Life, on the Line (31 page)

Still, I felt all alone in a corner and had no money of my own to contribute. One frequent patron of Trio had always told me that he would invest if I ever started a restaurant. So Dr. Mark Davis, a surgeon from southern Illinois, was included in the list at my insistence.

We cleaned up our presentation and then started an assembly line on Nick's dining room table. Dagmara cut the paper down to size, Nick printed everything out, and I boxed it all up. We shipped them out that night.

“So that's it? Then we wait?” I asked.

“No. I think we follow this up with a dinner,” Nick said.

“We can't do a dinner at Trio, that wouldn't be right.”

“No. I'm thinking we do a dinner off-site somewhere. Sort of an introduction to the concept.”

“The first Alinea dinner . . .”

“Yep. We send out an invite to anyone who comes back interested. And that's where we close it and get commitments.”

I had no idea how to do such a dinner logistically. I would have to create a dozen new dishes while running Trio, and then create those outside the Trio kitchen.

“When?” I asked.

“Two weeks from now. We can do it here. In addition to the numbers we need to make everyone realize that they are part of something great, and to make sure they get to know and trust you outside the restaurant setting.”

We set a date for May 4, 2004.

Chefs Curtis Duffy and John Peters backed up their cars into Nick's driveway. “Here they are,” I said.

We had already moved all of the furniture out of Nick's family room, and Dagmara helped Chris Gerber arrange a single long table down the middle of the room. Low vases filled with herbs were centerpieces that would become part of the aroma for the meal. Chairs were rented and Nick ran off on last-minute trips to Crate & Barrel for extra wine and martini glasses.

As Curtis and John started to unload the car, Nick's jaw dropped. “Holy shit. Did you guys bring all of Trio over here?” Our equipment was neatly stacked, wrapped in plastic wrap, and labeled. Nick's kitchen filled in an instant.

Though investors from New York and San Francisco couldn't make it, everyone from the Chicago area arrived—five investors and their wives, as well as Tom Stringer and Steve Rugo. We enjoyed a glass of champagne and I gave a simple toast: “I have dreamed my whole life of putting together something like this. I appreciate you all coming here today to help launch this project to build Alinea. I hope you'll enjoy this evening.” I raised my glass. “To new ideas and a new train of thought.”

Chris served food and occasionally Nick would run in to lend a hand. Curtis, John, and I put out the first Alinea dinner.

“Chef. It was brilliant,” Nick said afterward.

“It was a mess,” I said. “But the best we could do here. Was it worth it?”

“I can't imagine that this is not inevitable now, Grant.”

 

Nick was right.

We were able to line up the investors in the weeks that followed with minor tweaking of the deal he put together. All told, $1.6 million was committed to Alinea, including $500,000 from Nick personally. It was a figure that blew my mind.

The pressure had ratcheted up. Sure, I had reconceptualized Trio, but I had never built a restaurant from scratch. It was a daunting prospect, made all the more real by the huge amount of money it would take and the faith that these people had placed in me.

 

Trio's last night was a riptide of emotion. I was incredibly excited to finally see the initial steps of my goal to open my own restaurant realized, and yet I was sad for the end of the current era at Trio and the dismantling of the amazing team we had created. The majority of the staff had been with me since the opening day back in 2001, and the personal bonds that had developed were the most profound of my life. A wet-behind-the-ears chef and a bunch of mismatched cooks had come together, and with sheer determination, a dose of naïveté, and a lot of true passion, created something that was both unpredictable and rare.

Three years in, we were a well-oiled machine. Everyone knew each other incredibly well. We could finish each other's sentences and, more important in the world of cooking, step in as the other was stepping out.

We had learned the dance.

On the eve before our last performance at Trio we sat in our postservice meeting like we had every night for the last three years. Of course, we all knew this was the last time we would assemble together, and while there was some time spent reminiscing, the main focus was Trio's last day.

I knew I didn't have to address it directly—everyone knew what the goal was before I said it—but I think the group wanted me to voice it.

After I went through all of my thank-yous and acknowledgments of appreciation for the years of commitment and dedication, I threw around some jokes about some of the pointiest moments that we had all shared, and then I turned serious.

“We have come this far, and what we have accomplished is amazing; we should all be very proud. We cannot let our guard down,” I warned. “This is our last show—everything we've pushed for has come to this day. Keep it tight. Stay focused. The diners coming in tomorrow are expecting the best meal of their lives. We owe them that. We owe us that. Let's come in tomorrow and do exactly what we have done for the last three years.” I was acting tough, like the leader that they had all come to expect, but inside I felt different.

It was important to take the next step, to take another risk. But this one felt far from risk-free. This time I had as much to lose as I did to gain.

The next day I showed up at 9:30 A.M. The night before we had identified the VIPs who were dining with us and how we wanted to give every table as many courses as possible. That made for a big prep day. Shortly after I unlocked the door the cooks started filing in. The call time was 11:00 A.M., but everyone was in and at their boards by 10:15. We had pledged to re-create some Trio signature dishes on our last night as a tribute to the restaurant, Henry, the diners, and us.

Mark Caro, an entertainment reporter for the
Chicago Tribune
who was interested in food, asked to be a fly on the wall during Trio's last night. He planned to write a feature on the transition of Trio and give a few teasers about Alinea.

He showed up at eleven on the dot, wondering why the kitchen was already humming, and I showed him around and introduced him to the staff before settling in to my prep. He stood to the side of the kitchen, observing. Every now and then he would dart in and approach me with a few questions. He was trying to dig into my emotions. I was guarded with details of Alinea, telling him point-blank that the article should be about Trio out of respect for Henry and the restaurant itself. I did, however, slip a few times and tell him things I would have never told the staff, and he quoted me:
“When I think about it, it's like when you're sitting there watching your girlfriend getting on the airplane,” the chef said. “You feel it here, in the pit of your stomach.”

We intensely pushed through the prep day, planning to give each table at least three extra courses, although many of them were slotted for more. We wanted to go out with a bang.

The front of the pass was covered with a large copper sheet. Eight feet long and four feet wide, it was only visible to the guests who might be at the kitchen table, and of course to all of the staff. Every day it would oxidize to an ugly green-blue color and every night the copper was polished with a homemade paste. The recipe came from The French Laundry, and was composed of lemon juice, distilled vinegar, flour, and salt. Most of the time I would do it myself, using a green scrubby and a deli of the paste; if I was busy doing something else, David, Nate, or John did it. But each night it got done without fail, even though on many nights nobody would notice except the staff. Tonight, on Trio's last night, I made sure I had time to do it myself.

And that was it. This night was so different than any other night we'd ever had at Trio. Going back to the first day, right up until this one, we were always looking forward. On a bad night we would take comfort in knowing that we always had tomorrow to get it right. Other nights we would go home knowing how in the shits we were for the next day, but tonight we had nothing, good or bad, to look forward to.

But somehow it was the perfect ending.

Around 2:45 A.M. Caro walked out of the Trio kitchen. Everything was done—the last guests, Anthony Marty (aka “Yellow Truffle,” as he was known on eGullet) and his party, had finished their thirty-plus-course kitchen table menu and waddled out of the building in a food and alcohol daze. The final clean-down was finished and nothing was left to do, but the staff milled about, trying to act busy, to prolong the inevitable. I swung around the corner and headed into the pastry station to see what else needed to be done, knowing that they were the last to put food out, when I ran into Carrier. As we clumsily collided, I fell back and he caught me. Before I knew it he had pulled me into a bear hug, lifting me right off the floor, and we both started to cry. John rounded the corner and fell prey to the emotional collapse, and soon Nathan and Chris joined. It was ridiculous for a bunch of ego-driven cooks—and fitting at the same time.

Trio was no more. Building Alinea would begin in earnest.

October, 2004

 

 

My apologies for the delay before this first update, but as you will see below, a tremendous amount of work has been done to move Alinea toward reality.

Also, I want to put a special THANK YOU right at the top to Mike Cirks and Paul Hudson for allowing the Alinea Team to use their FBLab offices. Grant, John, and Curtis have turned the “FunBrainLab” into the “FoodBeverageLab” and made it a headquarters for their daily work. The FoodLab is also the “Cost Savings Lab,” and the three chefs have spent a great deal of time sourcing everything from multiple suppliers. Ultimately, we will have a spreadsheet that documents the differences between bids, but at this point I am willing to bet that the FoodLab has paid for itself. But none of that would have been nearly as possible or efficient were it not for the amazing office provided by Mike and Paul—free. Not only is it a great work environment, but it's also a place that Grant can meet with the press in a professional and serious manner. Thanks!

Right up there in the Let's-Give-A-Thank-You department is Steve Rugo and Tom Stringer, our architect and designer, respectively. We came to them with a silly schedule, a simple building, and lofty goals. In a very short time they have delivered a finished set of plans that will provide an exceptional environment in which to dine.

Here is the space as it looks right now. . . .
SEE FIGURE 1

Front window on the second floor—Tom Stringer looks over the plans.
SEE FIGURE 2

As you can see, the landlord had everything stripped out of the second floor. It is pretty much a white box. Grant, Joe Catterson, Curtis, and John taped out the plan on the floor to see how it would function from a service perspective. The blue box to the left is where the stairway will be. It will look something like this. . . .
SEE FIGURE 3