San Francisco

1. French Laundry

2. Masa’s

3. Fleur de Lys

4. Chez Panisse

5. ?

Boston

1. Clio

2. Radius

3. ?

4. ?

5. ?

L.A.

1. Spago

2. Melisse

3. Valentino

4. Ginza Sushiko

5. ?

We struggled to fill five slots in each city with what the group felt confident were “great” restaurants. Occasionally arguments would break out about what made a restaurant truly “great” or “world class.” Of course, there were many restaurants in each city that were serving delicious food, but I made it clear that I wanted to list only the ones at the very highest level. My exact phrase was “fine dining, truly four stars”—exactly what we aspired to be.

After agreeing to leave a few cities with blank spots we came to Chicago. I shot Dave a glance and he smirked at me because he knew me well enough to know where I was heading.

“I am going to name some restaurants and let you guys vote them on or off the list. Certainly Trotter’s is number one, right?” Everyone nodded their heads in agreement. “Tru? Arun’s? What about Topolobampo and Blackbird?” We whittled a list of eight down to the four that everyone could agree upon. I left the fifth slot open on purpose, put down my Sharpie, and walked away from the board. I sat down in the circle with them.

“Take a look, guys. I think Chicago stacks up pretty well. David, why don’t you take the board now.”

Carrier unfolded himself out of the chair and stood up, “Yes, Chef.”

“Okay, here’s what we have to do now. Simply cross off the best restaurant in each city.” Without waiting for input David slashed the Sharpie through The French Laundry immediately. “Wait, why did you start there, David?”

“It’s the best on the board, Chef. The big dog!” Everyone started chuckling.

“Yes, it is,” I replied, “but who’s next best?” The room fell quiet and everyone looked at me. We crossed off Trotter and Lespinesse next. I prompted the group again, second best on the board? JG or Daniel? And so it went—we canceled out restaurants that were equivalents in each city until we had some cities with none left. New York was the clear winner with the most restaurants remaining, but we all knew that before we started. What the group was genuinely surprised by was where Chicago stood—a solid second.

I stood up and relieved David of his duties. “See guys, Chicago is a great restaurant city. New York is tough to beat, but we can take everyone else.”

The Chicago list read:

1. Trotter

2. Tru

3. Everest

4. Le Français

5. ?

Nathan spoke up, “But Chef, you didn’t put us on there.”

“Exactly, Nate—but that’s only because we’re not open yet.”

These chefs knew very little about me except that I was the sous chef to Thomas Keller and worked at The French Laundry for four years, despite looking like I was an eighteen-year-old dwarf standing between Carrier and Peters. They had never seen me cook, although a few of them had read a mention of me in Michael Ruhlman’s book The Soul of a Chef. Their assumption was that I wanted to create food that was derivative of Thomas Keller’s, even though I’d told them during the hiring process that Trio would be very different. But I didn’t have notebooks filled with new techniques or recipes, nor did I have complete menus ready to implement. I had a vague notion that I wanted to explore new areas, and I had a very clear idea of how I wanted a meal to feel to the diner. That was the driving force, and everything else simply had to support that.

I was very much of the belief that if I built it, they would come. I watched firsthand as The French Laundry exploded from a little-known restaurant tucked away in the sleepy town of Yountville to a globally known temple of gastronomy. I was optimistic that we could accomplish the same thing. I was very aware of all the things that we didn’t have at Trio, but I was naive enough to tell myself that it didn’t matter. The fact that Trio had been considered one of the best restaurants in the Chicago area for the previous seven years yet still struggled to draw people from the city simply wouldn’t apply to us. The glassware, china, and silverware were dated, mismatched, and lacking in numbers. The best cooks would not want