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

Then, after all of that, it would be packaged and shipped halfway across the country.

“There is no way to pull that off,” John said. “We can barely serve forty of them per night here. Our freezers are more like refrigerators. How are we possibly going to keep seven hundred of them frozen? We would have to buy another freezer here just to keep them ready. And what happens when FedEx loses the box or the ice cream melts en route?”

Carlson chimed in, “Chef-man, you get me a two-hundred-dollar chest freezer and I will bang this shit out. That amuse is killer. We have to show well in Aspen, Chef, we have to. You cats focus on service, I’ll do the rest.”

I thanked Michael for his dedication, but voiced the same concerns as John. “It will take you days to do this by yourself.”

“I got it, Chef. I got it. This is Trio, guys. Come on. Quit being a bunch of pussies.”

Mike was right. He was on fire, smiling, and he was right. Everything we had accomplished to this point happened because we took risks. I knew Mike would kill himself to get it done on time if he said he would, and for that I had to back him up. I told him, “Let’s do it.”

Carlson showed up early, stayed late, and came in on his days off to get all the mise en place for ice-cream sandwiches done, packaged, and boxed up with dry ice, all the while holding down his station during our normal service. The FedEx driver loaded up the boxes on a hand truck and our 725 ice cream sandwiches left for Aspen. The extras were just in case.

I headed to Aspen with Henry. The boxes arrived shortly after we did in perfect condition, and Henry and I stood in a giant walk-in freezer colder than Antarctica wearing layers of clothing and assembling and wrapping the sandwiches.

“Man, if the guys could see us now,” I said to Henry, chuckling as my breath formed clouds.

In the matter of a year I had gone from an unknown young chef in his first kitchen to the cover of Food & Wine. Then I got nominated from a national pool of chefs under thirty years old for the James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year Award. All of the good press begat new good press, and more articles began hailing the food as avant-garde, or even “molecular gastronomy”—a term that I had never heard.

When I was in Aspen I met chef Michael Anthony. He and co-chef Dan Barber had made the list from their work at Blue Hill restaurant in New York City. Michael asked me if I read any of the food forum websites that had begun to come out recently, and if so, how I was reacting to the public reviews online. This piqued my curiosity. I did a Web search one night after service and found the site eGullet, where I was surprised to find that there were more than a few comments about Trio. Most were great, but a few were wildly misinformed. Posters to the site would be arguing over dishes that neither had ever eaten. Their speculations prompted me to join under the name “Chefg.” I started a new Trio thread with the subject line:

IF ANYONE HAS ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING THE FOOD AT TRIO, ASK ME.

The statement was as absurd as the fact that I wrote it in all capitals. I was a computer idiot and a Web neophyte who didn’t know any of the etiquette and had no real idea of the wealth of information and the power of the online crowds. But I saw in the posts that people were passionate about food and more than a little curious about Trio. Plus I figured I could entice a few to drive up to Evanston and check it out in person.

Every day during staff meal and after service was complete I diligently logged onto eGullet and answered the questions that had been posted that day. I enjoyed the unfiltered and immediate interaction, and many of the questions were thoughtful and thought-provoking. Typically, if a chef were to talk to a guest it would be briefly after their meal in the kitchen. These interactions online were very different, far more academic, and forced me to really think about what we were doing at Trio. The exchange of ideas began to inform our creative process. I learned about other chefs throughout the world who I hadn’t previously heard about who were also pushing the envelope. Guys like Andoni Aduriz at Mugaritz, Quique Dacosta at El Poblet, and the Roca brothers in Spain. eGullet was at the time the ultimate research guide to all of the best restaurants in the world, and it was full of authentic reactions to the food.

After four weeks of steady posts with tons of detail the site administrators took note and invited me to participate in a formal Q&A session where the subjects would be sorted, grouped, and focused. They offered to help with the legwork and promotion, and in return I promised to spend a good deal of time answering the questions.

The eGullet sessions were a turning point of sorts. I realized quite suddenly that despite my successes at Trio and the recognition I was receiving, I was barely scratching the surface of the interested audience. And the level of knowledge and passion exhibited by these people posting from all over the world was inspiring.

I felt a sense of freedom that I had not felt previously. eGullet allowed me, by writing down my thoughts, to focus my attentions and create a written philosophy of my ideas. This was something I would never have done on my own, and the process was incredibly instructive.

It made me want to push the boundaries much further outside the norm. And suddenly I had a small but vocal crowd letting me know that that was not just okay, but hugely exciting.