Life, on the Line summary

One day at Cygnus, Chef Kerr told Grant about a cookbook by the Chicago chef Charlie Trotter. It was a revelation: the book was an intoxicating mix of simple yet complex and abstract modern cuisine, and Grant spent every night studying the book until he knew it by heart.

After graduating with honors from culinary school, Grant sent Trotter his resume and a cover letter; weeks went by, and just when he was about to give up hope, he got a call. Trotter offered him a two-day trial.

To reinvigorate himself and get some inspiration, Grant and his girlfriend Cindy decided to take a culinary tour of Europe. The trip was centered around visiting some of the restaurants that had received the prestigious three-star award in the Michelin Guide, arguably the highest honor a restaurant can get.

The first stop was in Paris, where they dined at chef Gerard Boyer’s Les Crayères.

When Grant returned to the United States, he wanted to get his career back on track. And it all began when he was looking through a 1995 issue of Wine Spectator on the best US restaurants. On one page, separate from the main list, he found what he was looking for: a small Napa Valley restaurant called The French Laundry.

Grant was determined to work with its chef, Thomas Keller, who was using unusual ingredients to make exciting food that was starting to get a lot of attention.

After eleven months working as commis at The French Laundry, Grant moved up to line cook, where he was responsible for six to ten dishes every night. But Grant always knew that this was just a stepping stone for him to eventually do his own thing.

So, after two years of working the line, Grant was eager to strike out in a new direction. For a year he worked at a nearby winery and learned how to bottle wines the old-fashioned way, without any machinery.

Grant left The French Laundry in June of 2001, and by the first of July he’d put together a small team of five cooks who bonded over Grant’s ambitious plan and then cleaned and remodeled Trio’s kitchen.

Grant was excited to create his own version of modern cuisine, and he hoped to make Trio the same kind of food destination for the Midwest as The French Laundry was for the West Coast.

Another guest at Trio was Nick Kokonas, a businessman so in love with the food there that he asked Grant if he’d like to partner up and open his own restaurant.

This wasn’t the first offer Grant had received, but when Nick told him that the restaurant would be 100-percent in accord with his vision, Grant accepted.

A painfully inflamed white spot on Grant’s tongue made him decide to visit the doctor. After a biopsy, the doctor came back with frightening results: advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue, or stage four mouth cancer.

After visiting the best doctors in the country, the only course of treatment being recommended was the removal of the cancerous parts, which included his tongue, jaw and part of his neck, and the immediate commencement of chemotherapy.

On December 13, 2007, Grant was finishing his treatment via surgery to remove affected lymph nodes in his neck. And shortly afterward, as he was still recovering, Grant got the news: he’d won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in America.

The recovery took months of readjusting to the effects of the treatment and to the success of Alinea.