Life, on the Line (8 page)

I got the nod from Bill while he was still on the phone. “Go over there, G, make sure you knock, and take off your shoes before you enter the office.”

I was incredibly nervous and confused as I rapped on chef Trotter's office door. Part of me questioned what I was about to do. It was my goal to become a great chef and in order to do so I knew that I would have to work in some great restaurants. I knew I had to endure being the new guy, to eat a fair amount of shit in the process. I was fine with that. But this wasn't working. Trotter was rarely in the kitchen during the day, and when he was, he was giving a tour or simply walking through to discuss some aspect of the business with Bill.

I never saw Trotter cook.

Perhaps my ideal of learning from the man that created this amazing restaurant—and that amazing book—was unrealistic. I wanted to watch him work, learn how he cooked, hear his creative thoughts and processes. I wanted it to be like working with Jeff and chef Stallard. I wanted one-on-one time and mentoring. But the personality of this kitchen was the antithesis of that. The behavior of Trotter made such mentorship of cooks impossible. I wanted to grow, but instead I got ass-kickings.

I sat down across from chef Trotter. “Chef, I'm sorry, but I need to leave.”

Instead of the response I expected—yelling—I received for the first time in my young tenure something amazing—encouragement. In a matter of minutes, chef Trotter convinced me to stay. It was some sort of Jedi mind trick that was almost magical—
this is not what you want to do, Grant. You want to stay
. Clearly he knew how bad I wanted to succeed, and he knew how intimidating he was to a twenty-one-year-old cook. He complimented me on my work in his kitchen. He reminded me how great this restaurant was and how it could help me become a leader. My experience at Charlie Trotter's would open doors. I walked out of his office in a daze, confused by what had just happened. When I returned to the kitchen to finish up the cleaning Mike walked over and bumped into me on purpose, spilling the soapy water I was holding. As we bent down together to clean it up he whispered, “Did you do it?”

“Well, yes and no,” I said.

Mike popped up and began laughing loudly. He strode over to Bill with excitement and announced, “Charlie got another one, Bill. G caved!”

I left the kitchen at nearly 3:30 A.M., strapped on my Rollerblades in the back alley, and began skating to my minuscule apartment just north of the restaurant. The October air was crisp, and the smell of autumn in the Midwest made me intensely homesick. As I passed the late-night bars and blues clubs along Halsted, people were falling into the street after last call, and the encore music spilled out the door, mixing with the noise of the cabs and the wind.

I don't belong here. This just doesn't feel right, none of it.

I lasted a few more weeks at Trotter's. I pushed hard and actually did some good work. But the feeling only grew more intense—I needed to leave.

The atmosphere was genuinely eerie as I walked out the back door of Trotter's for the last time. The alley was dead quiet and an orange glow from the light affixed to a nearby telephone pole made chef Trotter's skin the color of a carrot. He was sitting on the hood of his maroon Jaguar, one foot up on the front, one foot on the ground. I knew I had to present myself confidently. But as my foot touched down on the last brick of the alley I realized I was looking at it, head down sheepishly.

“What can I do for you?” Trotter asked.

“Chef, I am really very sorry, but I have to go. If I leave now my landlord is willing to change my lease to a three-month, but that means I can only give you two weeks notice so that I can be out in time.” This was not going as planned.

Trotter looked me in the eye. “Well, that is really quite unfortunate. Because if you do not stay at this restaurant for a full year, you will simply not exist to me. Period. That means don't ever call me. Don't ever use me as a reference. Don't put Charlie Trotter's on your résumé. As far as I am concerned, if you don't work here for a year, you haven't worked here for a day.”

It took everything I had to pick my head up and look the best chef in the country in the eye. I wasn't afraid of Trotter, but I realized that I had failed.

“I understand, Chef,” I mustered.

There was an odd pause and we stared at each other for a moment. Then Trotter slid off the fender of the car, walked to the driver's door, got in, and drove away.

I
returned to St. Clair and brooded.

When I got the job at Trotter's, I thought for sure it was the break I needed. The restaurant was amazing, the food exciting, and Trotter was certainly on an all-or-nothing mission to be the best. He was succeeding, but I was getting exactly the opposite of what I needed. Instead, in a very short time, the Trotter experience managed to drain all of the confidence and drive that I had built up over years of cooking and thinking about food.

Maybe I wasn't cut out for fine dining after all. Maybe I belonged in a diner.

My dad pulled me aside one afternoon. “You okay, kid?”

“That was my shot and I blew it. I have no idea what to do now.”

“Ahh. That place wasn't right for you. Whenever you called home you didn't sound like yourself. Restaurants are like girlfriends; you just gotta find the right one. You didn't fail, you just haven't found the right partner yet and were smart enough to realize it. You'll figure it out.”

His words rang hollow.

I decided to visit Cindy at Michigan State in an effort to connect with someone who knew me well. We talked for hours about my goals and desires and came to the conclusion that I needed to connect with food again. I had to find something that would get me excited about cooking. I needed to go see the Michelin three-stars for myself, to experience the perfection that Trotter was trying to emulate and that Stallard had spoken so passionately about.

Cindy and I planned a trip to Europe. It would be a culinary tour for me, museums and cathedrals for Cindy.

Jim Stier, one of my best friends from high school, was stationed at Mildenhall Air Force Base in London, so that was our first stop. It had been nearly four years since I had seen him, and it was great to catch up. He spent a few days playing tour guide in London, and we hit the usual tourist attractions: Big Ben, Parliament, and the pubs. In return I treated us all to dinner at Midsummer House in Cambridge. During the meal I tried to explain to him why it was important for me to take this trip and to experience some amazing restaurants. While he understood the logic, he couldn't understand the bill. “Holy shit, Grant! That's more than I spend in a month on food.”

“It doesn't matter what it costs. I have to find that holy grail. I am visionless,” I said. They looked at me like I was being melodramatic.

We said good-bye to Jim the next day and took the ferry from Dover to Calais, then headed by train directly for Paris. Cindy had a full schedule planned for us there. Like me, she was in her holy land, and we visited the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower before making our way by train to Reims for our first three-star meal.

The
Michelin Guide
was first published in 1900. It started in France, and it ranks restaurants from one to three stars. It is an honor to get mentioned in the guide with even a single star. Any starred rating means that it is a fine restaurant certainly worth the reservation. But the highest rating, three stars, denotes exceptional cuisine “worth the journey.” It is the very essence of a restaurant worth traveling to find, and only a handful of chefs ever achieve the honor.

I was both nervous and excited as we walked into the door of Gérard Boyer's Les Crayères. This was it. I was in France and was ready to get my mind blown by my first three-star experience. I managed to save enough money from working throughout high school and from the Amway to make this a blowout trip. There aren't a whole lot of ways to spend money in St. Clair or Grand Rapids, and I was going to spend it all right here on my fine-dining education.

We must have looked ridiculous, especially to the French. We didn't speak the language well, and despite my knowledge of cooking, were totally in over our heads in terms of dining. Plus we were both twenty-one, and I looked fifteen.

I tried to compensate by ordering expensive wine and the largest of the tasting menus, plus an additional à la carte dish of
truffes en croute
, a 550 French franc supplement that was a signature dish.

But after all that, the meal was just okay. The service was unremarkable and condescending. They made it clear that we had no business eating there, and that inevitably colored the food.

I wasn't terribly disappointed, though. This was just the start. I had booked three three-star experiences during our trip. Les Crayères, Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, and Georges Blanc in Vonnas. I had it in my head that Blanc was going to be the meal of the trip, the one that jolted me back to life. He is a fourth-generation member of the Blanc family of restaurateurs and innkeepers, and, like me, worked side by side with his mother in the restaurant. He took over the business at twenty-five and slowly transformed it into one of the best in France. He was awarded a third Michelin star in 1981. Here was a guy that I felt I could relate to: humble beginnings, grand ambitions. And because of that I wanted to go big. I booked a room in the inn despite the extravagant cost of nearly $600 a night. I was putting all of my eggs into the Blanc basket.

We arrived at the Vonnas train station and asked the conductor for directions to Georges Blanc. With a raised eyebrow he looked us over but said nothing. We repeated the name again, making sure he heard us correctly. “It is about a fifteen-minute walk, not especially far.” We decided to hoof it.

We grabbed our giant backpacks and set out through the town. It was an unusually hot day and we were wearing shorts and T-shirts. By the time we arrived in the Georges Blanc lobby we were panting and dripping with sweat. The receptionist looked puzzled at first, then genuinely concerned about having two American students wander in by accident. She figured we were lost and needed directions.

“Bonjour. We have a reservation,” I said.

She looked horrified. “Here?”

“
Oui. Je m'appelle
Grant Achatz.”

She frantically searched the reservation book, running her finger over my name at least half a dozen times before she regained enough composure to see it.

I gave her my credit card and she reluctantly handed over the key. “Do you, um, need help with your . . . luggage?”

“Non, merci,”
I said as I hefted my North Face backpack over my shoulder, “we can manage.”

We took showers, put on nice clothes, and went for a stroll through the garden at the back of the property. We walked past the windows of the kitchen and peeked in. What appeared to be thirty cooks were meticulously prepping
mise en place
for the night's dinner service.

“Wow. Look how calm it is in there,” I said to Cindy. “This will be amazing.”

We turned a corner and walked past the pool. A helicopter flew overhead, circled, and landed on an expanse of lawn nearby, dropping off what appeared to be two Swiss businessmen in bespoke suits.

“Look at that! A helicopter to dinner.”

With that we went back upstairs and I grabbed my sports coat. I was ready for dinner.

The dining room was completely empty when the maître d' escorted us to our table. The room had an odd mixture of elegant Parisian elements—ornate mirrors and huge floor lamps—tucked into a farmhouse with large stone floors and exposed wooden-beam ceilings. Despite our youth and appearance we were seated side by side at a great corner table with a view of the entire room and the windows that encase the kitchen.

The captain greeted our table promptly and warmly, and I ordered two glasses of champagne. I didn't want a repeat of the treatment we received at Les Crayères, and while we looked out of place, I wanted him to think we knew what we were talking about. He left the menus and the wine list.

He returned quickly with the champagne and offered to help us “assess the menu.” He wanted to make sure “you will eat such things as pigeon.” He wasn't so much helping as he was trying to steer us clear of our certain ignorance.

The sommelier came over and I ordered half bottles of 1986 Drouhin Chassagne Montrachet and a 1989 Gevrey-Chambertin Clos St. Jacques from Rousseau. With him, at least, I scored some points. We were on our way.

I was literally on the edge of my seat with anticipation as my eyes swept the room trying to absorb the details.

“Grant, I'm over here,” Cindy said with a wave of her hand in front of my face. She was on a different mission than mine. Romance.