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

we will call you the Grand Pooh-Bah or whatever the hell you want, okay? And I promise never to tell you what to send out of your kitchen, or to ever deliver a plate to a table. Deal?”

“Sounds fair. But I am chef/owner. It means something to me. It’s the dream of every chef and has been mine since I was a little kid.” Grant said this with real emotion.

“Okay. Chef/owner. I’m just calling you ‘G’ from now on,” I said, laughing.

“No. Don’t.”

CHAPTER 15

Once we got rolling on the business plan, things flowed. Every day I would write up ideas—about the dining room, our identity, serviceware ideas for Martin, and anything else that came to mind—and e-mail them to Nick. He would send me just as many drafts regarding raising money, equity splits, cash flow projections, and build-out costs. Then we would simply comment on each other’s work. It was efficient and satisfying to work in this way while still running Trio at full tilt. We sent literally dozens of messages a day.

We discussed names for the restaurant all the time. Ideas like Avant-Garde and Achatz and Grant came from Nick. But I didn’t want an eponymous restaurant. I wanted a name that meant something about the philosophy of the place. Then I remembered that a cook had mentioned the word “Alinea” to me. It was that funny, backward “p” symbol that indicated a new paragraph or a new train of thought. I hastily put together a list of names in an e-mail, snuck “Alinea” in the middle, and sent it to Nick. His reply was quick: “Chef. I Googled ‘Alinea,’ and it’s the best possible name for our restaurant. The rest of the names are okay. But that one is great. We are done.”

We had a name we loved right from the beginning. We did not, however, have the most important thing—an actual building.

When I sent Nick ideas for dining room and kitchen layouts, he would simply write back, “Fantastic but largely irrelevant until we find a building. To a certain extent, what we find, and what we can afford, will dictate the design.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I imagined a great blank canvas where I could create the space I wanted without limitation. I was free to think of tables that came out of walls without legs, dining spaces that could transform over the course of an evening, and a kitchen that was a series of open work surfaces flexible enough to accommodate any station at any time. Whenever I brought up such ideas, however, Nick seemed to shoot them down, and it was getting more than a bit annoying.

On a Monday morning at ten sharp Nick was out in front of my house in Evanston. He wanted to meet early, before our meeting with a broker. I got in the front seat and he handed me a set of huge maps.

“Dagmara blew these up at Kinko’s. These are the neighborhoods we will likely want to locate Alinea in: Lincoln Park. Gold Coast. Michigan Avenue offshoots, maybe the gallery district in River West, maybe West Randolph Street. How well do you know Chicago?”

“I spend a hundred hours a week in a kitchen. Before that I lived in Napa, before that in Michigan.”

“I thought you worked at Trotter’s?” he asked.

“Yeah, for a whole eight weeks.”

“Well, we’re screwed then. I’ve lived here my whole life and I get lost five blocks from my house,” he said, laughing. “Anyway, Dagmara knows I’m a directional idiot, so she gave me these maps and three highlighters—red, yellow, green. Mark the good ones in green. Pretty basic, but at least we’ll have an idea of which streets might work and which won’t.”

“So we just drive around?”

“Yeah. Let’s just drive around and see what strikes you.”

We headed east toward Sheridan Road, then south at Lake Shore Drive through Rogers Park and into Chicago. The first place we landed was Lincoln Park.

“This is currently the most upscale neighborhood in Chicago. Used to be the Gold Coast over by the lake and Dearborn east of here. I guess it still is, but now all the younger families with money are building or buying around here. Everything is getting torn down and rebuilt, most of the time on multiple lots.” He pointed to a massive house on a beautiful, tree-lined street. “What do you figure that costs, Chef?”

“I have no idea. Looks sweet, though. Seven fifty? A million?”

“Ha. Three and a half to four is my guess. Could be more; I can’t see what kind of yard they have back there. Lots are going for eight hundred at least. No house, just the land.”

“Who the hell is buying them?” I really couldn’t fathom it.

“Guys like me!” He laughed at his joke.

“I’m clearly in the wrong profession.”

We turned off the residential street and on to Armitage. “And there is Trotter’s, G.”

I hadn’t been back since I left, and it all felt so different from this perspective. “Well, we can’t locate around here. That would just be stupid. We can’t be so close to Trotter’s.”

“Why not? Let’s just buy out McShane’s Exchange across the street from Trotter’s and call the place ‘Fucked’ instead of Alinea.”

He was waiting to deliver the punch line so I played along. “Fucked? As in we are fucked for doing this?”

“No, Chef. Fucked as in ʹF-U-C-T.ʹ Fuck You, Charlie Trotter.” He wailed with laughter, practically drooling.

I smiled but tried not to laugh. “You won’t hear me repeating that.”

“Come on, Chef. You’ll kick his ass. He’s been here fifteen years. One of the best meals I ever had was at Trotter’s in 1994. It opened my eyes to haute cuisine. But it hasn’t changed much except to put in more tables, and that’s never a good thing. Every fifteen or twenty years a new kid comes to town and takes over. You’re that kid. Twenty years from now, some kid will kick your ass. It’s the way of the world.”

We went