The Reach of a Chef (15 page)

This is the out-there food of his reputation: the smoke; the sponge; the no-hands; the carrot–mandarin–smoked paprika “leather” (kind of like a fruit roll-up for adults, something that’s likely appreciated by adults who have kids, as Grant does); the mozzarella blown into a bubble, injected with tomato water, and served on basil—a reinvented
caprese
salad; a pheasant dish served in a second dish filled with pumpkin seeds, apple, and hay, over which at presentation the server pours boiling water, so that while you eat the pheasant, your head is filled with smells of, as Grant described it, “a quintessential Midwestern fall.” The list goes on. Honestly, you’d never expect it from this earnest, freckle-faced kid from a little town in Michigan. During service, when people ask to come back to meet the chef—which Grant is honored by—some of the guests think the server is kidding. “He’s the chef? How old is he?” During the day, there he is, in his black pants, black clogs, and blue apron, patiently wrapping salmon roe, seaweed, and cucumber balls in sheets of gelled sake, the quietest person in the kitchen. Was he really “redefining fine dining” as some were claiming?

After the final desserts are sent out, all begin cleaning the kitchen. It will shine before the cooks gather for a meeting (a review of tomorrow’s reservations—do they have all the food they need?—and a reflection on the night behind them: “I feel like we underestimated tonight,” Grant says, “and we got burned. Does anyone else feel like that?”), and then leave, after midnight. They’ll be back again around ten
A.M
. tomorrow—short days given the relatively small number of covers.

Grant does not go home. Instead he heads to the office to sit in front of his computer for the next two hours. He’ll think, he’ll search the Internet. He’ll answer e-mails at considerable length and of uncommon eloquence—for a chef, at any rate. He’ll check out eGullet, one of the most popular and well-run sites for culinary discourse, to post comments or answer food questions under the member profile “chefg.” It was on the Internet that he found the base to make chewing gum, a source that would deliver Australian rain forest plums, and, after he read an article in
The New York Times
about Australian finger limes, those too (the
Times
article had noted that you wouldn’t find them anywhere in the United States; Grant took this as a challenge to serve them and headed to the Internet to get them—the shipping charge alone is $300). What artisan-craftsman could help him design and create unique, dish-specific sculptures to use in serving his unusual food—the antenna and the squid? He found and wrote to forty of them via the Internet.

“The Internet,” Grant says, “is
the
most underutilized chefs’ tool.”

On the wall behind his printer is a large dry-erase board, a two-column list that more than anything describes the culinary brainstorm perpetually swirling in Grant’s mind. Most of the items are still just ideas, but when an idea is realized and put on the menu, Grant likes to note the date by the idea.

• How can we make “snow”?
  

• How can we make bubbles that don’t pop?
  

• Can we make a dome of bubbles that disappears when touched?
  

• Bubble or taffy, caramel or gelatin?
  

• Alginate explosion (9/25/03)
  

• Sashimi on breadstick or tube of crispy seaweed with filling of? and powder
  

• “Dry shot” in starch cornet
  into bag of textures (1/27/04)
  

• Savory “roll up” carrot w/orange, ginger (1/23/04)
  

• Savory pectin soy-sesame bars
  

• Forced air—aquarium pump
  

• Masamum curry chips/replace pizza?
  

• Raisins on vine coated in??
  

• Cereal?
  

• Transglutimate!!
  

• Caramel-coated vinegar bomb as P.C.
  

• Saddle “byaldi”
  

• Starch usage! invisible flavors (12/3/03)
  

• Pectin skin
  

• “Candy Kane” 3 flavors…n. olive/vanilla/cranberry? “Grinchesque”-like shape
  

• Deconstruction of dish w/simple form w/different shapes. Give diner a flavor map to follow.
  

• Malt 11/7/03
  

• Oyster in sesame meringue (1/21/03)
  

• Mist bottle application (virtual shrimp cocktail 1/23/04)
  

• Chocolate soda (12/31)
  

• Bubble gum (1/23/04)
  

• Tempura shrimp with M. lemon, cranberry (on a
  vanilla
  bean) (10/18/03)
  

• Salsify wrapped in??? w/clams, mussels, dill, oysters,
  sausage
  (12/5/03)
  

• Crispy nest of    w/asp
  

traditional flavors
unusual flavors

• Menu in graph form
  

color tells sweet/savory
hue shows intensity
axis is neutral

• Eating without hands! (2/13/04 “antenna”)
  

“A menu should read like sheet music,” he says, so that the diner could know at a glance the progression of a meal, see the intensities, the truffle explosion (a knockout single bite) versus the verjuice (a light, clean, small intermezzo) versus a big meat dish. Grant seems always to be on, his brain perpetually thinking of new ideas, new manipulations of food.

He’ll leave the restaurant office by two
A.M
., he hopes, and can be home by two-fifteen. His wife, Angela, whom he met at the French Laundry (she worked front of the house), has been trying to mandate a home time of no later than two, and she’s been only partly successful. Now with two children under three, he needs to be home for longer than eight hours, at least four of which are typically spent sleeping. He gets up when the kids get up—“because if I didn’t get up and start being with them, I’d feel guilt,” he says. Asked about this schedule, Grant smiles and says, “I love it.”

Running a restaurant of this caliber and with this emphasis on experimentation and innovation is hard work. But for the past half year he’s been trying to propel this four-star restaurant while also putting together and opening another one. This new work requires knowing not just how to work a hot line and run a food cost, but how to put together a P&L sheet, do cost projections and site searches. “It’s been hard,” he says.

Especially as this new restaurant has to be perfect—this is the one, this is it, this is where he stays. And so he wants the structure of the entryway and dining room to mirror the food experience; he wants people to be put a little off their guard by the design; he wants the kitchen to be the kind of place that evolves as his cooking evolves. “It won’t have a standard brigade setup,” he predicts, “and maybe it won’t have a line of ranges and a flattop. It will have a lot of portable induction burners, instead.” His eyes grow bright, and he smiles at the absurdity of a normal kitchen layout, such as Trio’s, accommodating his food during service. “Right now,” he says, “we have fish station calling to pastry station for a sorbet that’s going on a vegetable dish!”

He’s got the financial guy and partner, Nick Kokonas, who will lead the money-raising efforts and be a primary investor himself.

Kokonas, a thirty-eight-year-old Chicago native, is completely new to the restaurant business, a fact he sees not as a detriment but rather as one of many reasons this venture is exciting. “I build businesses,” he says. “They’re all the same as far as I’m concerned.”

Kokonas is a trim, dapper, handsome man with short dark hair and a Mediterranean complexion typical of his Greek roots. He attended Colgate, backed out of going to law school at the last minute because it didn’t feel right, and instead took a job as a trader on the Mercantile Exchange for five dollars an hour. (He notes that the high pressure and the need to make fast decisions in that job are not different from the requirements of a good line cook in a crunch.) Kokonas did well, advanced, and eventually started his own business trading derivatives. The business grew to ten employees and soon opened branches in New York and San Francisco.

He also invested in some dot-coms, one of which was sold to Pearson Publishing for a profit that, with his derivatives business and other investments, was more than enough money to retire on. The derivatives business had grown to seventy-five employees, many of whom he didn’t even know, and this was one reason the work no longer excited him—he liked the personal nature of work. He decided instead he wanted to play a lot of golf and take his kids to school. A smart, energetic guy, though, and he kept his eye out for the Next Thing.

In the winter of 2004, a friend called him to say he had lunch reservations at Trio but something had come up—would Nick and his wife, Dagmara, like them? They thought
Why not?
and went, expecting a customary high-end meal. Kokonas can no longer recall what the first course was, but he remembers his emotional response to it: “This is different, something different is going on here.” He asked the server what was the deal, and the server replied, “We got this new kid from the French Laundry and he’s blowing our minds.”

Since retiring, Kokonas had begun to take an interest in wines, and from wines developed an interest in good restaurants. He and his wife had been unprepared for their lunch—didn’t know what to make of it or how to evaluate it—so they made a reservation for dinner. Again, they were, he said, “blown away.” He and Dagmara decided to reserve a table on the first Wednesday of every month. “I became convinced that Grant was doing some of the most interesting stuff in the world,” Kokonas says now. But, he added, he sensed a disconnect between the place and the food.

When he first laid eyes on Grant, he couldn’t believe this food was coming from, he said, “this kid who looked like he was fifteen years old.” As the Kokonases were regular customers, Grant would always chat with them when they came to Trio. Kokonas would say, “If you ever want to talk about a partnership, let me know.” Grant thought about it.

Kokonas, on another visit, said, “You know what? We should build a restaurant together.”

Grant asked, “What kind?”

Kokonas replied, “Whatever kind you want. It’s your vision.”

Shortly thereafter, Grant e-mailed Kokonas two pages outlining that vision. When Kokonas read it late at night, he got so excited that he woke Dagmara up to tell her, “We’re going to build a restaurant with Grant.”

Grant wanted first to hash out a business plan to see if they were on the same page; he didn’t want to find himself with a money guy who would try to muscle him in directions he didn’t want to go. Kokonas said to Grant, “I don’t care about a business plan right now. I want to know if we can be friends. Because if we can’t, this is going to be a miserable experience and I don’t want to do it.”

And that was how Alinea began. Grant—who had only cooked while others handled business affairs, had little experience with things like profit-and-loss statements and lease agreements—typed up a rough two-page business summary. Kokonas read it and that night, and well into the next morning, wrote from Grant’s proposal a thirty-page business plan, which remains basically unchanged today. The goal was simple, Kokonas said: “We want to build the best restaurant in the world.”

Every aspect of creating a restaurant, Grant says, has so far gone smoothly, except for the one thing he thought would be easiest of all—finding a place and negotiating the lease. He’s located a good building, but working out a deal remains a struggle he doesn’t know if he can win.

But he doesn’t dwell on this—he’s got service tomorrow, and the infinite world of gastronomy to explore for new ideas and new products. He’s got a wife and two kids he adores, a four-star restaurant, a schedule he loves, work that is his life; he’s at the top of his game and in the upper echelons of American chefs. And he’s just turned thirty years old.

One of the things I liked about Grant was remarked on by Nathan Klingbail, a fellow Michigan guy, one of the few members of the brigade who sautéed protein during service (sauté pans were infrequently used in this kitchen). As I helped him pick through and clean a box of wormy morels midday, I asked him about Rocco DiSpirito—one of my favorite topics as it always resulted in emotional responses from cooks.

Nathan recalled an episode of the NBC reality show
The Restaurant,
in which Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert ate at Rocco’s on Twenty-second Street during the filming. Bourdain and Ripert were getting kind of squishy by the end of the meal, but early on Bourdain got some cold food, and Nathan chose this point to remark on: “When Bourdain said he had cold food, and Rocco went back and said, ‘Stop serving cold food!’” Nathan shook his head. “If someone served cold food here, Chef, he’d”—Nathan swings his elbow down—“and work your station better than you’ve ever seen
anyone
work it.”