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

After a champagne cocktail was mixed before us, Grant turned around and came toward our table. “Hey, happy birthday, Dagmara. You guys ready?”

He had a bit of gleam in his eye and looked at me with a tilt of his head as if to say, “What, is that all you’ve got? Latvian with a bit of Asian?” That is a look that I have since come to know well. Instantly, I was eager to see what he had come up with. But the first course had us worried.

One of the chefs, Nathan, brought over two black perfume atomizers about the length of my forefinger and placed them before us. “Virtual Shrimp Cocktail,” is all he said, until Dagmara and I looked at each other and began to laugh. “Should we spray ourselves with it? Do we smell bad?” she asked. The other chefs were all looking over their shoulders to gauge our reaction and it wasn’t going well. We were laughing but we weren’t . . . eating. We had no idea what to do. Unlike the waiters out front, the chefs didn’t have the quick comebacks, and Nathan simply said, “Spray it into your mouth.” Okay.

It did, of course, taste like a shrimp cocktail. The initial flavor was shrimp and tomato that lingered a bit, followed by the horseradish burn at the back of your throat. But it was ephemeral, just a mist after all. We looked at each other and thought, “Wait, this is what this guy wants to do when he has a willing audience?” I thought that maybe we, or he, had bitten off more than we could . . .well, not chew.

I need not have worried, of course. What was to follow was, quite simply, the best meal of my life.

On that night Dagmara and I dined not only with each other, but also with a kitchen staff that exuded passion for their jobs. I had visited other commercial kitchens and had eaten at other kitchen tables, but I had never seen anything like Achatz’s kitchen. First of all, it was quiet, but not the absence-of-a-yelling-chef kind of quiet. It was nearly silent. Motions were slow and refined. No one was in a hurry. Trinna, the expediter at the head of the pass, would call out “Table 14, 2 Tour, 1 Veg Fish okay,” and the team would acknowledge the order in near unison by repeating exactly what she had said. The kitchen had a melodic rhythm. Occasionally, Achatz would ask something like, “Chef, how are we on the goose?” and someone would answer,“Now, Chef.” Grant would look left, move his arm 20 degrees, and there would be the goose sitting on a round metal sheet ready to be plated.

The only disruption we witnessed was when Dave Carrier actually raised his voice and shot one of the chefs a vicious look, then swung back around and asked hastily for some Darjeeling tea. We had been watching Grant painstakingly put a plate together with tweezers for about fifteen minutes during our previous courses, and it seemed that he had just thrown away whatever it was he was working on. Clearly, something had gone wrong and it would take time to fix it. Carrier and the other chefs had swung into action, hastily concocting an unplanned course to buy Grant time.

Once replated, Grant brought over the next course. A carefully constructed matrix of tiny minted melon balls, alternating between the green of honeydew and the orange of cantaloupe, sat beneath a semi-melted layer of prosciutto that was sliced so impossibly thin it was almost translucent. It was an absolutely gorgeous dish.

“What happened to the first one?” I asked.

“Never did this one before. It didn’t work like I expected,” said Grant very matter-of-factly.

The menu continued on like that. Original Achatz creations, often devoid entirely of identifiable time, place, or cultural references, interspersed with ingredients and preparations that clearly referenced Dagmara’s favorite ethnic cuisines: Kumamoto Oysters with Sapporo Beer and Ginger, Geoduck Clam with Sushi Rice, and deconstructed sushi flavors with wasabi, nori, and sesame all riffed off of Japanese cuisine. Kiwi seeds with coconut and lime, a curried skate wing with mango, and charcoal grilled pineapple all hinted at Thai flavors.

But the showstopper came in the middle of the meal. Latvian sorrel soup with smoked ham hocks and quail eggs. Born and raised in America by parents who fled Latvia under Russian occupation, Dagmara grew up as a first-generation American: firmly rooted in the United States but with language and cultural ties to her ancestry. Placed before her at this meal, in the midst of the kitchen staff that had made it, was not just a soup but a bit of her childhood. She laughed even as she teared up a bit. Achatz had hit the home run.

When we finished the meal I knew that no one, anywhere in the world that night, had enjoyed a better meal. Not only were we privileged to eat it but also to watch the care and craftsmanship with which it was made. So when Grant came over I told him just that. “Chef, at some point, you know, you are going to need to move on from here. If you ever decide to do that, I would like to build a restaurant with you.”

“What kind of place would you want to build?” he asked.

“I am not in the restaurant business. It would be your place, your ideas, and your vision. But all I know is that there is a disconnect here between the kitchen and the front-of-house that I never realized before tonight. If you took care of that, you would have the best restaurant in the world.”

“I think our service here is great,” he said quietly.

“It is,” I replied, “the best service anywhere. I am talking about the decor, the art, and the room. You put your food with the same quality service in