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

I was already deep into butchering a pile of Elysian Fields Farm lamb saddles when Curtis Duffy, the young, fit Tom Cruise-esque cook who we recently lured from Trotter’s, walked in the back door of the kitchen holding a ziplock bag full of what looked like paper.

“I picked this up in Chinatown yesterday,” he said. “I thought it was pretty cool.”

Curtis ripped off a corner of the paper and popped it in his mouth. He motioned for me to do the same. I picked up what looked like paper and placed it gingerly on my tongue. Within a second it was gone, completely dissolved. I did it again.

We quickly started chatting about what to do with this potato-starch paper. The rest of the cooks stopped at my cutting board, and Curtis kept ripping off samples for them to try. We decided that whatever it was had to be small. Even though the paper dissolved efficiently it did leave an unpleasant starchy film if you took too big a piece.

I immediately told them that if we were going to serve a tiny bite, it had to have intense flavors. The paper would also dissolve in the presence of any moisture. So the ingredients had to be dry. What about with fat? Chef Carrier grabbed a bottle of olive oil and dripped a bit on the paper. It held together. After nothing happened we knew we had our culinary glue. We began rattling off foods that would be imbedded in everyone’s memories and that had intense flavors. We quickly got to pizza.

Almost everyone has had pepperoni pizza and can remember exactly what it tastes like. While there may be variables that come with pizza’s numerous toppings, the core flavors of tomato, cheese, and garlic are nearly universal. The pepperoni merely adds a paprika and fennel seed element to the mix. We all became very excited by the prospect of turning this edible paper into a culinary joke, and Carrier sent one of the externs to the grocery store to buy some mozzarella. I began mixing powders of garlic, tomato, smoked paprika, and fennel pollen together in a ratio that tasted about right. When the extern came with the cheese I grated it into a large sauté pan and fired it in a hot oven. I wanted the cheese to caramelize the way it does on the edges of the crust of a pizza that has been overladen with cheese. Once it was browned we hung the pan and collected the rendered cheese fat in a small cup. The fat was then placed in the fridge, where it set up into a butterlike consistency.

We cut the potato-starch paper into half-inch squares, spread the congealed cheese fat on it, and sprinkled the powder mixture over the whole thing. It tasted exactly like the essence of pizza.

The experience of eating this pizza-flavored stamp was of course nothing like eating a slice of molten-hot pizza right out of the oven. But that was exactly the point. While it would remind the diner exactly of its namesake, it would not make you feel in the least bit full the way a slice of rich pizza does. And the visual pun of a tiny, tiny stamp of food packed with so much flavor was a great riff on the bad rap that haute cuisine has among some people: tiny portions. All of these aspects made people think about the mini-pizza they were putting in their mouths, and it made everyone laugh.

In March 2003 the James Beard Foundation released the final nominees for the restaurant and chef awards to be held in New York in May. The previous year I had been nominated for the Rising Star Chef Award, only to be beaten by Jean François Bruel, the talented protégé of Daniel Boulud. I didn’t expect to win that time, but Bruel was a product of the entrenched and powerful New York empire of Boulud. I would be lying if I wasn’t disappointed, but I felt I would have my shot.

Still, it rankled me more than a little, not that I lost, but that I lost to a chef who was in my mind merely implementing the cuisine of his mentor at db Bistro Moderne. Here we were at Trio breaking our backs to try to do something completely new and original. The criteria for the award were: “A chef age thirty or younger who displays an impressive talent and who is likely to have a significant impact on the industry in years to come.”

I did my best to set my ego and jealousy aside and focus my ambition squarely on creating new dishes. We were in the middle of filming a TV show for the Food Network called Into the Fire. They had a crew of guys filming at Trio trying to dig into our creative process. It made me aware after seeing the clips just how hard the whole team was pushing, how many ideas were coming out of our kitchen.

Going into the awards this time around I felt like we were in a better position to win. By “we” I do mean me, but recognition of this type was really for our whole kitchen and for Henry. The Food & Wine award raised our recognition nationally, and I felt we had a shot. Plus, most important, there were no New Yorkers on the list.

Despite my pride in our work, I was uncomfortable in the atmosphere of a big event. I wore a cheap rented tux and walked around holding a glass of champagne while deflecting any questions about Trio’s food from the press or my peers. I was terrible at schmoozing and just wanted to head back to Evanston as quickly as possible. So I just smiled and tried to enjoy myself without looking nervous.

Finally it came to our category. The nominees were read, and before I realized what was happening, I was onstage with Henry slapping my back and Jean François draping the