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

We were incredulous. We had been traveling far afield to eat at Michelin-starred restaurants, and yet here was this tiny restaurant ten minutes from our home.

“We should come back for dinner soon,” Dagmara said to me. I agreed. We made a reservation for the following Wednesday. After that meal, Dagmara suggested we eat there the first Wednesday of every month.

Chris Gerber was overjoyed by that request. “No problem at all. It will be a pleasure to see you next month.”

CHAPTER 14

Over the next six months Dagmara and I ate at Trio seven times, and I had been there an additional two or three times with business associates and friends—an excessive number of meals for this type of restaurant. Each time was a revelation, and each time at least a few new dishes hit our table. Sometimes, all eighteen or twenty courses were brand-new. We had developed a rapport with the waitstaff and with Trio’s owner, Henry, and had chatted with chef Achatz on a few occasions. Every time we went to eat somewhere else it felt lesser in every respect, so we kept going back, despite the cost and the sometimes awkward feeling of being a regular at a restaurant of this type.

The food was like nothing we had ever eaten—imaginative, daring, odd, whimsical, avant-garde. But more than anything else, it was delicious. We would often comment that X or Y were the best preparation that we had ever had—“That was the best rabbit ever, period.” “Yeah, but what about the short rib?”—and our ride home and conversation the next morning would be a dissection of the meal, its ingredients, and “Why the hell isn’t anyone else making food like that? I mean, if I could just get the short rib as a stand-alone dish, I’d be at that restaurant every week.”

We had, it seemed, become full-fledged foodies, and we passionately believed that Trio was the best restaurant that somehow no one knew about. Sure chef Achatz had won numerous accolades, but Trio was often only half-full on a weekday, was hidden inside an odd rooming house, and was in the suburbs. Tell a New Yorker or a San Franciscan, as I often did, that the best meal in America was to be had an hour outside Chicago, and the ensuing guffaws would reverberate out of the phone.

The first time we really spoke with Grant was after a particularly memorable meal. We had brought along two good friends for whom fine dining was a foreign and hostile endeavor. They had been to a few of the Temples of Gastronomy and very much enjoyed the food but highly disliked the pretense and formality of the experiences. The husband told me on the way to Trio, “Look, I get that it’s good food. And I understand that it’s expensive because it costs the restaurant so much to make it, etc., etc. But if I want to be treated like an asshole and then pay for it, I’ll go visit my lawyer. And I usually eat a hot dog on the way home, by the way.” We assured him this would be different—fun, even.

We arrived at the restaurant, a mere ten minutes from our homes, after listening to this harangue about formal dining. Greeted personably by Chris Gerber, the young and affable maître d’, we were led to a table “that you have not yet had the chance to enjoy. Another view of the room.” Chris was making a joke about the size of the small room and had raised his eyebrow in mock irony, but the humor was lost and The Husband shot me a look that said, “this place will be no different.” A bottle of Grand Siècle was brought out to us as a gift from Henry, and the waiter asked whether or not we wanted to see the menus, despite knowing that we would say, “Whatever the kitchen wants to do is fine with us.” “Off we go then,” he said. The first course did little to change The Husband’s mind. Pear-Eucalyptus Olive Oil was a beautiful sculpture of a bite, an amuse that let you know this would be a different kind of meal. But it was only a single bite. The plate was taken away, and I received The Look once again. I smiled a knowing but cautious smile.

The second course fared little better in his opinion. Michigan Brook Trout Roe with ginger, soy, and papaya was a showcase for Steve Stallard’s hand-gathered caviar. We had enjoyed this roe in another preparation before, and it was shockingly good. Each egg popped with a slow push of the tongue against the roof of your mouth and let out a burst of flavor that was unrivaled in any caviar I had previously eaten. Gathered only two days before, according to our server, what it lacked in provenance it made up for in taste. Still, this was but a few small spoonfuls, and The Husband had more or less given up. He relaxed, thinking he was correct.

Then came Tempura of Rock Shrimp. Dagmara let out a little squeal of delight upon seeing and smelling the vanilla bean-skewered shrimp as they made their way to our table. This was a personal favorite of hers. Visually arresting and sitting carefully in what the staff called “the squid”—a stainless-steel base with six vertical prongs to gently grip the tempura—this was the first shot across the bow of The Husband’s resistance. There is no way anyone could not like this. First of all, it was deep-fried shrimp with a bit of candied Meyer lemon and cranberry compote, hardly a challenging taste for any palate. But the genius of the dish lay in the use of the warmed vanilla bean as an aromatic handle. It is said that most men not only love the smell of vanilla, but that it has an almost aphrodisiac quality. Whatever the case, the combination was delicious and the method of eating