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    Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef
    Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef
    Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef
    Ebook160 pages1 hour

    Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef

    By Agate Digital

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    About this ebook

    Grant Achatz's career as a chef has been built around beating the odds—from his humble Midwestern beginnings and rise to stardom in Chicago; his iconoclastic vision of the American dining experience; and his life-threatening battle with cancer that temporarily stripped him of his ability to taste. In all these situations, Achatz defiantly and definitively surmounted innumerable obstacles to become—and remain—one of the world's most recognizable and respected chefs.

    Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef, a collection of articles taken from the Chicago Tribune, is an up-close examination of Achatz's personal history and international impact in the culinary world. Included are rare interviews on Achatz's humble beginnings as a young chef and modest lifestyle, stories from his stint as executive chef of Evanston, Illinois's four-star restaurant Trio, long-unseen restaurant reviews, as well as features on his innovative restaurants Aviary and Next, which play with Achatz's trademark concept of molecular gastronomy and the importance of presentation and memory in fine dining.

    In the middle of all this success, Achatz was diagnosed with stage-four squamous cell carcinoma, a rare cancer afflicting the tongue that completely eliminated Achatz's sense of taste. Told he would die if he did not have his tongue surgically removed, Achatz tenaciously clung to the belief he would be able to regain the sense most vital to his extraordinary talent. While undergoing experimental treatment to regain his sense of taste, Achatz continued to manage Alinea and even improved it despite his professionally debilitating condition. Miraculously, Achatz made a full recovery and regained his ability to taste while going on to open one of the culinary world's most discussed and praised new restaurants: Next.

    Grant Achatz tells the story of the man at the forefront of modern culinary trends and the world's top-rated restaurants, as seen through both his own eyes and the journalists who have been covering his fights against the odds from the beginning.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAgate Digital
    Release dateJun 5, 2012
    ISBN9781572844148
    Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef

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      Book preview

      Grant Achatz - Agate Digital

      Achatz_ChiTrib_cvr.jpgAchatz_TitlePage.jpg

      GRANT ACHATZ

      The Remarkable Rise of America’s Most Celebrated Young Chef

      Chicago Tribune Staff.

      Copyright 2012 by the Chicago Tribune.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including copying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the publisher.

      Chicago Tribune

      Tony W. Hunter, Publisher

      Vince Casanova, President

      Gerould W. Kern, Editor

      R. Bruce Dold, Editorial Page Editor

      Bill Adee, Vice President/Digital

      Jane Hirt, Managing Editor

      Joycelyn Winnecke, Associate Editor

      Peter Kendall, Deputy Managing Editor

      Ebook edition 1.1 June 2012

      ISBN-10 1-57284-414-0

      ISBN-13 978-1-57284-414-8

      Agate Digital is an imprint of Agate Publishing. Agate books are available in bulk at discount prices. For more information visit agatepublishing.com.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      ABOUT THIS BOOK

      INTRODUCTION

      PART I Coming to Chicago, Taking Over Trio

      PART II Alinea: A New Train of Thought

      PART III Against the Odds: Battling Cancer and Alinea’s Rise

      PART IV New Directions: Next and Aviary

      TRIBUNE SOURCES

      PHOTO CREDITS

      ABOUT THIS BOOK

      This book was created using articles published in the Chicago Tribune. The material has been carefully selected from the Tribune’s archives on Achatz and edited to present the story of the chef and his accomplishments in book format.

      Throughout the book, regular text denotes original material taken from the Tribune’s archives. Italic text denotes material created to connect the various source information into a coherent whole.

      INTRODUCTION

      Since his arrival in Chicago in 2001, Grant Achatz has become an international leader in progressive cuisine. In his quest for perfection, Achatz has altered the way we eat and experience food, gaining a reputation for playing with diners’ senses, emotions, and memories. Achatz has earned numerous James Beard awards including Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2003 and Best Chef: Great Lakes in 2008, as well as two James Beard awards in 2007. In 2006, Gourmet magazine’s Ruth Reichl declared Alinea the best restaurant in America. Achatz was included in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2011. Alinea is one of the most sought after restaurants in the world, ranking at sixth place on the highly prestigious S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2011. Alinea earned three Michelin stars in 2011 and 2012, and the chef has yet to turn 40.

      PART I

      COMING TO CHICAGO, TAKING OVER TRIO

      If a dish does not taste good, it does not go into the dining room.

      William Rice wrote the following profile of the young Grant Achatz, in January 2002, shortly after the virtually unknown chef had taken over at Evanston’s Trio Restaurant.

      The as-yet-unmade film Achatz the Chef begins in Richmond, Mich., 15 years ago.

      Twelve-year-old Grant Achatz, a small, wiry German-American kid with a ton of energy, has been hanging around the kitchen of his father’s restaurant long enough, the elder Achatz decides. He sets a milk crate in front of the pot sink, encourages his son to step onto it and, voila!, young Grant is able to reach the bottom of the sink. Soon he is cleaning every kitchen implement he can lift.

      Over the years, recalls Grant, Chicago’s newest four-star chef, a half-dozen family members were involved in operating several restaurants founded by his grandmother. It was humble food, the chef says, burgers and family fare. But I was at home in the kitchen environment.

      After high school, the boy opted to train to become a chef at the high-powered Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., despite some discouraging words from his father. (He told me the nature of the business is not conducive to normal family or social life.) Nonetheless, the young Midwesterner took the school seriously and performed well.

      I developed a new attitude. What I was learning went way beyond burgers, he says. I realized there was no ceiling on what I could do, that I had to work within perimeters and learn a lot of details, but in time I could tailor them to myself and my personal vision.

      In the best show business tradition, lights went on and doors of opportunity opened for him. He was able to work briefly in some of the leading kitchens in this country and Europe. But he made his big break through persistence.

      In The Soul of a Chef, a 2000 book on contemporary American chefs, author Michael Ruhlman reports that Achatz won admission in 1996 into the kitchen of the French Laundry, the landmark Napa Valley restaurant, only after writing a letter of application to all-star chef/owner Thomas Keller every day for several weeks.

      It was kind of weird, Achatz (pronounced AK-etz) told the author. But it worked.

      Over the past decade, the French Laundry — along with Charlie Trotter’s and a handful of others — has been rated among the nation’s top restaurants and Achatz played a meaningful role in the kitchen’s triumphs.

      Described, accurately, by Ruhlman as hopelessly wholesome and earnest, Achatz chased perfection with the zeal of a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.

      I was in awe of Thomas, he remembers. I wanted to be a sponge and just soak it all up.

      Gradually, he began to look beyond the kitchen’s French orientation and firmly set techniques. He also took a year off to work in a Napa winery, La Jota.

      The vacancy at Trio

      Early last year he found an announcement of the upcoming Trio vacancy on the Internet. This time a single missive was enough to set the ball rolling, but it took four months before he was hired. (I did a big search, says Trio owner Henry Adaniya. I wanted something unique, but also I wanted someone I could relate to.)

      One of the reasons I came here was Henry’s willingness to let me set my style and use influences from around the world, Achatz says.

      There is no denying his distinctive mind set. This is a chef who, when asked to list ingredients essential to his cooking, begins with gelatin, sugar and veal stock.

      Awesome, says veteran chef John Coletta of Caliterra, recalling a recent meal at Evanston’s Trio restaurant. He takes the usual, ingredients we all know, and prepares them in an unusual manner that is extremely refined. His food is intricate, precise and flavorful and it’s his. He’s not doing copycat cooking.

      Michael Taus, chef/owner of Zealous, a highly innovative chef who says he has intentionally tamed myself down, was very impressed with his meal at Trio, but found a couple of things way out.

      He feels Thomas Keller’s influence is pervasive, Coletta does not.

      Global tastes

      Achatz has been under wraps for the past six months, since he started at Trio, taking care of business so to speak. And with reason.

      Adaniya realized he was taking a risk when he brought the young chef from the French Laundry. Popular chef Shawn McClain, who was leaving to open his own restaurant, had garnered four stars. Chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand had done the same after they and Adaniya opened Trio eight years ago.

      Achatz’s concept was to create global — not regional — tastes and textures and present his food on prix-fixe menus of four or eight courses that change daily. There would be no a la carte meals of salad, steak and a cup of coffee. Wines should change as the courses change, he believed. This put considerable pressure on the cooks, servers and the customers. In some cases new china and tableware were needed.

      The customers found themselves face to face with a shot glass containing infused water, truffle oil and a topping of hazelnut foam; smoked sablefish with kumquat marmalade, endive jam and chocolate syrup; a honey balsamic poached peach with almond-peach genoise, champagne ice cream and nectarine ice.

      Some rebelled, Adaniya acknowledges. Not only was the format dictatorial (which many food lovers enjoy because it empowers the chef to provide continuity and possibly create a seamless meal), dinner was more expensive. Despite the dining malaise that followed 9/11, tabs went up more than 50 percent, especially when customers began to increase their wine purchases.

      I am happy to have Grant here, Adaniya explains. He has established a rapport in the kitchen beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Our cooks are on a mission and so is the rest of the staff. We all admire his character as well as his talent.

      Part of a food ‘revolution’

      In turn, the chef explains he chose Chicago to begin his career as a star performer because the level of restaurant cooking is very high, there are a good many food-oriented consumers and very good product availability. He and Angela Snell, a former co-worker at the French Laundry, have settled in Evanston with 3½ -month-old son Kaden.

      He believes there’s a food revolution under way around the world and wants to be part of it. Despite the absence of a flamboyant personality, he dreams of playing with the big boys, being accepted as one of the nation’s top creative chefs. At the same time, he worries about burnout because of the intense pressure on young chefs in the public eye to perform as well as produce. He realizes the repetitious nature of his work leads to perfect execution, but the price may be boredom.

      To fight monotony, he and his cooks have nightly postmortems where they push themselves to identify weak links and find improvements in dishes on the menu.

      Whether the techniques used to produce it are new or old, Achatz says, there’s one fundamental rule: If a dish does not taste good, it does not go into the dining room."

      Grant Achatz is the most dynamic, boundary-stretching chef to hit the town in a long, long time.

      Elsewhere in the Tribune that day, Tribune critic Phil Vettel awarded Achatz

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