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

our table a large, glass vase filled with long, green, leafy angelica branches. The bottom 6 inches or so of each branch had been hollowed out—and filled with apple puree.”

“But Adrià is 41. Keller is 49. Achatz is just 29, and he’s still feeling his way, still experimenting, finding his own style. He’s not just pushing the envelope; he’s shredding it—and then re-forming it, in different shapes, with different materials and in a far more radical fashion.”

I sat in the dining room in near darkness, reading the piece over and over in disbelief. In some way I felt like this sealed our fate in some strangely wonderful way. Diners and experienced food journalists were raving about what we were doing. A couple of good reviews could be chance, some accolades might be luck or good PR, but the momentum was now undeniable. More important than that was what we were accomplishing: exactly what we had set out to accomplish two and a half years earlier. We were changing what a dining experience could be.

I was excited that the sonogram showed that another boy was coming into my life. Kaden was now just over two and the thought of him having a little brother to play with gave me some comfort. I had been spending a few minutes each day combing baby-naming sites on the Internet for something I liked, but nothing stood out. I decided to grab the phone book and start paging through. I cracked the book open to the natural halfway point, which happened to be the names beginning with the letter “K.” Of course in a phone book the family names are listed first, followed by the given name, and as I began to scroll I figured this might be fruitless. Names like Kane, Kasy, and Keefer clearly would not work as a given name. But as my eyes ran down the page I landed on Keller, James T. “Wow, that works,” I thought to myself. I considered naming my second son after my mentor.

Would people think that was strange?

In the end it didn’t matter. It was original in that it wasn’t common, it honored someone that was incredibly important to me, and I liked the way it sounded.

On December 19, 2003, Keller Mitchell Achatz was born.

Trio had a small but committed group of regular diners who were anxious to see what we would create next. Because we didn’t do a ton of covers, it was easy to remember a face, a name, or a phone number of a diner, even on their second or third visit. Most of these regulars were a bit older and lived in the wealthy suburbs just to the north of Evanston, while a few were from Chicago. But one couple stood out. They were younger, laughed a bit louder, and according to our staff seemed a bit more knowledgeable and passionate about the food and wine.

After their second visit, Chris Gerber came back to the kitchen with a smile on his face and said that the Kokonas party had just made a standing reservation for the first Wednesday of every month. That was a first. “Wednesday, huh? That’s kinda tough.” Wednesday was the first day of the Trio workweek since we were closed each Monday and Tuesday. That meant that the kitchen had zero mise en place ready. What’s more, we made it a practice to create new dishes for repeat guests so that they wouldn’t see the same concepts over and over. You really can only laugh at a great joke or anticipate a plot twist once. To us, a regular was someone that came in four or five times a year, typically on a Friday or Saturday night. The Kokonas were scheduled to come once a month, and on the day of the week that the kitchen was at its weakest.

I didn’t think about it again, figuring that I would make sure their menu three weeks later would be entirely new. Except ten days later they were back.

I didn’t know it then, but Nick Kokonas, a guy who had never spent a day in the restaurant business, would soon become my business partner and friend.

Like me, he was a driven only child. He would not only help build a restaurant, he would also save my life.

Toasted hot dog buns with butter—that’s what I ate for breakfast nearly every day between the ages of seven and fourteen. The butter had to go on the bun before it went into the toaster oven so it melted, ideally leaving brown crunchy ridges around the spot where each pad of butter had been laid.That and a glass of orange juice was pretty much it.

It was a point of fascination among my friends’ parents that Nicky Kokonas, as I was known then, only ate hot dog buns for breakfast. On trips with friends up to their summer homes in Wisconsin, or skiing in Michigan, or simply on a sleepover on a weekend, I would make the faux pas of querying, “Do you have any hot dog buns?” when asked what I would prefer for breakfast. It is safe to say that I did not grow up in a home steeped in food culture.

My father had owned a green grocery on Chicago Avenue after serving in both the Army and Navy. He had worked at the shop since he was fourteen, when his father fell ill to a series of strokes, and had saved up enough over the years to make a down payment on the Royal Food Store. My mom, of Polish descent, lived in the area and frequented the butcher across the street. “I bet that man across the street is married with ten kids. And how he flirts and looks at all the ladies walking down the street, pretending to sweep!” my mom said to the butcher.

“No ma’am. He isn’t married. Takes care of his mom who lives with him and his sisters. Nicest