¬ I recently heard the concept that when we remember, we are actually only remembering the last time we remembered the memory. No other time in my life do I remember as often as my time in Chicago at the restaurant Alinea.
We, Maida and myself, recently watched ‘Love, Charlie ( the rise and fall of Charlie Trotter )’ and while I never ate there it sparked a lot of reflection of my time in Chicago down the road at 1723 N Halsted, where I worked Nov 2010-March 2012.
I have worked in restaurants for the majority of my life. My first job was at Michaels kitchen in Taos as a bus boy around the age of 14 which was owned by my mothers side of the family and where my fathers side of the family worked. My tia Lula ( Dolores ) has been working in the kitchen there for 54 years. In the following 5 years I worked in other places in town, competed in regional culinary competitions and took culinary arts throughout high-school. I didn’t really know that I wanted to cook the majority of that time, but started to realize in my senior year of high school that cooking was going to consume me. One of the spots I worked at was in the hotel El Monte Segrado and by chance had some cooks that would open my eyes to the world of food that taught me about famous restaurants like El Buli and ALINEA. This was a a crazy moment in time where there happen to be a chef trying to do something special and had hired a team of younger cooks from around the country. It was the first place I tasted fresh pasta, wild mushrooms, had any glimpse of cooking not solely with the idea of filling someone up.
The chef was a guy named John Cox who after the spot in Taos went on to run the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur CA and now has his own place in Orcas WA. I can’t remember how long he was there, but it wasn’t long before he had moved on. The sous chef from that spot Johnny Tracie sat me down one day while working with him over summer break from my first semester of college and asked me what my plans in life were. I wasn’t exactly sure what that was going to be, but I laid out my plan of taking advantage of my NM lottery scholarship and going to school at UNM for business and working in a kitchen on my time off. I thought this was a pretty smart way of going about things. I would be able to learn about the business end of restaurants and learn to cook on the side. In one of my culinary arts competitions in high school I had won a scholarship to culinary arts school, that upon talking to the school I realized it was merely $1,500 off a program that would cost me over $50,000. So going to school in my home state for free sounded pretty nice, especially since not very many people in my family had a college education. He proclaimed something along the lines of ‘fuck that, that will be a huge waste of your time. If you really want to learn to cook forget about school and move to a city and work somewhere’. I was never one for school to begin with, so what he was saying resonated with me. I thought about this for sometime, not long really, and told my mother I was going to drop out of school and move to Chicago, IL. I could sense she wasn’t thrilled, but she respected the intention and gave me her blessings. That winter I sold my Land Rover I had bought and loved and moved to Chicago with ~$4,000 from the sale in my pocket.
I picked Chicago because some of my favorite music was being made in the area and I figured I resonated with the music so I would resonate with the city. Also my high school girlfriend had moved there for school so I would have a place to stay and a friend while I figured things out.
Being a kid from a small town/village I was incredibly naive, something I owe a lot to in retrospect, but something worth acknowledging nonetheless. When I knew that I wanted something, I couldn’t not have it or at least be climbing towards it. One thing that took me off guard was the Chicago cold. I thought that Taos snowed a lot so I would be fine in Chicago, and learned pretty quickly after being there that was not true. The humid wind cold felt like it went all the way to the bones, something I had never experienced before. My skate shoes and hoody weren’t going to cut it. Through out slowly attaining warmer gear, with a much swifter pace I dug into the best restaurants of Chicago and made a list of places I wanted to work. I dug into their books, forums, everything there was. I was obsessed. I wished I had kept the list, but one that made the list that almost didn’t was ALINEA in Lincoln Park. I remember at a bookstore somewhere in the city I had picked up their book and opened it up to Grant Achatz ( chef / owner ) standing in front of the kitchen with his arms crossed and I wasn’t sure if I liked this guy or his restaurant, but then I saw the food. After flipping through the book I realized I had never seen food like this. Needless to say, ALINEA made my top 5 places I wanted to work. Not too long after ravaging through all the books, lists et cetera I worked on my resume and wrote what felt like heartfelt letters to each spot on my list. After only a few hours after sending in those emails I received a reply from ALINEA via the chef de cuisine in transition at the time Dave Baren. He said something like, how about a two day trail Monday at 6am. I was shocked. Dave was the chef de cuisine at the time, and was transitioning to open NEXT. The food in the book was from when he was at the helm.
I spent the weekend slouched over the ALINEA book and a tiny notepad. I had no idea all of the ingredients ( hydrocolloids ) that were in the book were or did so I wrote down every single one as if I knew there would be a pop quiz. If while there someone would ask me the if a agar gel was thermo reversible I might be able to answer like I knew what they were talking about.
I got to the restaurant early so that nothing could go wrong on a cold November morning at 5am on Sunday. Prior emails with Chef Baren said to go to the back door of 1723 N Halsted and to knock and that Chef Graves would let me in. I took a walk around the block, almost got lost, and made it back to the door right on time. I knocked and Graves answered right away. He introduced himself and instructed me to go downstairs and get changed. I frantically changed and ran upstairs to the kitchen and asked how I could help. The next couple hours he gave me small tasks, and honestly I don’t remember much about them but once it became 10am, on the dot, I remember so clearly. The door from downstairs to the kitchen was unlocked and the entire night team rushed in, around 20 chefs running like their life depended on it. The energy that burst through that door was insane, a feeling akin to smashing open a bee hive. The energy of that kitchen was incredible and a feeling I still crave in some weird part of me. As those cooks walked in Graves set me up on the hot pass and gave me a 20gt container filled with black truffles and gave me instructions on how to clean them then walked away. As I cleaned, and definitely not fast enough, a moment I will never forget happened. The beehive suddenly went from a hectic buzz to a soft murmur, Chef Achatz had walked in. I was nervous as fuck. A few seconds later he was setting his cutting board next to mine. He set up his station immaculately and then turned to me and introduced himself with a handshake. I had been “cooking” for a few years already, but I then realized I had no idea what I was doing, not a clue. I even showed up with a Rachel Ray knife my mother bought me at Ross and here I was set up next to Chef himself.
After growing up and working in as many “great” kitchens as I could and eventually running the greatest one I could find, SAISON under Josh Skenes, I realize places like ALINEA nothing happened by chance. I have to wonder back to all the things that have lead me to where I am now and wonder if they were by chance, or by design. Not by some higher power, but by those I was interacting with. I still wonder why Graves posted me up to Grant with thousands of thousands of dollars worth of truffles, or if was it just because that was the only space available. I’d like to think it was by design. How many 19 year old kids drop out of school and find themselves at the best restaurant in America. Why not post him to the man himself.
As the day progressed I was shoved off to another chef and another. I was shoved off to the chef de tournament / expeditor Rene. He set me up to make grapefruit segments that would be dropped into liquid nitrogen and broken down to their individual cells. Chef Rene showed me the task and ran off. Seconds later Grant walked over to me and asked what I was doing, and not in a sweet friendly way. I said “grapefruit segments chef” and he took my knife out of my hand and explained to me how to peel the grapefruit gently without the knife as to not slice any of the grapefruit cells, then walked over to Rene, and to my best guess, asked what the fuck was he doing and why did he teach me to cut the grapefruit in a way that goes against the entire point of what was trying to be achieved. At some point out of utter silence one of the chefs yelled 2! And the kitchen roared back, 2! No one had explained to me what this meant or why everyone knew to shout it, but shortly after the entire kitchen was franticly cleaning the entire kitchen. Not just cleaning, but cleaning, every single inch of the kitchen. Renee came to me and told me to remove the trashes and the replace the bags, 10 or so in the entire kitchen. Someone pointed me to the trash cans hidden in the passes and I slowly replaced all the bags then helped with something else or another and then jumped on dishes or something else until I noticed everyone go back to work and found someone who needed some help. Shortly after, similarly the kitchen broke everything down and cleaned again and family meal was presented at the pass where the cooks and service team all ate together. Grant, Baren, and Chausser ate together at the end of the pass. Some cooks ran to the basement and scarfed down their food and hide while they continued to prep, some skipped lunch all together and had a few cigarettes and a coffee. After family meal the cooks went back to cooking for 45 min or so and then cleaned everything again before setting up for service.
The morning crew, which at this time included me, cleaned and sorted out the basement where all the dry goods and such were. Once we were finished we were taken upstairs by Chef Anderson who was the morning manager and someone who really took the time to show me the ropes. We all stood in the middle of the cold and hot pass in a single file line, Anderson in the front. The cold pass off to the left and the hot pass on the right. Achatz, Baren, and Chausser all plating as servers ( captains and food runners ) came up and down the pass to collect the finished vessels before being directed by the expediter. You can watch Rene expediting here: Alinea’s Expediter Station. As things finally calmed down Chef Achatz turned and shook Andersons hand while looking straight into his eyes and gave a gentle nod of his head, and then the same to each of us. Our day was over.
I came back the next morning the same time and got to it. I was still blown away and knew I had so much to learn, but I was excited to have a better grasp of what was to come. I remember being asked by Dana on pastry to weigh out this recipe for her. After painful minutes of trying to find where everything was I got to the part of the recipe where I needed to weigh out a liquid. At ALINEA everything is weighed out not measured. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to weigh out ml ( milliliters ). I must have ran around for 15 minutes or so trying to figure out how to set the scale to ml, or where a scale that could do so was. Luckily no one was keeping track of my accomplishments because I had very few. I must have looked like a chicken with it’s head cut off. I didn’t want to sound dumb, but I had no idea what to do. Finally Chef Simon said, snarlingly, ‘just weigh it out in grams like everything else’. I couldn’t believe it as I asked a handful of people no one could answer my question. I suppose they were too busy to even hear the question. In one of the recipes I was asked to make the recipe stated that a 2qt sauce pan was required as to not have too much surface area to scorch the continents. I searched and searched for a 2qt pot but they were all gone. Later I found out there were only four in the entire restaurant and that they were the most popular pot. So each time the team would enter the kitchen at 10am they would either rush to the 2qt pot, or the 2oz ladle, or something else that was limited and necessary, but generally not with time to gather more then one because someone had already ran for that. I had found one in pastry caked in some sort of caramel or something like it dumped in their sink. I needed that pot so I inquired and she said ‘it was dirty that I couldn’t have it’. At ALINEA the cooks wash all of their own dishes for prep so she was waiting till she had a moment to wash it, or till lunch where she could sneak it into the dish pit for the evening dish team, or for someone like me she could pass it off to. I asked, “what if I wash the pot for you so that I could use it” and she agreed eagerly. I took the pot to the dish station and started scrubbing away. What ever was in the pot would not come off. One of the cooks on the hot line Dennis asked me what I was doing and after explaining the exchange he grabbed the pot and took it to Dana who had made the arrangement with me and told her that everyone else washed their own dishes, and she should do the same. ALINEA functioned like a beehive. There was a bit of a hierarchy but it also was a system of self responsibility. Dennis was no higher on the hierarchy than Dana but held himself accountable and everyone else the same. I felt bad that my idea had caused push back for Dana, because I was there to help anyone after all, but I understood then that though a team, everyone was and had to be cutthroat. I was far from such.
At 2pm again like the day before 2 was yelled out like clockwork and everyone yelled back in confirmation, myself included. It’s a weird practice, but to feel part of a team all on the very same page was exhilarating. Like the day before the entire kitchen stopped and assumed rolls. I ran to change the trash as I had before, but before I started Rene stopped me and said he was going to time me so I ran a little bit faster. I opened up every cabinet, pulled out the bag and tied it off. I went all the way around the kitchen, dodging as cooks scrubbed and swept. After throwing all the bags in the dumpster I ran back in to fill each can with a new bag and in my efforts to go fast I swooshed the bag open, as most people do or at least have done before. What seems like immediately after chef Chauser who was the Chef de cuisine to be came up to me and asked me something along the lines of ‘why are you being so fucking loud’ and showed me how to open a bag quietly by putting my arm into the bag. I don’t remember what my time was, but I remember that that would be the last time I would swoosh a bag open.
After clean up was over, I was passing through the small space between the kitchen and the stairway to downstairs and I ran into Chausser. He asked me what I was doing there so I responded with something like “I’m here for my trail”. He obviously knew that and said something like, “I know that, what for a stage or a job”? I responded by saying “I don’t know chef, honestly I just want to be here, either one I guess”. This was an honest response and on paper probably the worst thing to say to an potential employer. However I couldn’t imagine they would want to hire me, so if they even offered let me be there at all I would have done it for free.
After shaking hands again when the morning crew’s day was over I was pulled to the office and offered a job, if memory serves by Baren who had sent me the initial email. I couldn’t believe it. I would have took the stage ( unpaid internship mostly reserved for culinary students needing credits or international cooks ). Less than a month later, and actually I believe only a few days later ALINEA was awarded their first Michelin stars and 3 of them at that, the highest honor awarded. A few months later they were awarded the 6th spot on the worlds best restaurant list. My first few month involved quite a few moment cheering champagne ( I snuck mine as I was only 19/20 years old ) with the team. The last time I remember of such we were all above the moon, even though most of us had hardly put in a few drops of sweat, some of us some blood, but nothing like what it took to build the place. This last time after cheering Grant went and grabbed Chausser and had him round up the entire kitchen team and took us all outside. He spoke with a loud and fierce tone, not quite yelling but close to it, and asked something along the lines off why the fuck were we so happy when we can’t even keep our garbage outback clean. In the back of all our heads we were like what the fuck, the trash isn’t that bad, no worse then any others. But now I understand the sentiment. He was trying to get the point across that we shouldn’t rest on our laurels. Sure we had been awarded some grand award, but if we were’t great enough to have the nicest dumpster, what right did we have to be the best restaurant.
I don’t know if I’m different, or if I just got to get started before most but I loved it! I wasn’t jaded yet and completely enamored. It was hell, and all the time. I think being young and hungry worked in my favor. Even though I was youngest hire and probably the worst cook I always had something that resembled a smile, or at least a radiance of excitement. After a few months I was promoted to morning manager prepping, receiving orders, and designing, coordinating, and cooking family meal.
I would ask to stay and help with service as I was only working mornings and wanted so bad to be behind the line. After bugging Chausser a few times, he pulled me out of line while waiting to shake hands and say goodbye and had me help the main hot station where Travis and Banko were cooking, passing everything to Grant and Chauser to plate where they would be thew final eyes on everything. This was my station I had dreamed of working on, and that I did the majority of the prep for. It also had my favorite dish, an all white dish with crazy flavors. Halibut, parsnip, coffee, lemon, black pepper, licorice, et cetera. It had to be close to an hour and the rest of the morning team was still there waiting to shake out. Chausser not only threw me in the fire, but he seemed to be using me as an example, or at least a challenge to the rest of the morning crew or myself. Until being promoted to the evening team with a station of my own I would stay after service every Sunday ( our Friday ) and help cook service with the meat/fish station. I would stay all the way until the evening team would go home helping finish out service and clean up, making my Sundays 20+ hours at work, starting work at 6am heading home close to 3am.
I pushed myself as hard as I possibly could. I ate, slept, breathed ALINEA. My goal was to become a sous chef. One day while it was raining we received a produce order and while carrying two bags of sugar down the stairs I slipped at the bottom and sprained my ankle. I don’t remember the moments that came after this, but somehow I spent the rest of the evening in the ER and got back to work the next morning on crutches to do my shift. This may sound insane, and it was, but there was no where else on the planet I wanted to be more. Even more so, I couldn’t imagine leaving the evening team who relied on my prep to be put behind because of my dumb mistake. So I stashed the crutches and got to work. Grant came in earlier that day for some reason and saw me hopping around and asked what happened and then after realizing the scope of the situation told me to go home and take care of myself. Later he posted a tweet about me and how my situation showed true dedication. I believe I took one full day off, which was good because I needed a new phone and never had the time to get a new one so now I finally had a chance. Recognition is a strange thing, although not necessary it is nice to know your efforts are externally appreciated.
A while later I was promoted to evening shift and was officially a chef de partie with my own station. I spent a week with Dennis on the “GRAVES” station, named such after Andrew Graves who was the man who first ran that station which had close to 9 courses. It was also a station that broke a lot of chefs down, so the name was pretty fitting. This shift marked the end of my 20+ hour Sundays and in pursuit of learning more I convinced the butcher shop Butcher and Larder to let me come in once a week in the morning until 9am when I would then ride my bike to ALINEA.
After Dennis and I worked together for a week he moved to the hot line and I took his place on the GRAVES station. I was on my own. It was hard, very hard, but some of the most fun I had in that restaurant. It always felt like I was 10 steps behind. You would usually find me while on that station in the basement hiding while finishing up my prep work. On one of these such days Chauser came down and noticed me and asked what I was doing, and while I gave the reasons I couldn’t get me prep done and needed this time he told me tomorrow I would come in at 12pm instead of 10am and made me take my lunch break. I had no idea how I would get all my work done in around only four hours, but come the next day at 12 like I was instructed and was finished before lunch. It’s fascinating how much your mental fortitude matters. Ever since that day I thought about my every action and how to be the most efficient so that I could do the work with full intention. This isn’t to say that from then on everything was smooth sailing, not even close. But it was an important lesson.
At ALINEA we didn’t use knives much so my orange Rachael Ray knife did fine, but I had since got a new one and probably not much better at that. One day Chauser came to my station and grabbed both of my knifes and threw them in the trash and then gave me a new knife. I forget the brand or model, but it was the same one he used. Unfortunately that knife was in a backpack I had that was stolen, but the sentiment will always remain.
Part of the GRAVES station was protecting the cooler. This cooler had most refrigerated items in the entire restaurant. If anyone slammed a door, the entire team would turn around and glare at who ever had disrespected the equipment by slamming the door. The same for leaving it cracked open. This is something you learn as you got to ALINEA, and you usually learned it the hard way. Because there were so many new faces entering the kitchen constantly Chausser made me solely responsible for protecting the cooler. Both from slamming but also from leaving the door cracked as on hot days a cracked door could be detrimental. The first time I remember snapping on someone was on my now great friend Trevor Davis who now runs his company William Ellerly. Trevor slammed the door for the second time and I came over and let him have it. I am mostly a pretty calm person, but recollecting with Trevor he made it seem more intense than I ever thought. The graves station couldn’t be run alone, no matter how you sliced it, so I got to work with and train most of the stages. Though unnatural to me, I made sure no one slammed that door again. It was on this station also that I met another great friend Will who runs the restaurant HORSES in Los Angeles CA with his (ex) partner Liz.
I stayed at Alinea for 16 months in total. In these 16 months I saw over a hundred people come and go. In fact I was the only cook that was there from when I started aside for those in a senior position. There would be days where we would have four new people and before the day was over they were all gone. They couldn’t handle it, or didn’t enjoy it and would just leave. To survive at ALINEA you had to really want to be there. It demanded the most of you, and that was hard for people. One day I remember the sous chef Mike Bagel was off for the week and we had two people quit, all while Grant had added four new courses to the menu. It was pure chaos! Matt Chausser took over an entire station and I remember him passing by me and whispering in my ear, “don’t you fucking love this” and ran off. I fucking loved it.
I was starting to realize that while I loved it and was able to glean discipline, desire, and efficiency I had learned close to nothing about “cooking”. I learned to make gels, to run a station with 9 courses for 100 people a night. I learned to have a sense of urgency even in mundane tasks. I learned to treat everything in the restaurant with respect, from the roll of plastic to the most expensive plate ware. I learned more there than I could ever imagine learning in any school or in any other restaurant, but I was hungry still. I knew I would never be the sous chef I desired to be unless I learned to actually cook. I had told myself, I’d leave for a while, learn what I needed to, and come back to be a sous chef one day. This is actually told Grant when I finally put in my notice. Chausser, at the time was 27 years old, and this age stuck with me. He was my benchmark. I was now 20 and figured by the time I was 27 I could be ready for an important role at ALINEA. Chausser in my eyes was a fucking god. Cooks at ALINEA, even the sous chefs, were rigorous but they too could be sloppy, myself included, however Chausser wasn’t in the least bit. I never saw him drop a thing, I never saw a mark on his apron, I never saw him scared or frantic, I never saw him make a mistake. I saw him run stations by himself. We even believed he had a fake British accent, which I still feel he might have actually had. That man wanted to be there more than the rest of us.
Recently there has been a trend of sabotaging restaurants, either through the media or by way of lawsuits. While I worked at ALINEA I got paid 100 a day, no more no less. When I would work 20+ days I was off the clock, and that was my choice. I was there because there was no reason to be anywhere else, and I made the choice to be there. It was cheaper than culinary school, and it was more fun than anything else and really I would have worked there for free. The 100 dollars was just the cherry on top. I was yelled at, I was punished, I was broke down, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. You were required to care 150% percent and if you didn’t you would be weeded out. There were people around the world who would gladly take your place or think they would like to, even with no pay, so you had to make it count. You had to wake up as if someone was going to take it from you. There was once I was told “chef I swear to god if you fuck this up one one more time I am going to throw your head through the fucking wall”. Guess what, I didn’t fuck it up again.
There is something to be said about working to make systems better and more humane, but I wouldn’t be who I am today without the rigorous and at times fucked up militaristic system that was ALINEA. I am not someone by nature that needs external structure put on me, quite the opposite. But being in a place that had that allowed for magic to happen. Something I feel like professional athletes experience.
I have since been back to Alinea and while that restaurant and Grant himself have continued to push the boundaries of food for close to 20 years it wasn’t like it used to be. The staff was compact and compared to when I was there the food felt safe and doable. Still against the current, but safe. I can’t help but wonder how it would have been if the gears of the place still moved in the vigorous and unruly way they did while I was there. The legacy of ALINEA remains and there are few chefs I admire more than Grant. I am honored to be pushed, to be taught, to be held accountable, to be part of something much larger than myself.
Where I grew up at Taos Pueblo the young boys get to go into an initiation or manhood training as young teens. I never participated in this way, mostly because my father wasn’t and had a distaste for a lot of the culture at the pueblo. The initiations are a brake from familiar. They are a means of setting the conditions that will turn a young boy in to a man. My self propelled trip to Chicago and my time at ALINEA was my initiation and has shaped me as the man I am today.
ALINEA is where I ground my teeth. It is the place that showed me that food was so much more than just food. It was my launching point, my initiation and I will look back on my time there and in that kitchen forever.