Life, on the Line (18 page)

A week went by and I heard nothing from Henry. I became anxious. I continued to search for job openings online, and like before, there was nothing. Then I got an e-mail from Henry. He complimented my drive and passion and said the food was fantastic, but that it was simply too risky to transform the restaurant as I envisioned. Changing the food, service, and decor all at once was difficult conceptually and daunting financially. “I wish you all the best.”

My ambition had cost me the job.

I told myself that I didn't want the position unless I could do it my way, so it wasn't really a lost opportunity. But I hadn't been offered the job, and I couldn't be certain why that was, despite what Henry said.

I told chef Keller about Henry's e-mail. “It doesn't look like I'm going anywhere, Chef.”

“Well, you have to respect his honesty and the fact that he realized he didn't want to take that risk with his business.”

“I guess.”

I spent the next two weeks looking for another opportunity, but came quickly to the conclusion that I would be staying in Napa for a long time. Time was running out. If I was going to move I had to do it soon so Angela could have some stability during the late stages of her pregnancy. It had to happen quickly, or it would likely not happen at all. As much as I loved the Laundry, I was feeling that everything was conspiring to keep me there against my will.

Then it came.

Four and a half weeks after my interview with Henry he e-mailed to see if I was still available. I didn't even finish reading the e-mail before I picked up the phone and called him. “Hi, Henry. It's Grant. I got your e-mail.”

“Here's the deal. I have gone through all of the applicants that I had scheduled and your food blew them all away. It wasn't close. The food has been haunting me. I can't get it out of my head. You are a talent and you're driven by a vision. So much so that I'm willing to entertain the changes you want for Trio. That is, if you're still looking for a job.”

I was elated.

Henry and I exchanged dozens of e-mails working out the details. He decided to go all in, do or die. He would market this not as a gradual transition but as a reinvention of Trio. He commissioned his brother-in-law, Pavel Kraus, to design and install Mylar screens in the dining spaces to update the decor. We changed the logo, purchased new china and wineglasses, updated the website, ordered new uniforms for the service staff, and hammered out a labor budget so that I could hire a new team in the kitchen. Operationally, everything would change in a manner that would enable the best presentation of the cuisine.

Trio would become a new restaurant.

Chef Keller asked for a minimum of two months to work out the changes necessary in the French Laundry kitchen. Henry wanted me there sooner, but I told him that I would give chef Keller whatever he asked for. I would leave The French Laundry in June 2001 and start at Trio on July 1. Everything was set. I was about to run my own kitchen.

Chef Keller looked at me with a smile as he headed back toward the kitchen. “Chicago, huh? Trotter's going to crush you.”

A
s my time at the Laundry wound down, I needed to make a plan for the kitchen at Trio.

Shawn McClain had already departed from his position to open Spring, and Henry had put in place a temporary kitchen team to fill the void until he hired the next chef. As soon as I committed to the job we began to talk about how I'd want to hire my own crew. Trio was never a terribly busy restaurant, and with the loss of customers after Shawn's departure and the expenses from the upcoming renovation weighing on him, Henry suggested I use a very conservative estimate for the number of cooks needed to operate the kitchen. He was equally adamant about offering a very low starting salary to all of the chefs, so much so that I was embarrassed to mention it to potential hires. I knew that I was going to drive the chefs hard, working them fourteen hours a day. To accept a job making barely over $20,000 with an unknown chef running his first kitchen at the age of twenty-six would require a huge leap of faith on their part. We settled on a crew of five cooks and I began building my team.

The French Laundry had a giant brigade of twenty-plus cooks. Having such a small team would be a significant departure, and I knew I needed someone who spoke the same language, knew the standards, and knew how to execute. I needed to bring someone with me from the Laundry.

While Henry placed ads in local papers and sorted through applicants for me, I approached chef Keller and asked him if I could bring David Carrier with me to Trio.

David was a commis at the Laundry, and I had gained a lot of respect for his drive and determination. He was a huge guy, the size of a middle linebacker, with a Queens accent and a fast pace. He didn't so much prep his
mise en place
as he plowed through it, sweat beading up on his forehead. Despite his effort and competence he never graduated past that prep-cook ceiling, and I wasn't sure why. I knew he would agree that it was time for him to move on in order to grow as a cook.

After Thomas said that it was okay for me to ask David along I decided to approach him by writing a letter. It read:

When I next saw Dave the answer was swift: “You bet.”

I had very little money saved up and he had even less, so we had no choice but to jointly rent a large U-Haul truck. Packing into the cab of a moving truck were Angela, nearly six months pregnant; her 140-pound Rottweiler; Dave; and me. Two thousand six hundred miles, a few arguments, a flat tire, and dozens of bathroom breaks and sleepless nights later, we arrived in Evanston, Illinois—twenty-eight hours before our scheduled first day at Trio.

 

David and I stood in the middle of the space, surveying the kitchen. It was his first time seeing it.

“Man, you were right,” he said. “This definitely ain't The French Laundry!” He slapped me on the back hard and it was tough to tell if it was dismay or optimism that he was trying to convey.

Before we left Napa I warned him over and over that Trio was not what we were accustomed to. It was pretty much the same talk that Thomas gave me a few months before. The kitchen was rough, to say the least. Stacks of carbon- and grease-crusted pots were piled in the corner, and thick rubber mats lined the floor. The floor itself was painted purple and was slippery as hell. It pitched four inches into what we eventually called “ditches” on the hot line. All of the equipment was modular, raised on casters with broken brakes that not only moved around any time someone bumped into them but also created gaps where debris would collect, making it difficult to keep things clean.

As we walked down the line, David leaned in to inspect the condition of the stove and smacked his head on the exhaust hood. The ceilings were low and the hood extended down enough to make it an obstacle to any cook over six feet tall. On a far wall were framed magazine covers and old
Art Culinare
pages—reminders of the Rick Tramanto and Shawn McClain eras.

“Um, can we take those down?” he said to me with a grin.

We began the work of reconfiguring the kitchen ourselves. The shelving that towered above the hot line for holding the finished plates was disassembled, the low-boy refrigerators were rearranged, and a space in the center of the line was left vacant. We found a four-foot-square piece of granite in the basement and placed it on top of some metro shelving that we bought at Home Depot. That became our pass. The heat lamps were pulled out—we wouldn't need those for sure—and the steam table was converted into a workstation with the addition of another piece of found granite secured in place with duct tape. The line felt more spacious and clean and was an efficient use of an otherwise small kitchen.

Once the rest of our small crew came in, we gave the kitchen a scrubbing that it clearly hadn't had in years. Then Dave smiled and grabbed recently hired Nathan Klingbail, and a few moments later the two returned carrying rolls of black carpet mats, the same kind that lined the floor at The French Laundry. They rolled out the carpets and all of a sudden the purple floor disappeared.

It was not a high-end, well-designed four-star kitchen, but at the end of four days of cleaning and moving things around, the space worked. More important, the team felt united in the pride of what we had accomplished together—and we hadn't even fired up the stoves yet.

In the dining rooms, Henry was making the same effort to give Trio a new face. The walls were repainted, the table settings revamped, and new art was hung by his brother-in-law. Within three days it was transformed. The physical changes weren't dramatic, but to everyone working there the feeling was that we had just created a new restaurant.

As I got to know the team from our time cleaning I started to wrap my head around their placement in the kitchen. I knew I was going to put Carrier on the fish station, both because he was familiar with the
mise en place
from working as the fish commis at the Laundry and because its central location on the line would give him a good vantage point to help me supervise. Still, I needed to find a great meat cook to anchor the line, because I knew my own time would be stretched over multiple stations.

The group was downstairs attacking the basement and walk-in with bleach and deck brushes when I headed down and asked everyone to come up to the pastry kitchen to clear our heads of the noxious gases. “Who thinks they can cook the meat?”