Life, on the Line (40 page)

The
Trib
covered Alinea's opening with a very positive “preview” that asked whether any restaurant could live up to the preopening hype, and then answered its own question with an emphatic yes, and then some. But until the official review comes out, you never know. There is a tendency among critics to want to give a restaurant something to strive for, room to improve. So a great restaurant opening will often get three and a half stars rather than four out of the gate.

I was in southwest Michigan for a family trip with friends when we suspected the
Trib
review would be in the paper. I couldn't contain myself, so I woke up early, drove to the market and got there before the newspapers were delivered. When the stack finally arrived shortly after seven, it didn't take me long to realize the review would be four stars—there was a box on the cover of the paper directing you to a four-star review in the dining section. I flipped the paper open and the entire dining section page was filled with photos and a giant headline: Alinea Plays to Perfection.

From the first line to the last it was more of a love letter than a review. I skimmed it quickly and then got to the last paragraph:

I quickly bought five copies, sat down in my car, and read it again and again. I was overjoyed not only because my efforts had paid off, but also because this is the review that Grant had been waiting for his whole life. His restaurant, the restaurant he built and owned and created, had joined the elite in Chicago. I picked up the phone to call him, knowing he would still be sleeping.

“I got the paper, Grant,” I said. “It's not good. It's fantastic.” I read the review to him and described just how much real estate they gave us. His reaction was muted.

“Awesome. That's great,” he said sleepily. “I'll talk to you later.” It was a curious reaction, but one that I came to realize meant that his goals were much, much bigger.

This was only the necessary first step.

When the
Esquire
Top 20 New Restaurants of 2005 list finally came out, it wasn't a surprise that we weren't included. Nor was it a surprise that Mariani managed to get in a dig at us.

That inaccurate nugget—we never used any incense—was tucked into his review of a restaurant named Butter that would fail quickly and close permanently within two years. While Butter proved to be less than stellar, its talented chef Ryan Poli went on to open Perennial with the BoKa Restaurant Group, our neighbors next to Alinea.

We were livid about the treatment in
Esquire
for about a day. We wondered to ourselves how well Mr. Mariani knew chef Adrià's cuisine, and we bitched about our inability to say no to him when we knew it was the right thing to do.

And then a shit-storm with Mariani at the center hit the Internet and was picked up by the
L.A. Times
. Mariani was accused of getting complimentary meals, making demands upon restaurants, and having his travel expenses paid for by visitor bureaus and groups of restaurants. He dismissed the accusations, but the damage was done, raising doubts about the
Esquire
list and the selections made, as well as ethical considerations regarding the reviews.

The Internet played a huge role in the controversy, and by not being included on the list, Alinea benefited more than if it had been. In many people's eyes, exclusion of a few restaurants in the Chicago area lent credence to the complaints. And the fact that we were online posting up our business plan six months before we opened put us squarely on the side of the interested public.

The Mariani flap made me all the more excited when I found out that Jeffrey Steingarten was coming to dinner. I loved his writing and his surliness and was confident that he would see through the exotic presentations straight through to the flavor and technique. But I also knew he would try to ruffle our feathers.

Shortly after he sat down I headed to his table and greeted him with unabashed enthusiasm. “Mr. Steingarten, it's not a stretch to say that one of the reasons that this restaurant got built is because I love your writing and it helped me understand and love food.”

“Jesus, I am so sorry,” he deadpanned. “Listen, is snow going to begin falling from the ceiling or something? Because I expect some strange stuff here tonight,” he said, and smiled at his joke. “Call me Jeffrey.”

“Jeffrey, if you want snow I am sure we can arrange it. But that would be an odd and tacky request,” I replied. “Enjoy your meal, snow or no.” He was laughing, which was good, so I left quickly. When I came back two hours later he was about sixteen courses in and had his napkin tucked somewhere near his chin. He patted the banquette next to him and I sat down awkwardly.

“Nick, I don't say this often, but Grant is just a genius. How did you know? I must have written well.” He giggled at me.

I explained how I met Grant and how I simply helped to facilitate things and that our staff was just drinking the Kool-Aid and loving the place. It felt fantastic to see someone whose food writing I respected so much really understanding the whole place.

We knew that when he returned to New York he would begin spreading the word there.

 

Alinea settled into a steady pace over the first year as we expanded reservations to full capacity. The restaurant was booked solid except for January, when Chicago turns into a tundra and tourists and business travelers smartly stay away. It was nothing like running Trio—it was like my days at the Laundry.

Alinea made money every month in our first year. It was, on every level, a success. My home life, however, was a different story.

Before Kaden was even born I had made the decision to not run out and get married, despite the pregnancy. Marriage was a difficult subject for me. I watched the relationship my parents had growing up. I had until recently completely rebuffed my father. I knew that I didn't want to have that sort of relationship with my sons and I wanted to do everything in my power to set an example for them and to engender trust.

But I was very adamant about not getting married.

Angela and I had two wonderful children, and she kept the home together in a fairly tight fashion. She was a dedicated mom who spent nearly every minute of every day tending to the boys. I was, of course, working nearly all of my waking hours at Alinea. I was not a great father in that I was largely absent five days a week working sixteen-hour days, but I made every effort I could muster when I was there. But I was a terrible spouse. I had no emotional time for Angela, and in many ways my feelings vacillated between appreciation and, well, something else.

While Alinea was being built and had just opened I could defer any talk of marriage by shrugging my shoulders and simply saying, “When?” I had no schedule other than wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep. The restaurant was always in my head, and there were really no days off, no moments off.

As our relationship continued to struggle and disagreements became more frequent I chose to shut down rather than argue. Silence, after all, was the path of least resistance.

In the midst of a tiff in which Angela confronted me about getting married and I tried to change the subject, she marched to the refrigerator, where we had a calendar that helped us remember things like birthday parties, doctors' appointments, and when I would get paid. She grabbed a red Sharpie and drew a large red ʺXʺ through a square cell that marked a date.

“Here,” she said loud enough so that I would hear her from the other room. “If you don't ask me to marry you by that date, I am leaving . . . with the boys.”

I knew we weren't meant to be together, and the kids had been the glue holding the relationship together before Kaden was even born. But over time our interactions grew worse, and what started out as trying to do the right thing for everyone turned into the opposite. But the thought of her taking the boys back to California or Arkansas, where she grew up, was devastating to me.

I wanted desperately to do the right thing for the kids, so I did what I thought was right. I waited until the day before the crossed-out date on the calendar and—ringless and begrudgingly—asked her to marry me.

The wedding was scheduled for March, when Alinea was in its slow season, and Mark Davis, the doctor who had invested in Alinea, generously offered up a house in Napa that was part of a vacation club he belonged to for the wedding site. After I told Thomas that we were getting married—a TFL alumni engagement, no less—he offered to cook for the reception, which Angela arranged to have at Silverado Vineyards, where she once worked. Once everything was set, I asked Nick if he would preside over the ceremony.

“You want me to marry you guys? I'm not exactly a minister,” he said.

In California it was easy to get an online certificate, and it was completely legal. “Come on. You would do a great job and I'm not exactly religious. And I don't want some old justice of the peace.” He agreed and got a kick out of it.

 

Two days before the wedding, Angela and I went to the Napa County Courthouse to get our wedding certificate. As we approached the building she turned to me, knowingly, and said, “Well, are you ready?” My stride slowed to a stop. “Here's your out—you don't have to do it,” she said. I knew at that point, as I did months previous, that this wasn't really the case, and resumed walking to the front door of the building.

When the date finally came we gathered with around forty family members and friends in a stunning mansion in Napa. Nick and Mark took me out, and Dagmara and Angela went to dinner at Bouchon before meeting the guys at Pancha's, the only bar in Yountville. Nick was intent on making sure I had some sort of bachelor-party experience and began ordering shots for everyone. I didn't want to drink.

I began to panic. Was I doing the right thing? Clearly I knew that Angela and I didn't belong together, but was this the best thing to do for the boys? Instead of this being the happiest day of my life, I was instead asking myself how I let it come to this. The answer, of course, was that I had invested no time or thought in my personal relationships. My waking time and my dreams were of restaurants and food and my career. And now I was getting married to someone who I did not know well enough and who I did not honestly love.

I sat looking at the pool table and thinking about my time at the Laundry and the great nights we would have here blowing off steam. As I did, I started to shut down completely. Nick came by. “G, don't take it so hard,” he said. “An ass-kicking on the pool table is nothing to get upset about.” I shook my head.

“I'm just not feeling well. I'm going to bed.”

“Nonsense. I will allow no such thing,” he said. “Here. Have another shot of tequila and try to forget you're getting married tomorrow.”

“That's just it. Exactly,” I said. “I thought I was doing the right thing, Nick, given the circumstances, but now I'm not even sure that's the case.”

Nick tried to calm me down and told me that everyone has jitters. But I think he knew that my situation was different. We returned to our pool game and didn't say much.

The next day I got married.

One of Angela's friends from Napa was a hairdresser, and when she arrived she decided to redo Angela's hair and makeup, which had been done earlier that day in a salon. This delayed the start of the wedding by nearly an hour and did nothing for my nerves. Meanwhile, Nick, sensing my complete state of distress, offered to put me on the next plane back to Chicago. Mark backed him up. It was clear to them that I was making a mistake. But I stayed.

Nick kept the ceremony short and sweet and did a fine job as a stand-in minister. Within fifteen minutes, we were married. My panic didn't subside.

Everyone headed over to Silverado, where I arrived to find Thomas in the kitchen personally cooking a full French Laundry meal for my wedding. It was, needless to say, not your typical wedding fare. I felt incredibly guilty about putting him through so much trouble. “Nonsense!” he said.

When we returned home Angela could tell that I had shut down, and that I regretted my decision. I was barely able to speak most of the time, and I couldn't articulate what was going on in my head. But she knew, and it became the source of constant tension.

When I returned to work I found myself staying later and getting up earlier just to avoid the conversation that we would inevitably end up having. People at work could tell I was different too. Wedding gifts from other chefs and restaurants were piling up in our downstairs office, unopened.

Three weeks after returning from Napa, while monotonously trimming a hundred branches of rosemary for a version of the centerpiece that would adorn the table and ultimately become an aromatic component to a lamb course, my mind began to wander. It became very clear that in order to have the best possible relationship with my two sons I would need to leave the very house they lived in. It seemed counterintuitive, but right in that moment it was undeniably clear. Two days later I moved out, and six months later, we were officially divorced.

T
he amount of media, both print and Web-based, that was covering Alinea was amazing, and we were fortunate to get it—many other restaurants would have killed for it. But I wasn't content. In order for me to achieve my goal we needed the silver bullet. One of the most influential food writers in the country had to put a giant stamp of approval on our cooking by heaping tons of praise and superlatives on Alinea in a highly regarded print medium. Only a handful of writers have that power, and we clearly missed our shot with Bruni and the
Times.
That left Ruth Reichl.