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

went from generally nervous to almost panicked at the growing uncertainty, and the anxiety at home was intense as well. Angela was ready to pop. At any moment I was expecting a call letting me know that she had gone into labor. The situation evoked emotionally charged conversations. Here we were, living together in a nascent relationship, spending virtually no time with one another, and about to have a child. The country had just been attacked and the economy was in the tank. Angela was rightfully concerned that Trio would close and I would lose the job for which we had just spent everything we had to move across the country. Our relationship, such as it was, was more strained than ever.

But while the rest of the industry backpedaled to accommodate the financial and emotional downturn and the prevailing notion was a return to comfort food, Henry and I decided to do the opposite. We decided not to change Trio at all. We didn’t change the cuisine, lower prices, create lunch specials, or change the hours of operation. We thought instead that people might actually enjoy being pulled into an experience allowing them to forget about the outside world, even just for a few hours. A Black Truffle Explosion would reinvigorate their lives more than wallowing in their sorrow with a plate of mashed potatoes.

Trio barely survived, but Henry’s dedication to the staff and the vision for the restaurant became a source of inspiration. There were days the team would come in and prep the entire menu for a single table of three diners. I explained to the kitchen staff that we were in this for the long haul and that we were not going to panic. Instead, I reassured them, this was a time to work harder and to take advantage of the slow days by cleaning and painting the kitchen, and more important, by developing new dishes and concepts.

Things didn’t recover all at once, but slowly the days with only a table or two booked gave way to a slow but steady business. The team worked six days a week from ten in the morning until midnight. I was the first one in and the last one to leave every day.

On Monday, September 24—the only day of the week that Trio was closed—and with impeccable kitchen timing, Kaden William Achatz was born.

I returned to work, on time, the next morning.

Trio’s business returned to what Henry and Joe deemed “normal.” To me it felt like we were barely keeping our heads above water. The lack of consistent covers made operations difficult. Weekdays we would bounce between twenty and thirty covers, and Saturday would always spike up to nearly eighty. With only six cooks and an ambitious menu, anything above a fifty-person night was pushing the redline. Saturdays were a battle we would sometimes lose, but we could not afford to turn people away. Trio was barely breaking even.

A few small reviews began to trickle out and were favorable: the Chicago Reader, the Pioneer Press, and a luxury, ad-laden magazine called Chicago Social. But still, there were no reviews from Chicago magazine or the Chicago Tribune. Finally, a call came in from Phil Vettel to do a fact check and an interview with Henry and me. I was relieved and nervous at the same time—the importance of this review was undeniable. Trio had managed to stay afloat during a chef transition, a reconception, the biggest attack on America since Pearl Harbor, and a recession, but anything less than a gushing four-star review from the venerable Trib would surely be the final nail in our coffin.

When the review was due to come out, Henry and I huddled around the office computer knowing it would get posted online some time after midnight. We did eleven covers that Thursday night during the first week in January. Henry took a deep breath and looked at me before striking the “Enter” key and accessing the website.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

A flood of emotions swept over me: excitement, fear, helplessness, responsibility, and a few I didn’t even recognize. “Wait,” I said, stopping him at the last second. “I want to thank . . .”

Henry interrupted me. He knew what I was going to say, and like a father he made it easier on my by letting me off the emotional hook. “Whatever this says, nothing can take away what we have accomplished here already,” he said. “We have all worked hard to realize a vision. There aren’t too many people who, one, have that creativity, and two, are willing to take a chance to make that happen.”

I looked at him and nodded slowly, and we both turned to the screen to see our fate.

It didn’t take long to figure it out. The headline said everything we needed to know:

“Dining at this four-star restaurant is akin to enjoying participatory theater.”

Henry leaped out of the office chair, sending it flying across the room, and yelled, “Yeah, baby!” As I stood up he grabbed me in a bear hug and shook me back and forth. “We fucking did it, man—we did it! Congratulations.”

The review was a grand slam. The fourth paragraph read:

“With the installation of its third-ever chef, Trio has definitely reembraced its wild side. Grant Achatz (pronounced, and it’s worth remembering, ‘AK-etz’) is the most dynamic, boundary-stretching chef to hit town in a long, long time. If you’ve been putting off luxury-dining lately, let me suggest that now is the time to jump back in the game.”

And that is exactly what people did.

When I arrived at ten the same morning, I found Peter Shire intently listening to the voice mail while scribbling notes. He was giddy with excitement—the mailbox was completely full. The phone rang constantly in the background.

As the cooks arrived, each one would walk in the door with a copy of the paper in one hand and a coffee in the other. Ceremoniously they slammed the paper down on the wood counter close