On stage that day, I asked, innocently enough, what Marco thought of huge, multicourse tasting menus—whether, perhaps, we’d reached the point of diminishing returns. I knew he’d recently had a meal at Grant Achatz’s very highly regarded Alinea in Chicago—thought of by many as the “best” restaurant in America. And I knew he hadn’t enjoyed it. I thought it was worthwhile to explore why not.
Achatz, it is generally agreed, sits at the top of the heap of the American faction of innovative, experimental, forward-thinking chefs who were inspired by the work of Ferran Adrià and others. I thought it was a provocative but fair question—particularly given Marco’s own history of innovation, as well as his elaborate, formal, and very French fine-dining menus. He seemed to have had a change of heart on the subject of tasting menus—maybe even about haute cuisine in general—having insisted to me previously that all he wanted these days was a proper “main, and some pudding.”
What I hadn’t anticipated—and what poor Ruhlman certainly hadn’t—was the absolute vehemence with which Marco hated, hated, hated his meal at Alinea. Without bothering to even remember the chef ’s name or the name of his establishment, Marco spoke of an unnamed restaurant that was unmistakably Alinea as if Achatz had shot his favorite dog and then served him the still-steaming head. The way Marco went after him, dismissing all his experimental presentations and new cooking techniques with a contemptuous wave of the hand, came from a place of real animus. Warming to his subject, he went on and on—all of us blissfully unaware that Achatz himself, a beloved and respected figure in gastronomy, was sitting a few rows in—right in front of us.
The next day, there were hurt feelings and recriminations all around. Ruhlman, who’d worked on a book with Achatz and who is unrestrained in his admiration for the man and his food, found himself accused of treachery by loyalists and acolytes, pilloried for “allowing” such a thing as this public demonstration of disrespect. It’s rather hilarious to imagine Ruhlman or anyone else trying to stop it—given Marco’s fearsome reputation, rock-star ego, not to mention his intimidating size. The fact that Achatz had only recently survived a heroic battle with cancer of the tongue, having had to contend with the possibility of losing his sense of taste forever, added another layer of awkwardness to the whole affair. Ruhlman was shaken up by the whole thing. (It’s pretty much par for the course with Ruhlman and me. I always manage to put him in the shit. Last adventure I involved him in apparently got him blackballed from a budding career at Food Network.)
The next day, at the same conference, Achatz reacted directly. He stood up and gave an impassioned and well-reasoned defense of the kind of cooking he does, associating himself, appropriately, with other pioneers of the form. It was an argument with which, in principle, I am in total agreement. That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund. Of all the chefs in the room, he hardly needed to explain why he was eminently qualified for the job.
Have I mentioned yet that Grant Achatz is probably a genius? That he’s one of the best chefs and cooks in America? That his kitchen, just like Marco’s old kitchen, is staffed with the very best of the best, the most fiercely motivated and dedicated cooks there are, the true believers, the SAS, the Green Berets of kitchen crews?
That it was Grant Achatz, then working with Thomas Keller at the French Laundry, who was co-responsible for the greatest single meal of my life?
Thing is, I, too, hated Alinea. In fact, I despised it.
Don’t take this as a caution. If ever my not enjoying myself at a restaurant is a reason for you to go and decide for yourself, this is surely it. Alinea is a serious restaurant with a serious staff doing serious and important work.
But my meal there was one of the longest, least pleasurable meals of my life. Twenty minutes in, and I was looking at the little menu card, counting the (many) dishes to come, ticking off the hours, minutes, and seconds I’d have to remain before earning my freedom. I thought it lethally self-serious, usually pointless, silly, annoying, and generally joyless. It was, for me, a misery from beginning to end.
At the time, I was in the middle of a particularly mind-numbing book tour, and I found myself that night with a journalist who was actually thoughtful, interesting, and fun to be with. The possibility of a good and sustained conversation presented itself. And dinner—at one of America’s most exciting new restaurants—seemed the perfect setting.
No.
At Alinea, every twenty minutes or so (too soon—but also not soon enough by a long shot), a waiter would appear at my elbow with some extremely distracting construction—a single eye-gouging strand of flexible wire from which one was invited to nibble; a plate atop a slowly deflating whoopee cushion, intended to gradually fart rosemary fumes or some such; a slab of pork belly, dangling senselessly from a toy clothesline—each creation accompanied by a lengthy explanation for which one’s full attention was demanded.
With each course, the waiter, like a freshly indoctrinated, still cheerful Moonie, would hang there tableside, waiting for us to stop our conversation, before delivering a too-long description of what we were about to eat—and exactly how we should eat it. Half the time, I’d already popped the thing in my mouth and swallowed it by the time he’d finished with his act.
I sat there, sneaking looks at the little menu card to my right, silently ticking off each course as I finished it. There was one course—lobster, as I remember it—that was infuriatingly brilliant. It was also uncharacteristically restrained. I came away thinking, this guy, Achatz, with his skills and creativity, is going to rule the world someday; that when he moved past the form-over-function stuff on his menu, he, better than anyone, was suited for the Big Job, the next pope, the next Keller.
I am in the great minority in my assessment of Alinea. Many people whose opinions I respect believe it to be a truly great restaurant. In fact, my wife, usually a much, much harsher critic than I am, adores the place. On reading an early draft of this chapter, the mad bitch got on a plane, flew off to Chicago by herself, and dined—alone—at Alinea, curious to see what I was griping about. She had exactly the opposite experience I did. I believe she used the words “fantastic,” “delicious,” and “always entertaining” to describe her meal. “One of the best meals of my life,” she snarled at me, on returning.
So…here’s what I have to ask myself.
Am I just a mean, jaded prick? Or was Alinea really bullshit? Or is there some other, third path—a way to look at my reaction in a constructive fashion?
Let’s face it: I am, at this point in my life, the very picture of the jaded, overprivileged “foodie” (in the very worst sense of that word) that I used to despise. The kind who’s eaten way more than his share of Michelin-starred meals all over the world and is (annoyingly) all too happy to tell you about them. I am the sort of person whose head I once called for in the streets, the sort of person who—with a straight face—will actually whine about “too much foie gras” or “truffles—again?”
In short, I have become, over time, the sort of person who secretly dreads long, elaborate tasting menus. I’ve been denying it, to myself, but no longer. In fact, the only people I know who hate long, elaborate tasting menus more than me are chefs who serve long, elaborate tasting menus.
You might well ask at this point: “Well, uh…asshole. If your mind is poisoned against them—if you hate big tasting menus so fucking much, why go to Alinea? And why, why, why, then, go to Per Se? Why go to the Mother of Them All?”
It’s a fair question, and I don’t really have an answer.
It’s true I walked in the door at Per Se with a sense of trepidation very different from the feelings of child-like awe I’d felt at the French Laundry all those years ago—when the twenty-course meal was all fresh and new. I’m a romantic, I guess. I wanted to believe that love conquers all.
Understand this: I respect no American chef above Thomas Keller. I believe him to be America’s “g
reatest” chef—in every sense of that word.
The single best fine-dining, white-tablecloth meal of my life was at his French Laundry.
I’m quite sure that it would be unlikely in the extreme that one could find better, more technically accomplished, generally gifted, harder-working chefs than the Laundry’s Corey Lee or Per Se’s Jonathan Benno (or whoever follows them in those positions).
I think that Keller long ago achieved that ideal state of haute nirvana where it matters not at all to the quality of food or service whether or not he is in attendance on any given night at any particular restaurant—and I’m happy for him about that. It is a testament to his excellence, his unwavering standards, and to the excellence of the teams and systems and institutions he’s created, that this is so.
Per Se in New York City has four New York Times stars—along with three from Michelin. They deserve every one of them. You’d have a very difficult time making the argument that there is a “better” restaurant in America.
So, why, I ask myself, did I come home from Per Se heartbroken last night? And why, in the hours since, has an unarticulated, indefinable sadness hung over me—a cloud that followed me home, an evil imp on my shoulder whispering terrible things into my skull? Like the spare tire around my waist—something I just don’t want to acknowledge.
Maybe if I creep up on this thing slowly—this spirit-destroying guinea worm wriggling around inside me, threatening my happiness, making me a bad person—maybe if I stab blindly at him with a cocktail fork, with a lucky shot I can reel the whole fucker out and resume life as it was before.
Why are there voices in my head—making me ask…questions?
Like this one:
At the end of the day, would a good and useful criterion for evaluating a meal be “Was it fun?”
Meaning: after many courses of food, sitting in the taxi on the way home, when you ask yourself or your dinner companion, “Was that a good time?” is the answer a resounding “Yes! Yes! My God, yes!”—or would it, on balance, have been more fun spending the evening at home on the couch with a good movie and a pizza?
Perhaps, given the expense and seriousness of the enterprise—and the fact that, presumably, you had to dress for dinner—a fairer question might be “Was it better than a really good blow job?” As this is the intended result of so many planned nights on the town, would you—having achieved touchdown before even getting up from the couch—have then bothered to go out to dinner at all?
Okay. It’s apples and oranges. How can you compare two completely different experiences? It’s situational. It’s unfair. It’s like asking if you’d prefer a back massage now—or a life without ever having seen a Cézanne or Renoir.
How about this, then? Same situation. You’re on your way home from the menu dégustation (or whatever they’re calling it). You’re sitting in the back of that same taxi, and you ask yourself an even simpler question:
“How do I feel?”
That’s fair, isn’t it?
Do you feel good?
How’s your stomach?
Could what you just had—assuming you’re with a date—be described, by any stretch of the imagination, as a “romantic” experience? Honestly now. I know you spent a lot of money. But look across the seat at the woman with you. Do you really think she’s breathlessly anticipating getting back to your apartment to ride you like the Pony Express? Or do you think it far more likely that (like you) she’s counting the seconds till she can get away for a private moment or two and discreetly let loose with a backlog of painfully suppressed farts? That what she’d much prefer to do right now, rather than submit to your gentle thrusting, is to roll, groaning and miserable, into bed, praying she’s not going to heave up four hundred dollars worth of fine food and wine?
And you—are you even up to the job? Any thoughts of sexual athleticism likely disappeared well before the cheese course.
That’s a fair criterion, right? Least you could ask of a meal—by classical standards, anyway.
To establish precedent, let’s take Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli in Spain—perhaps the longest and most famous of the tasting menus. After the full-on experience there—about five sustained hours of eating and drinking—I felt pretty good. I hung around drinking gin and tonics for another two hours—after which I could, I believe, have performed sexually and then happily gone out for a snack.
Le Bernardin in New York offers a “Chef ’s Tasting Menu” and I always feel fine after. Both meals are pretty carefully calibrated experiences. Laurent Gras’s L2O in Chicago, Andoni Aduriz’s Mugaritz in Saint Sebastian both take a modest and reasoned approach to the limits of the human appetite.
I mentioned chefs dreading tasting menus.
Consider the curse of Ferran Adrià. Not Ferran Adrià the chef, restaurateur, and creative artist. Ferran Adrià the diner—the “eater,” as he puts it. Ferran Adrià the frequent flyer. Doomed to walk this earth subjected to every jumped-up tasting menu, every wrongheaded venture in “molecular gastronomy” (a term he no longer uses), the interminable, well-intended ministrations of every admirer in every city and every country he may go. Imagine being Ferran Adrià. Food and wine festivals, chefs’ conferences, book tours, symposia. Everywhere he goes, there’s no getting out of it: he either gets dragged proudly to what his local handlers see as his kindred spirit—or he’s just obliged, when in Melbourne or Milwaukee or wherever, to pay homage to the local Big Dog, who’s famously worshipful of him. There’s no slipping in and out of town quietly without dissing somebody. He’s got to go.
One twenty-, thirty-course tasting menu after another, one earnest but half-baked imitator after another, wheeling out the tongue-scorching liquid nitrogen, the painfully imitative, long-discarded-by-Adrià foams, the clueless aping of Catalonian traditions they’ve probably never experienced firsthand.
And all the guy wants is a fucking burger.
Ferran Adrià walks into a bar…it’s like a joke, right? Only, I’m guessing, it’s no longer a joke to him. Because Ferran Adrià can’t walk into a bar—without six or seven freebie courses he never wanted showing up in front of him. When all he wanted was a burger.
Thomas Keller surely knows this pain. If the stories are true, when Keller goes out to dinner, an assistant calls ahead and explicitly orders the restaurant to not, under any circumstances, send any extra courses. There will be no unasked-for amuse-bouches. The chef does not want to see your interpretation of his signature “oysters and pearls.” He’s coming in for your chicken on a stick—which is quite good or he wouldn’t be coming—so please, leave the man alone.
You’re thinking, oh, the poor dears, great chefs all over the world wanting to stuff expensive ingredients in their faces…fuck them! But c’mon…Imagine, day after day, tired from long flights, one hotel bed after another, bleary-eyed, exhausted, craving nothing more complicated than Mom’s meatloaf, a simple roasted chicken—and here it comes, another three-hour extravaganza, usually a less good version of what you do for a living every day. It’s like being an overworked porn star and everywhere you go in your off-hours people are grabbing your dick and demanding a quickie.
Sitting here, wrestling with my reaction to last night’s meal at Per Se, I look back again; I search my memory for details from that greatest meal of my life at the French Laundry. There were me, Eric Ripert, Scott Bryan, and Michael Ruhlman. Twenty-two-some-odd courses—most of them different for each of us. God knows how many wines. A perfect, giddily excited five hours in wine country, thoughtfully punctuated by piss breaks. No one could have asked for more of a meal. Every plate seemed fresh and new—not just the ingredients, but the concepts behind them as well. It was a magical evening filled with many magical little moments. Those memories come back first:
The silly expressions on all our faces at the arrival of the famous cones of salmon tartare—how the presentation “worked” exactly as it was supposed to. Even on the chefs and on Ruhlman, Keller’s coauthor on the cookbook.
&n
bsp; The surprise course of “Marlboro-infused coffee custard with pan-seared foie gras,” a dish designed specifically for me—at the time still a three-pack-a-day smoker—an acknowledgment that I was probably tweaking for a butt around that time.
The “oysters and pearls” dish—how thrilled I was to finally taste what I’d only gaped at previously in the lush pages of The Book. How they did not disappoint—if anything, only exceeded expectations. The way the waiter’s hands trembled and shook as he shaved a gigantic black truffle over our pasta courses. How he dropped it—and how, with a look, we all agreed not to tell.
The four of us, during another break before dessert, drunk and whispering like kids on Halloween in the Laundry’s rear garden as we snuck up to the kitchen window and spied enviously on Keller and his crew.
After-dinner drinks in the garden with the chef. Dark by now—and very late, the restaurant closing down. The way Keller seemed to vibrate at another, slower, deeper pitch than every other chef I’d met. He seemed a happy yet still restless man, sitting there, surrounded by growing things, the place he’d built. I asked the famously workaholic chef if he’d ever consider taking time off—just doing nothing for a month—and he reacted as if I’d asked the question in Urdu, tilting his head and trying to make out what I possibly could have meant. I remember pulling away in our ridiculous rented prom limousine, knowing that I had had the best meal of my life.
But I remember now another detail, something I’d forced from my memory as inconvenient. That didn’t fit in the picture I was painting for myself—of an idyllic five hours in wine country, a timelessly magnificent meal prepared by a chef I idolized.
I push myself to remember what came after—what happened after we pulled away in our silly white stretch. There was little revelry in the back of that car. I remember moaning and heavy breathing. A struggle to hold on.
We willingly and enthusiastically ate and drank too much—this is clear. But this, I’d argue, is what is expected when you order the grand tasting at the Laundry or at Per Se. That you will—or should, if you’re sensible—prepare yourself in advance: maybe fast for a day. Wake up early the morning of your dinner and stretch your stomach with water. And the following day must be planned for as well. There will—there must—be a period of recovery.