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

to meet you. I’m Nick Kokonas.What are you here to inspect?” I really thought we had crossed everyone off the list. I had no idea who this guy was or what he was doing there.

“I need the plans for the building. I literally just got back from Florida. Vacation. I am not happy to be here, but they rushed me over. Give me your plans, please.”

“Okay. One second.” I went to the basement and gathered up the master set of blueprints and handed them over.“Do you mind if I follow you around?” I asked.

“Do whatever you want.”

He started walking through the restaurant quickly, pointing at the ceiling, then at a door, without saying anything. He headed upstairs, toward the back dining room, and said, “This is a storage room? Ha!”

The City of Chicago counts every fourteen inches of banquette as a “seat,” or a person. No one could believe we only intended on seating fifty people upstairs. So we had to make the back dining room temporarily into a “storage room” and put fire doors back there. As soon as the inspectors left, of course, we were going to pull them off and had already designed a cap that looked like a fancy molding to hide the mounts. We even signed an affidavit stating that we only wanted an occupancy of fifty upstairs, even though according to the city’s math we could get one for one hundred. This guy saw through that ruse, because it was clear that we intended to operate that room as a dining room. There was fancy carpeting and a built-in service station. He made a note on his pad.

“Where are the third and fourth means of egress?” he asked.

I led him to our back staircase. “This is fucking steep!” He pulled out a tape measure and sized up the treads. I was ready for this one.

“That is a preexisting, nonconforming staircase,” I said with confidence.

“What did you do, tear the whole place down except for this one staircase?”

“Yes, basically. All of this has been approved by the city inspectors and we have had every other inspection necessary. All the stamps are on there,” I said, pointing to the blueprints that were getting crushed under his arm.

“I really don’t care. There is no way you are opening in two days. No way. You don’t have a fourth means of egress, you don’t have emergency lighting, that stairway back there is a joke, and I am wildly curious how the hell you got these plans approved with all of that.” He started heading down the stairs and out the front door. I ran ahead of him and stopped him.

“Look. This is a span-concrete construction, a b-3–rated fire building. We only need three means of egress. The emergency lighting is some fancy shit that retracts into the ceiling. We didn’t want it to look bad. Please, take a moment and go inside and I can explain your objections. Do you like espresso? I think you need a double.” He softened, considered the coffee, and headed back inside. I found Grant busy in the kitchen training some cooks. “Come here, now. We are fucked. This guy from Buildings is a crazy man and was about to head to City Hall with our set of stamped plans. Call Rugo. Call our attorney. Get them over here immediately.”

I ran upstairs, grabbed a waiter I hadn’t yet met, and ordered him to make a double espresso, pronto. I led the inspector to a table in the upstairs front dining room and asked him for the blueprints, which he reluctantly gave to me. I opened them up on the table.

“Hi. Let me reintroduce myself. I am Nick Kokonas. For the past year, almost to the day, building this restaurant has been my life’s work, twenty-four hours a day. There is a young chef downstairs who has been working toward this day since he was a kid, literally. Now I know none of that matters if we have something that is not to code or is dangerous. But I assure you that is not the case.”

He had calmed down and I was able to walk him through the plans, starting with the demolition plan that showed clearly that the back stairs were preexisting. Then I went through the approvals from the city for the special emergency lighting, the fire rating of the floors and cinder walls, the type of drywall we used, and the lowered occupancy permit. “You mean you fought to get a lower occupancy?” he asked. “No one does that.”

“This is not a normal restaurant. As I said, this is going to be a very unique place.”

A sudden look of awareness crossed his face. “Hey, what did you say the name of this place was again? And your name?”

I told him.

“Shit. I know who you are. You’re friends with Bobby Meltzer, right? This is that fancy place he was telling me about.” The espresso arrived, and right behind it came our architectural team and lawyer, who had rushed over. I waved them off subtly to go away. I was pouring sweat but trying to look calm.

“Yeah, it is. We did everything right here, I swear. It’s not a typical build-out, but it is to commercial grade and it’s well hidden by intent. We wanted it to look like an old brownstone that has been here forever, but it was originally built as a crappy Mexican restaurant in 1989. Please, take your time and go back through after you look over the blueprints. But enjoy your espresso first.”

“I just have one question,” he said.

“Okay, shoot.”

“How long after I leave do those fire doors come off back there,” he said, laughing.

“Ten minutes, tops.” I smiled. “But we will be well under the occupancy, I assure you.” I knew then that we were all set.

An hour later we had our last stamp. I sent someone to go get the occupancy placards, walked downstairs to the front dining room, stretched out on the banquette,