Life, on the Line (43 page)

I had no real interest in chatting with her, and I was about to walk away from the group when I heard John say, “Chef, this is Heather.”

I turned to see an attractive young woman with long wavy brunette hair and sleek glasses standing with her hand extended ready to shake mine.

After the introduction we pulled some empty chairs from a nearby table over and the four of us sat down. Antoinette said hello, and I couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable. It wasn't that I disliked her or had any bad feelings toward her or StarChefs, but the way things had gone down, it wasn't exactly like being reunited with a long-lost friend. Nevertheless, that was two years ago, we were in Spain, and all of us had had a few drinks by this point in the evening. Will Blunt, Antoinette's partner in StarChefs who I had met a few months earlier while I was cooking at Trotter's nineteenth-anniversary dinner, was at the table as well. As we started talking about that event, he asked if I would be willing to do an interview and submit a recipe of one of the courses that I had prepared at Trotter's. After some good conversation about food and the industry, the group decided we didn't want the night to end just yet and opted to go out for some Cava. One bottle turned into several, and before I knew it I found myself in a tiny dive bar in Madrid watching John and Will go head-to-head in a Jameson consumption contest.

After our late-night foray into the streets of Madrid, Heather and I went back to my room and stayed awake talking until the sun came up. Heather and Will headed for the airport a few hours later, while my group stayed for another night. I tried to talk her into changing her flight and staying an extra day, with no luck.

When I woke up the next morning, I immediately went to my computer, found the StarChefs website, and tried to locate Heather's e-mail address. I wanted to talk to her more. Again, no luck—it wasn't listed. I decided to e-mail Will when I returned from Spain to get it.

It turned out I didn't need to. A couple of days after returning home Heather e-mailed. She explained that Will had assigned her to talk to me about the tempura shrimp served on a vanilla bean that we had contributed to the Trotter dinner.

“Thank you, Will,” I thought to myself.

We bounced some subtly flirtatious e-mails back and forth, and after our time together in Spain and our conversation about the Trotter article, I knew I definitely wanted to see her again. Our e-mail exchanges soon gave way to much more efficient g-chats. I hinted about coming to New York to visit her, and she made it clear that she wanted to eat at Alinea in the near future. In March, a couple of months after we met abroad and countless chat sessions, she stopped in Chicago on her way to a cheese tasting in Wisconsin.

Heather ate at Alinea with her friend Alina—yes, just one letter off—who was working at
Gourmet
in the marketing department. The meal sealed the fate of our relationship. She told me that the emotionally charged meal was the best of her life. To my good fortune, I was able to impress her with creativity, passion, and delicious food, and the fact that she not only understood those things but enjoyed them made me even more attracted to her.

The conversations increased over the next couple of months, and when I was invited to fly to London to attend the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony put on by
Restaurant Magazine,
I asked her to come with me. I knew the invitation was way over the top for how well we knew each other, but I figured it would be exciting and fun for both of us. After a bit of deliberation she declined. So I told her that given the fact that she was not going to fly to London with me on a whim, I would change my flight plans and travel from London directly to New York and lay over for a day or two. She didn't know it, but I had a plan. Our birthdays were only three days apart. If I came back directly after the awards we could meet in New York and celebrate. I made the flight changes and booked a reservation at Per Se.

I decided to stay two days in New York, arriving on April 26, one day after my thirty-third birthday. After reaching the hotel I immediately went out and bought three giant handfuls of deep purple calla lilies, one of her favorites, to fill the room and ordered up a bottle of champagne on ice for when we returned from dinner. Our first night we decided to go to Mas, a restaurant owned by Galen Zamarra. Galen was good friends with Keith, and I had met him when Keith brought him to Trio once before. I arrived early and incredibly nervous, grabbed a seat at the bar, and waited for Heather to arrive from work. An infatuated night in Spain was one thing, and the subsequent chatting online was another, but reorganizing my international flight itinerary with the sole purpose of spending time with this woman took things to a different level.

Shortly after she arrived and the first glass of champagne disappeared my nerves subsided. Things were as natural in person as they were over the phone.

The next night we went to Per Se. I knew what to expect, but I was excited for Heather to experience the perfection and creativity. The maître d' welcomed us and showed us to the kitchen so we could say hello to chef Benno. Settling into our table, clearly the best one in the house—it was close to the fireplace and offered sweeping views of the entire room and Central Park—I heard a familiar voice from behind.

“Welcome to Per Se, Chef.”

I turned my head slightly to confirm my suspicion—it was Michael Minello. Michael started as a commis on my first tour of the Laundry and quickly became one of the people in the brigade that “got it.” Chef, Eric, and I quickly took a liking to his quick wit, sense of humor, and most important, his cooking ability. He stayed on and worked his way through many of the stations before deciding to slow the pace of life down a bit and transition to the front of the house. When Per Se opened in 2004, he was part of the opening diningroom team, and he's been there ever since, having risen in the interim to the position of captain. I stood to shake his hand and give him a hug. It was great to see him. After I introduced Heather he confirmed any allergies and dislikes, subtly inserting some inside jokes from our time together cooking, and told us that the sommelier would be over shortly to sort out our wine plan.

After pouring glasses of Grand Siècle and confirming that we did in fact want to let him pair the wines with the courses he slyly remarked, “Good choice—we have some special bottles open for you, and it turns out we had a Grand Cru Burgundy tasting with a few DRCʹs at lunch here today, and sadly some of the bottles still have wine in them.”

What a shame, Heather and I said in unison.

The meal was the most emotional I had ever had in my life. Part of it was the excitement of the circumstances—the spontaneous change of plans to come and see Heather—while another part of it was nostalgia: tasting flavor memories that were some of the most prominent and important in my life, like the cornet, oysters and pearls, and coffee and doughnuts. And of course, I had begun to recognize that I could very well be falling in love.

It was great to see Heather experience some of my favorite bites of all time. Chef Benno had crafted a menu that was both familiar and altogether new, dishes like Quail in a Jar, Degustation of Kona Kampachi, and Shad Roe Porridge were new and exhilarating, and the wines poured were incredible. At one point midmeal the sommelier poured us each a glass of DRC Montrachet, giving Heather the 1979 and myself the 1982. We sat savoring the wine for fifteen minutes after the matching course had been cleared. The aromas and flavors of those two wines are burned into my memory forever.

Six hours of amazing food, stellar wines, flawless service, and staring into each other's eyes was coming to an end as we nibbled on the final
mignardise
. By all accounts we were thinking how the dinner was perfect, that nothing was amiss, when one of the bulbs in one of the giant floor lamps flickered out. We looked at each other and smiled. Well, I guess the night wasn't perfect after all, I said jokingly. Before she could agree Michael glided over to the light, raised his arm to the bulb, and snapped his fingers. The light popped back on. He slowly turned to face us and with a slight smirk gave a wink. We laughed in astonishment. In fact, the night was more than perfect. It was magical.

After the Per Se weekend Heather and I started making it a priority to see each other frequently. Within four days I found myself back in New York for the James Beard Awards, where I was nominated for Best Chef Midwest. After I won the award, a large group that included some of Heather's friends, Nick, Martin and his wife, Lara, and sous chefs Curtis, Jeff Pikus, and John Shields celebrated with drinks and conversation at Employees Only. I told Heather at that point that we should make an effort to see each other every ten days or so; we could take turns flying to each other's city. A pattern emerged, and the Jet-Blue frequent-flyer points started adding up quickly. Slightly more than a month later I flew to San Francisco—where she was working on the StarChefs rising-star event—to meet her for a weekend.

We strolled through the farmers' market and collected provisions for a romantic picnic at Point Reyes, and later that night raced down the coast to an amazing meal at Chez Panisse. Everything was going perfectly, we were truly in love, I was starting to reap the rewards of years of hard work, but something was bothering me. My tongue had become very sore, and I had begun to use gum as a shield to prevent my teeth and tongue from touching. Heather noticed it while we lay in bed the morning after Chez Panisse.

“Do you always sleep with gum in your mouth?”

I was a bit embarrassed, but I tried to explain to her how I had made repeated trips to the dentist only for them to tell me I was biting my tongue at night. They prescribed me a mouth guard, which I normally use, but I figured the gum would be a suitable substitute in this situation. I told her I was sure it was nothing, that I was planning to go back to the dentist when I got home and have them try to file my teeth down on that side—it might just be a sharp spot.

After the San Francisco weekend I was confident that I was in love with Heather and that I was about to enter the world of a long-distance relationship. Our early days together were a whirlwind of spontaneity and excitement that any romance novel would envy. We continued to fly back and forth—sometimes for less than twenty-four hours—just to see each other. Nick thought I was completely nuts.

“Dude, you think you don't have enough going on? Running the best restaurant in the country, being a father, and now getting into a relationship with a girl who lives in New York—are you nuts? You're a glutton for punishment, and lack of sleep, apparently.”

I couldn't argue with the logic. It certainly didn't make sense from a time perspective. I was logging ninety- to one-hundred-hour weeks at work and then spending my days off with Kaden and Keller; throwing this relationship into the mix was in fact crazy, but completely necessary.

We planned for Heather to fly to Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend to meet the boys. Alina had started seeing Pikus, and she decided to come with Heather to Chicago. We all decided it would be fun to prepare an elaborate dinner at Alinea together. In the weeks leading up to the weekend, the four of us exchanged e-mails about the menu and who would prepare what. We decided on the following menu:

Having the entire Alinea kitchen to cook in on a day the restaurant is closed is a beautiful thing. But sharing this experience with these people was amazing. We all pulled out cutting boards, poured some Krug, and casually chatted while we prepared a feast. It was one of the best cooking moments of my life.

Meanwhile I was in extreme pain.

Since leaving San Francisco, the sensitivity in my tongue had worsened to the point where I could barely eat. The pain was excruciating. With the gum and a good dose of champagne I figured I could get by without it looking obvious, and I did pretty well. I was getting up frequently, ducking into the bathroom and applying a generous layer of oral gel toothache cream to my tongue. This only proved to give temporary relief; after I returned to the table and started to eat the next course the antiseptic qualities of the cream were rinsed away and the pain returned. But I had to eat this food; I didn't want to ruin everyone's evening by letting them know I was hurting.

The next day Heather and I took Kaden and Keller to North Avenue Beach. I was nervous about how Heather would react to them. Up until this point she had only seen me as the older, successful well-known chef who was flying around the world. In a way I had a dual identity: energetic chef most of the time, followed by providing father some of the time. I wondered how that would make this beautiful, ambitious young woman feel. The boys took to her right away, and before you knew it the three of them were engaged in a full-on seaweed war. She gave Keller a piggyback ride most of the walk home, and then played Wii and drew on pieces of scrap paper into the evening. It seemed to me that the day had gone well—I even had to talk her into letting me put them to bed so we could have some alone time.

I
walked into the Alinea kitchen and saw Grant for the first time in a few days. He looked really sick—his hair was matted down and his eyes were hollow. He was gaunt.

“Chef, you look really sick. What's up?”

He pulled me by my sleeve into the polishing room adjoining the kitchen. “Remember when I told you about that thing on my tongue? Well, a few weeks ago it started hurting again, but this time really bad. It got to the point where I couldn't eat. So I went to the dentist again and she insisted that I'm biting my tongue at night. I know I'm not biting my tongue.”