The Reach of a Chef (13 page)

Others, though, were claiming he was a visionary, working at the outer boundaries of the new edge cuisine led by Spanish chef Ferran Adrià at El Bulli and English chef Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck. The media, charmed by Grant’s humble Midwestern attitude and impressed by his resolute seriousness and culinary daring, were already gushing. “What Achatz is doing in his 13-table restaurant is nothing less than redefining fine dining in this country,” wrote David Shaw, the late Pulitzer-winning reporter for the
Los Angeles Times. Food & Wine
pre-viewed his new restaurant, proclaiming it “may be America’s best new restaurant”—and ran the story three months before the restaurant even opened.

I was skeptical about this kind of cooking in which the method overshadowed the food itself, in which classic dishes were so deconstructed they didn’t look like anything you could even recognize. When you’re not even sure what you’re supposed to put in your mouth or how, isn’t this going too far? But I was also curious: Was the food any good? Was there something to merging molecular chemistry and gastronomy? At age thirty, Achatz was perhaps the most notable chef in the country working this type of food. Certainly, he was able to reach the edges of culinary reason, at so young an age, only because his foundation was so solid. At his core he was grounded in classic technique that had been honed in two of the best and most forward-thinking restaurant kitchens in the country. Without the basics, a cook is lost. Having perfected the basics, a cook can go anywhere. Grant was trying to go where no one else had gone before. He was a young culinary James T. Kirk and Trio was his
Enterprise.

Grant had arranged for a room at a good rate for me at the Homestead, the hotel that houses Trio, located on a leafy street in Evanston, a few blocks south of Northwestern University. He suggested that I have dinner at Trio before I spent substantial time in the kitchen so that I’d come to the table with as few expectations as possible, and so I did.

I arrived in the subdued dining room, where about twenty-five people were seated. The room, lit by overhead dome lighting, was handsome, decorated in earthy browns and funky modernist art on the walls. Trio’s four-course tasting was priced at $85; the eight-course chef’s tasting menu, which included lobster, lamb, and beef dishes, at $120. Service was gracious and, knowing who I was and that I intended to spend the week in the kitchen, assumed correctly that I’d want the Tour de Force menu, the largest of the three tasting menus, twenty-eight courses ($175) that described the complete range of the Trio kitchen, a genuine culinary adventure.

Twenty-eight courses does not mean twenty-eight large plates of food, of course, or even small plates of food. One “dish” was simply a frozen circle of verjuice the size of a Communion wafer, a refreshing intermezzo toward the end of the meal. Some “dishes” came with no dishes at all, or even silverware. The first course was a small slice of Sri Lankan eggplant that had been poached in a spicy liquid and had a crisp sugar top, as if it had been brûléed, served on a fork—one bite, good flavors sweet and spicy with a nice crunch to go with the soft eggplant.

The next course: wild steelhead roe, tealike tosaka seaweed, and tiny cucumber balls, wrapped in a package of something reminiscent of rice paper—what was it? Tasty, mild, not weird. Interesting.

It was, rather, the third course that signaled I was not in a conventional fine-dining restaurant: salmon with pineapple and soy sauce—another one-biter. The whole deal was presented on what the staff called an “antenna,” a skinny rod about fourteen inches long rising at an angle through a heavy circular base. Not only was there no plate, all silverware had been removed from my table. The cubes of salmon and pineapple had been skewered on this antenna, and a soy sauce foam, stiff as shaving cream, had been dabbed on the pineapple. The creation bobbed gently before me, beckoning, like a little pet or something. I’d seen this thing arrive at other tables, and it was invariably fun to watch people’s reactions to it and what they did and how many angles they looked at it from—as if it were modern sculpture in a museum, but not something you put in your mouth—and to note how long it took them to go down on their food. Now it was time for others to watch me. And so I did—I went down on this thing. It tasted really good—salty, sweet, savory. But facing the bobbing little number, staring it down, and then actually getting it into your mouth—you didn’t need silverware, you didn’t even need arms—was odd and vaguely unsettling. I like using my hands, I decided.

And the meal caromed off from there, cruising, banking, breaking, one missed shot, and more than a few gorgeous swishes. The fourth course was among the latter. “Chilled English Peas
ramps, eucalyptus, yogurt, ham,
” the menu read. In my notes I called it pea soup. (I take notes throughout a meal like this, which is especially pleasurable to experience alone—the only way, as far as I’m concerned—I’d have been frustrated if anything beyond the food demanded my attention.) It was a chilled pea soup, dotted with fresh green peas, in a bowl with a wide, flat base—delicious in itself, kind of a no-brainer if you’ve got great peas. In the center of this was a disk of something white and creamy, on top of which was something icy and opaque, and on top of this ice—a granité, it looked like—were transparent pink balls, like pale salmon roe. The soup was also garnished with four shavings of Smithfield ham and small bright green leaves.

A very pretty and elegant-looking dish, conventional apparently—soup with garnish. And delicious. The peas and pea puree were a delight, something minty in there too, but not mint, hard to place, and the peas went perfectly with the ham (why not—as appropriate as a ham bone in split pea soup). The creamy center was a tart yogurt. The granité on top—
hmm.
Ham.
Ham
granité? OK. And the roe on top? That minty, unplaceable flavor—what was it? On the menu it said “eucalyptus.” Of course. Eucalyptus leaves—and eucalyptus…roe?

Who cares, this is a delicious dish, I thought.

The next dish had become something of a signature for Grant, the Black Truffle Explosion: It’s simply a ravioli filled with truffle juice with a slice of black truffle on top, a single bite that explodes in your mouth, exactly what it says on the menu. Delight.

The meal went on, but all the elements of the mind behind it were already in evidence: the unusual serving devices
(Look, Ma, no hands!);
conventional flavors in unconventional forms (ham granité, soy foam, and that rice paper wrapping the salmon roe and cucumber balls would turn out to be sake, gelled with agar); unconventional flavors in unconventional forms (eucalyptus roe); and perfect cooking technique (the peas).

But—very little cooking technique at all this early in the meal. That would come later, as dishes heavier on protein arrived—the beef and the duck and the lamb—much of it cooked sous-vide. (The Cryovac machine, which vacuum seals food in plastic, was evidently in more frequent use than the sauté pan.)

The lamb dish, for instance: Strips of lamb loin were cryovacked, then dropped in hot water until they were perfectly medium rare. They were then served with sunchoke puree, lamb sauce, ajwon (the seed of an oregano-like herb indigenous to the Middle East), and a little packet of stuff in a small rectangular cellophane pouch that the server called “bag of texture.” The lamb was perfectly cooked and had extraordinary flavor; it was grown by Keith Martin, in Pennsylvania, a guy I’d met while working on
The French Laundry Cookbook,
who fed his flock nothing but the finest grasses and alfalfa, which he grew himself. Indeed, because there were no flavors of searing, the lamb sensations were so vivid I actually saw in my mind’s eye Keith’s alfalfa fields—the flavor was so amazingly grassy and floral.

But because it wasn’t seared or grilled, but rather gently warmed, it would lack the complexity of flavor and texture that a good sear gives to red meats. Thus, the “bag of texture,” five items—capers, garlic chips, oregano leaves, sunflower seeds, and lamb that had been cooked to melting tenderness sous-vide, then pulled apart—deep-fried. Savory, crisp, crunchy, nutty—all of it delicious.

Desserts, likewise, ran the gamut, from interesting and solid—a great chocolate plate, including a very-high-fat bittersweet chocolate, on a flaxseed-and-pistachio cookie (flaxseed?!), a yeast sorbet (?!), and pistachio sauce—to somewhere beyond interesting (homemade bubble gum concluded the meal).

And then there was the out-there food—that “pizza” I’d heard about. A half-inch square of white paper, lightly dusted with tomato powder, fennel pollen, garlic that had been dehydrated and pulverized, and salt, affixed to the paper by a brushing of the fat rendered out of baked mozzarella. It tasted very much like pepperoni pizza; it lacked, of course, the heat and aroma, the chewy cheesiness, the fat, the protein, and the starch (though the paper was rice-based). Before Grant was born, I enjoyed having Space Food Sticks, a product that played off the popularity of the space program in the late 1960s, but Grant’s dishes were straight out of the Jetsons. The food wasn’t unpleasant by any means, but was this eating? Not always. The kitchen would sometimes chuckle when a table new to the restaurant would order the pizza as an appetizer while they looked over the menu.

Then there was the “shrimp cocktail”—which needed even bigger quote marks than the pizza. Trio’s shrimp cocktail came in a mouth spritzer set in crushed ice. That was it.
Spritz, spritz
—tastes just like shrimp cocktail!

The chips and dip (“Chicharrones con Salsa”) were fun—braised pigskin, cleaned up and fried puffy, and served with avocado that had been cured with salt and other seasonings, then pushed through a drum sieve into skinny “worms,” as well as the gelatinous seed-goop from ripe tomatoes, seasoned with garlic, chiles, cumin, and coriander. The dish composed mainly of seeds—kiwi, plantain, and passion fruit—along with curls from the meat of young coconut, all dressed with lime vinaigrette, was a little nonsensical (there’s a reason we don’t eat fruit seeds), but it made me
think
about seeds. A fine-dining restaurant such as this usually serves a foie gras course. On the Trio menu it read “Moulard Duck Foie Gras
blueberries, cinnamon, tapioca, sorrel.
” The ingredients alone were enough to nudge this dish into the “odd” column, but more so: They arrived at the table in a glass tube, about an inch in diameter and about seven inches long, and made a strata of color along its length. Only a little instruction was required (“Cream end in your mouth first,” the server directed), and
schluppft!
—into the mouth. Like something you’d be doing to get drunk faster at a frat party. But it was tasty. The flavors (blueberry and
sorrel?
), amazingly, worked. The foie did not have a strong flavor, but instead gave the whole deal a very rich, luxurious feel. Grant had certainly figured out a surefire way to encourage the diner to eat multiple, separate ingredients in a set order—foie, blueberry puree, cinnamon tapioca, then again, foie, blueberry, tapioca, then conclude with sorrel puree and cinnamon jelly, a plug of it—to make this parfait really pop into your mouth.

The dinner lasted about four hours. Never once did I feel antsy. It was a delight all the way through, truly dining as entertainment in a way I’d never experienced before. And I was full, but not bloated. I’d enjoyed plenty of wine throughout the meal, but I didn’t feel drunk. This kind of thing is difficult for a chef to pull off. At a French Laundry over-the-top meal, after the second dessert course I’m praying the server will arrive with the
mignardises
tray and not another set of silverware; when the server
does
comes back with yet more silverware, I want to hoist up a white flag. This meal at Trio had been extraordinary. You wouldn’t want to eat this way every day. The
Los Angeles Times
article recounted a woman who got up and left after the third course, grumbling that she just wanted a
steak.
But the ingredients, methods, flavors, textures—all of it came together to create a new kind of dining experience. At least for me.

What was going on back there in the kitchen?

Trio’s kitchen is as traditional as the food is non. Entering the large rectangular space from the dining room, the hot line—the kitchen’s about forty feet long—and a bank of service counter is to the left, leaving a wide open path for the expediter (Grant) and numerous servers to come and go down the center of the kitchen. To the right is a coffee and beverage station followed by a raised built-in booth that serves as the chef’s table, where a table of four can eat and watch service at the same time (“Kind of a pain,” says Grant, “but people love it”). Desserts are finished and plated at the far end of the kitchen.

The Trio kitchen is celebrating its tenth anniversary—her opening chefs were Rick Tramanto and Gale Gand, who have gone on to considerable acclaim at their Chicago restaurant, Tru. Shawn McClain, who took over the kitchen when Rick and Gale left, now runs the Chicago restaurants Green Zebra and Spring, and was nominated in 2005 for a Best Chef Midwest award from the James Beard Foundation. Grant’s following McClain makes this string of chefs an unusually successful one for a restaurant, owned by Henry Adaniya, who’s proving to be something of an impresario for choosing stars in the making; the formal name of his restaurant is, appropriately, Trio Atelier,
atelier
being French for “studio” or “workshop.” (His choice to replace Grant would be Dale Levitski, a veteran of Blackbird in Chicago, one of the city’s best restaurants, but the change wouldn’t last. Adaniya would close it in February 2006.)

The place looks conventional in action, as morning routine gets under way, a dozen or so cooks at their stations banging out their mise en place—pasta dough being mixed, melons reduced to perfect parisienne balls, enormous cèpes being peeled (I’d been served the mushroom dish and eating an entire fat cèpe was as satisfying as eating a steak), butchering and portioning meat, picking and washing lettuces, and in a back room, the pastry room, gum being made, sorbet bases being mixed.