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

“That’s just it. Exactly,” I said. “I thought I was doing the right thing, Nick, given the circumstances, but now I’m not even sure that’s the case.”

Nick tried to calm me down and told me that everyone has jitters. But I think he knew that my situation was different. We returned to our pool game and didn’t say much.

The next day I got married.

One of Angela’s friends from Napa was a hairdresser, and when she arrived she decided to redo Angela’s hair and makeup, which had been done earlier that day in a salon. This delayed the start of the wedding by nearly an hour and did nothing for my nerves. Meanwhile, Nick, sensing my complete state of distress, offered to put me on the next plane back to Chicago. Mark backed him up. It was clear to them that I was making a mistake. But I stayed.

Nick kept the ceremony short and sweet and did a fine job as a stand-in minister. Within fifteen minutes, we were married. My panic didn’t subside.

Everyone headed over to Silverado, where I arrived to find Thomas in the kitchen personally cooking a full French Laundry meal for my wedding. It was, needless to say, not your typical wedding fare. I felt incredibly guilty about putting him through so much trouble. “Nonsense!” he said.

When we returned home Angela could tell that I had shut down, and that I regretted my decision. I was barely able to speak most of the time, and I couldn’t articulate what was going on in my head. But she knew, and it became the source of constant tension.

When I returned to work I found myself staying later and getting up earlier just to avoid the conversation that we would inevitably end up having. People at work could tell I was different too. Wedding gifts from other chefs and restaurants were piling up in our downstairs office, unopened.

Three weeks after returning from Napa, while monotonously trimming a hundred branches of rosemary for a version of the centerpiece that would adorn the table and ultimately become an aromatic component to a lamb course, my mind began to wander. It became very clear that in order to have the best possible relationship with my two sons I would need to leave the very house they lived in. It seemed counterintuitive, but right in that moment it was undeniably clear. Two days later I moved out, and six months later, we were officially divorced.

CHAPTER 20

The amount of media, both print and Web-based, that was covering Alinea was amazing, and we were fortunate to get it—many other restaurants would have killed for it. But I wasn’t content. In order for me to achieve my goal we needed the silver bullet. One of the most influential food writers in the country had to put a giant stamp of approval on our cooking by heaping tons of praise and superlatives on Alinea in a highly regarded print medium. Only a handful of writers have that power, and we clearly missed our shot with Bruni and the Times. That left Ruth Reichl.

I had watched firsthand how powerful her voice was when she crowned The French Laundry “the most exciting place to eat in America” in a feature for the Times. Since I personally helped create that specific meal, it gave me confidence that she would see both the connection to the food that excited her back then, the evolution of that base, and the originality of what we were doing at Alinea. Having been open now for seven months, I felt we were ready for her.

I asked Nick if he thought it would be okay to e-mail her personally and invite her to come to the restaurant. This confused him. “Why would it be bad? What’s wrong with that? In fact, if you write the e-mail well I bet she’ll find it refreshing to be getting a personal note from the chef rather then being pitched by a publicist.” I tried to explain to him that most chefs go through PR channels to sway journalists into their restaurants, and that e-mailing her myself may seem too forward, cocky, or even arrogant. Or it might even challenge some sort of ethics thing. He assured me it would be fine. I e-mailed Michael Ruhlman, figuring he would have her current contact info, and to test the waters with him to see if he thought I was off my rocker for asking her in.

Michael responded with her work e-mail at Condé Nast and a bit of caution. He didn’t try to talk me out of contacting her, but simply asked if I felt we were really ready to have her in. He gently recalled the Bruni thing and politely reminded me that Alinea had only been open for seven months, not seven years. After service that night I sat down and wrote:

Dear Ms. Reichl:

I hope this finds you well. I hope you don’t mind that I’m reaching out to you; I received your e-mail address from Michael Ruhlman. I am writing to invite you to dine at Alinea, but first I’d like to tell you a story.

You likely don’t know it, but I was in the kitchen working the garde manger station the night you dined at The French Laundry back in 1998, the dinner that you later wrote about in the Times, and that subsequently led you to proclaim the Laundry as the most exciting restaurant in America. I firsthand saw the energy that came from your table being in the restaurant that night, and I witnessed Thomas in a way that I never had before.

Because of the way that meal resonated with you, the playfulness, the flavors, and the execution, I think you would very much enjoy Alinea. The experience is very different than The French Laundry; in many ways it is a present-day version of it, but yet very much our own vision