Life, on the Line (38 page)

Food & Wine
stated in a profile that Alinea was the new best restaurant in the country—and that was two months before we even opened. Conversely, people posting on food forums predicted we would close after two months, failing miserably.

The day had finally come, the construction was just finished, and boxes of food were whittled, pureed, foamed, gelled, and simmered down to tiny components of intricate dishes. The energy was high. I had a ton to be nervous about. Not only was this the first day of Alinea, but it was also make-or-break time.

Gourmet
magazine sent in a writer named Tom Vanderbilt to pen a feature specifically on the presentation of the food, focusing mainly on Martin and the Crucial Detail pieces. Michael Ruhlman was dining to gather the final material for his book
The Reach of a Chef
. The dining rooms were filled with super-foodies with giant cameras in hand ready to capture every detail of the experience. For some it was a race to see who could get the most comprehensive report about the restaurant posted on the Internet and into print first. For others it was about documenting something important. Regardless of the future of Alinea, and more fittingly because of the seemingly unpredictable nature of it, everyone could not wait to step into the hallway, be seated at the bare wood tables, and taste the food that had captured so much attention before a single meal was served.

Even the
New York Times
.

Two months earlier, Melissa Clark from the
New York Times
had called and requested a table for opening night. When I spoke to her on the phone she explained she had tried to secure a table via the reservation line but was told we were full. She went on to say that she was in town visiting her cousin Edward and really wanted to try Alinea. I cleared a table that we had blocked in order to keep the reservations modest in an effort to maintain quality. It was the
New York Times
after all, and Melissa was quite nice.

Chris Gerber nervously asked if I was ready. The kitchen was on fire with activity. People were scrubbing the stainless countertops, others were vacuuming the black rugs, and yet others were still frantically preparing their
mise en place
for the night's service.

“No,” I said angrily. “Does it look like we're ready?”

“I know it's only five twenty, Chef . . . but . . . but there are at least ten people waiting at the front door. I have to unlock it; it's raining out there.”

“Fine. Open the fucking door.”

I whirled around while my eyes scanned the kitchen to access our status and to find Curtis or John.

“You hear that!” I yelled to the team. “The door is open. We have guests in the house. Are you READY?ʺ

Some answered by calling back, “Yes, Chef!” But it was not in unison, and it was not everyone.

I turned to Curtis. “This is going to be rough. We need to carry this.” He simply looked at me and nodded.

The family and friends dinners had been less than stellar, but I expected them to be. And while I knew we were going to be far from perfect tonight, I also knew that we had to be far better than any other restaurant's opening night. Or at least that was the expectation I shared with the guests who had watched us practice, train, and document for the last six months online.

Joe had created a reservation template that spread the diners evenly throughout the evening, making it manageable for the staff to process the load. That plan failed immediately when the line started to form outside the locked door. People were showing up an hour early for their reservations, and what should have been a smooth buildup turned into a smackdown as soon as Chris flicked the dead bolt on the front door.

I told Chris and Joe to try and slow the speed that the tickets came into the kitchen by stalling certain tables, but there was only so much they could do. The people were here, and they wanted to see the show.

Every couple of minutes I was interrupted. Nick would swing through and ask how it was going, Ruhlman was in the kitchen taking notes and asking questions, and known Trio guests like Anthony Marty wanted to say hi and offer congratulations. Because Melissa had booked the reservation under her name and was not a critic and therefore had no reason to be anonymous, I told Joe and Chris to bring her into the kitchen before the meal so I could meet her and say hello.

In between pickups I kept glancing at the door, knowing she was going to arrive at any moment. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chris walking a woman into the kitchen. She was by herself.

I walked over to the corner of the kitchen to find Michael in friendly conversation with the woman.

“Chef, do you know Melissa?” he said.

I introduced myself, trying to act as calm as possible, but I was listening to the sounds behind me to determine how the service was going. After some small talk about the opening I asked where her cousin was.

“Oh, he must have had to use the bathroom,” she said, turning around to see if she could spot him. I glanced at the foyer with her to see Chris chatting with a man in the shadows.

Michael sensed that I wanted to get back to the plates, so he gave me the out.

“Chef, you better get back in there, it's opening night,” he said with a firm nod.

 

Press demand for opening night was crazy. It seemed that nearly every food magazine in the country wanted to send someone out. But as important as the press was to us, we wanted regular patrons in there as well—otherwise, the whole thing would feel like a press preview. Grant wanted to severely limit reservations on opening night to about thirty-five people, but he didn't want the restaurant to seem completely empty. So I was reluctantly scheduled to sit down at 6:30 at a 6-top with two investors and their wives. We were the table that didn't really matter in terms of pacing and mistakes.

Grant gathered the staff, and I saw once again why he was so successful. He talked about execution, excellence, and our goals. He let everyone know who the press was and why Michael Ruhlman being in the house this night was so significant, and he thanked all of the key managers for doing so much in such a short time. The staff was ready to run through a brick wall by the time the doors opened at 5:30.

When the front door opened I heard Chris Gerber say, “Welcome.” I watched from the front dining room as the electronic doors opened and the first diner, Sean Brock, walked a few feet past them, disoriented, then moved back toward the actual entrance, laughed, and came in with a look of wonder. “That worked perfectly!” I thought.

I greeted guests as they arrived and then made myself scarce—I had never worked in a restaurant in my life, and I didn't have the faintest idea what I was supposed to do. I looked up at Grant as I headed toward the basement office to wait for my reservation time. He grabbed my arm. “In fifteen minutes I want you to go into the teens and make sure they're putting the silver down right,” he said. “Don't correct them there. Just make sure it's being done right.”

“I thought I wasn't supposed to set foot in the dining room,” I said.

“Gerber's my eyes and ears. You, you're something different.”

Grant was calm. Diners were spaced out twenty minutes apart on the sheet, but everyone was arriving early. And that included Melissa Clark from the
Times
.

I called Dagmara, Jim, and Joel and told them to move our reservation back to eight just to give the kitchen some time. And then I moved from room to room and watched. Everything was new to these diners, and their faces were beaming. Anthony Marty was constantly taking digital pictures. Our servers moved at a slower, steadier speed. Things were going well.

When Dagmara arrived, I met her in the front hall, gave her a kiss, and suddenly made the transition from a worker to a diner. It was an odd transition, and I realized at that moment that Alinea, for me, would never be like Trio. I would never be able to enjoy a meal of Grant's again. Instead, I'd be working. I reluctantly headed upstairs.

All I could do the entire dinner was listen to the other tables and to watch and gauge their reactions. But my back was to most of the dining room, and directly behind me was Melissa Clark and her guest. Michael Ruhlman was motioning to Dagmara to get my attention, and when I glanced over my shoulder at him, eating as a single diner a few tables down from Melissa, he called me over.

“Is everything okay, Michael?”

“Yeah, it's great, Nick,” he said as he grabbed my tie to pull me in very close, “but I thought you might want to tell Grant that the guy eating with Melissa Clark is Frank Bruni.” Bruni was the head dining critic for the
New York Times
. This didn't make any sense.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“You should go tell him now,” was all he said.

I walked back over to my table to eat the course that was just presented so as not to draw attention. It was a bison dish served with beets, with smoking cinnamon sticks below it. One of the cooks had once showed Grant a glass Crate & Barrel candleholder, and this provided inspiration for the plating. Four small indentations originally designed to hold tea candles now held the bison, and burning sticks of cinnamon were placed below in a long, cylindrical hollow bottom. I wolfed down the food as quickly as possible and excused myself to the restroom. Then I ran down our back service staircase into the kitchen and up to Grant.

“What's up?” he said, seeming far more like his usual self.

“That guy with Melissa Clark is Frank Bruni.”

Grant stopped plating and looked at me. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Ruhlman told me. He seemed certain.”

“Well, that's just great.” Grant turned and began plating again with a shrug of his shoulders. I stood waiting for him to say something more but he was done. So I walked back up to the table, worried.

 

A week to the day after we opened, on May 11, 2005, the
New York Times
dining section had a huge picture of what they referred to as “A sandwich, of sorts, at Alinea in Chicago, a passion-fruit sponge rests between swirls of dehydrated prosciutto.” I was ecstatic to be getting such a huge article. Until I read the first few paragraphs:

Those first few paragraphs were horrifying. It said nothing of the four-star service we were aiming for, the elegant rooms, or the sensual aspects of the food.

The rest of the article was a take on how a few restaurants in the country, including minibar, Moto, wd~50, and Avenues, were exploring molecular gastronomy. The title was, “Sci-Fi Cooking Tries Dealing With Reality.” As I read it I began to panic. There were mentions of Graham Elliot Bowles using Pop Rocks and Altoids in his food. Words like “gimmickry” and “mad scientist” littered the article. These were precisely the comparisons we were trying to avoid.

And then I got to the inevitable quote from Charlie Trotter.

“If it's truly valid, I'll be delighted to have this conversation with you in two years.” He went on to call it “child's play” and, to paraphrase philosopher Jeremy Bentham, explained that “I want to make sure our young colleagues are not literally producing something that is merely nonsense upon stilts.”

“FUCT, indeed!” I thought. I was pissed off. I wasn't a chef, or even part of the industry, but I would never, ever publicly flog someone who is taking such a huge business risk in my industry and putting their heart and soul into it. In sports that's called a “locker-room quote”: you pin it up on the wall of the locker room to get your team amped up to kick the other team's ass. In my mind I had already fired up the laminator so I could put that up on the wall of our employee changing room. I picked up the phone to call Grant. He didn't answer. I called four more times. No answer. I drove to Alinea.

I found Grant standing at the pass looking at the article. He had clearly read it twenty times. He was beside himself and angry.

“Chef,” I said, “that is huge coverage for a restaurant on its first day. And while a ton of it is awful and they lumped us together with chefs that are doing something completely different, in the end Bruni came around and hedged himself. Look:

Grant looked at me and his eyes were on fire. “Dude, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Do you know how many times the
New York Times
dining critic reviews restaurants outside of New York? Never. Never at Trio. Once at The French Laundry, and it made the place. This was our shot. What the fuck was he doing reviewing us on the first night? Who does that? And all that crap about Pop Rocks and Altoids, and, and . . . Trotter! What the fuck is that?”