Life, on the Line (26 page)

“We got this new kid from The French Laundry, and he's blowing our minds,” he said.

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.”

O
ver 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 it was anything but formal: Pick up the vanilla bean with your hand, tilt your head back, bite the shrimp off the end. The Husband liked this one, I am sure, as his only statement was, “Holy shit.” We all laughed and the waiters smiled because they knew—they had seen this many times before. And they also knew what was coming next.

As the table fell into a blissful silence, four waiters quickly appeared, each carrying a long, slender plate.The first thing I saw was a giant hard-boiled egg. The waiters placed the plates before us in synchronized fashion, and three of them disappeared, leaving Scott at the end of the table. “Any guesses?”

“An ostrich egg.”

“Hell, an elephant egg!”

“No. This is a new one,” he paused for effect and smiled. “Balloon of Mozzarella with heirloom tomatoes, some basil puree, olive oil, sea salt, pepper. Inside the mozzarella balloon you will find tomato water, and that will serve to incorporate all of these garnishes. Enjoy.” With that he left the four of us staring at this work of art on a plate, wondering how to deface it properly.

The plate was beautiful. The balloon of cheese was absurdly large, and the heirloom tomatoes—red, yellow, green zebra, brandywine—had been cut into geometric shapes that temporarily obscured their identity as tomatoes. There were green streaks of basil puree, and a pile of sea salt, itself composed of tiny pyramid-shaped crystals, sat in a far corner of the plate. I gingerly cut into the bottom half of the mozzarella balloon, surprised to find not a huge hunk of cheese, but rather a thin, indeed balloon-like, shell. The tomato water poured out and the mozzarella deflated slowly. The tomatoes were exceptionally well chilled, the basil and olive oil perfectly combined, the tomato water sweet and salty.

“This guy is a frickin' genius. Seriously.” The battle for The Husband was over. And it was won with, essentially, a really fancy caprese salad. Genius indeed.

Of course, at this point in the meal we had not even gotten to anything resembling a main course. These were but the preliminaries. They were clearly designed to set the stage, to awaken not only the diners' palates but also to open their minds. Here is caviar—from Michigan. Here is a jumbo fried shrimp—with a vanilla-bean aroma. Here is a caprese salad—though you won't figure that out until tomorrow. This was my third or fourth full dinner under chef Achatz, but I was starting to understand, however faintly, his method. And it was illuminated not by reflecting on my own experience, but rather by watching a reluctant diner be won over completely. I sat there silently cheering on the kitchen, wondering what would happen next.

The meal continued for four more hours, twenty-four courses in all. The Husband did not want another bite, he assured the waiters. If he did, no doubt the kitchen would have made sure he didn't leave hungry. We were the only patrons left, and it was near midnight on a Thursday—late for suburbia. And perhaps to ensure that we would eventually leave, chef Achatz appeared from the kitchen, sauntered over to our table, put his hands on his hips, and said, “So, how did we do?”

A twenty-year-old kid cooked this? You have got to be kidding me!

We all had that reaction. Grant Achatz looked much younger than his years, and he was young to begin with—only twenty-nine. He was thin, not particularly tall, good-looking and clean-cut, but in every way—and not in a bad way—average. I suppose we were expecting a middle-aged, overweight, Hollywood casting version of a mad chef. The ladies were smitten. A waiter appeared with a glass of champagne for everyone, including Chef, and he pulled up a chair and sat with us. We all talked at once, telling him with great inebriated enthusiasm what he must have known we'd say: we loved it, it was great, how did you do that? But as the conversation became more natural he asked questions that were more probing: Why do you feel the shrimp is such a powerful course, when after all it's just fried shrimp? Were you put off by the fact that there were leaves and sticks in a bowl surrounding your food? He listened to the answers and you could see that he actually cared. Sure it was nice to get compliments, but here was a rare chance to measure his audience, to see if intent met with reaction.

I like to talk and often unintentionally dominate a conversation, and yet this time I became unusually silent. I watched him listen—it was an unusual situation, this young artist who is not only talented but also measured and smart. This was the first moment that I thought that Grant would one day soon be far from here, and that perhaps, vaguely, in some way I should be involved.

The next morning I searched the Internet for the book
Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure
, which was then out of print, found a copy on Alibris.com, and had it sent to chef Achatz as a way of saying thank you. That book began an e-mail correspondence between us.

 

The week before Dagmara's thirty-fourth birthday, I sent chef Achatz the following e-mail:

I knew the e-mail would ruin his weekend, and I felt bad about it. There was no way he would read three disparate ethnic references and simply give us the set menu. He had five days to construct a meal for Dagmara based on those hints, and he would also have us as an audience for the first time because we had reserved the kitchen table on Henry's recommendation.

We were seated at a table that was elevated and directly across from the pass. Grant's and the sous chefs' backs were to us, but we could watch them plating the food for other guests as we arrived.

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.