Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (20 page)

Their lips mouthing, “Nooooooo! Not Trey!!! NOT TREYYY!!!” impotently in the control room as another beloved fan-favorite gets sent packing.

Judging is taken seriously by the permanent judges and guest judges alike. I’ve spent
hours
arguing with Tom, Padma, and guest judges—trying to reach a consensus on winners and losers. It is a thoughtful and considered process.

What should be stressed here is that what the contestants on
Top Chef
are asked to do is really,
really
difficult. Confined to quarters with strangers, separated from family and friends, they are asked to execute—on short notice—a bizarre progression of cooking challenges without benefit of recipes or cookbooks. Anything from “create a snack from this crap vending machine” to “make a traditional Hawaiian meal with unfamiliar ingredients” to “create a four-course high-end menu for Eric Ripert.” And do it in the rain. Over portable field-ranges. The rigors of
Top Chef
’s unpredictable, high-pressure, occasionally loony, product-placement-driven challenges (“be sure to use X brand frozen pasta dinners in your final dish”) would be brutal for any seasoned professional.

I’ll tell you honestly that if
I
were a contestant? I
might
, maybe—if I was lucky, and only through a combination of years of experience, stealth, strategy, and guile—duck and dodge my way through a few weeks. I’d never make the finals.

What’s fascinating to a professional watching the show is how other talented professional cooks and chefs are pushed to the limits of their ability. You can actually see them hit the ceiling, the place beyond which they just aren’t prepared to—just
can’t
go. And exactly
why
: a failure of the imagination, a failure of technique or strategy, maturity or experience. And yet—many times, you see contestants go
beyond
their previous abilities. You can see them dig down—or pull from left field and go higher than they’ve ever been before. This leads—all by itself—to fascinating drama for food nerds. The “best” chef—or the best all-around talent—doesn’t necessarily win. The most technically skilled cook, or the most creative, often overreaches, chokes, makes a crucial and inexplicable error of judgment. Just like real life.
That’s
what makes the show worth watching (to me, anyway)—that the chef left standing after all others have fallen represents the qualities you’d want of a chef in the real world: a combination of creativity, technical skill, leadership abilities, flexibility, maturity, grace under pressure, sense of humor, and sheer strength and endurance.

Erik Hopfinger came one thin hair away from getting snuffed right out of the box.

I was guest judge, along with Rocco DiSpirito and regulars Padma and Tom. The challenge was to re-create one of a list of midrange-restaurant cliché classics, like shrimp scampi, lasagna, steak au poivre, and duck à l’orange. The contestants drew knives to determine who got what. Erik got the soufflé.

Now, a soufflé can be a tricky thing under the best of circumstances. Most cooks learn to make them in school—and, unless they move on to become pastry chefs, are seldom called on to make them again. Ever. Because of their delicacy and time concerns, and ’cause they just haven’t been in fashion, you rarely see a soufflé of any kind in a restaurant these days. Which means very few cooks—if suddenly called upon to make one
without a recipe
—could do so. Hell, even with a recipe, I’d guess the greater part of the cooking population would fuck the job up. Me? Maybe. And that’s only because I spent six months doing almost nothing
but
making soufflés at the Rainbow Room early in my career (and they were a pretty leathery, unimpressive version, made from cement-like bechamel, cheap flavorings, and meringue). Even if you do everything right before you get your soufflé in the oven, there’s still a whole lot of ways to fuck up: pull it out too soon, it deflates by service. Too late? It burns and hollows. Slam the oven door? Forget to correctly grease and sugar the mold? Thermostat fucked? Uneven heat in the oven? Or will the thing just sit too long while they reset the cameras or apply powder to a shiny judge? The soufflé is fraught with peril. And in a competitive, high-pressure situation like
Top Chef
—where even shit you
know
how to do in your
bones
can suddenly sense fear and go south on you—well…a soufflé is a death sentence.

From the relative comfort of my judge’s chair, a freshly poured gin close at hand, I saw Erik draw the soufflé and knew the poor bastard had walked right into the grinder. He looked like he’d been punched in the stomach before he even started cooking.

In retrospect, he says now,
Top Chef
“looks a lot easier sittin’ on the couch with a joint in your mouth.”

What he came up with was a soufflé only in the most liberal interpretation of the word. It
did
come in a soufflé mold—intended, I could only guess, as an airier version of cornbread or corn pudding. But like a dog trying to cover its shit with leaves or dirt, Erik had literally piled on every trick—or trope—in the faux-Mex, Southwestern cookbook. The plate looked like the last shot of a
bukakke
video—filmed at Chili’s. There was some kind of awful avocado jiz squirted all over the plate. Some other squeeze-bottled madness…and, worst of all, the “soufflé” itself had been buried under a fried garnish either crushing the fucking thing or ineptly concealing the fact that it had never risen in the first place. Looking down with no small amount of sadness at what he’d put in front of me, I could only compare it to the work of a first-time serial killer, hurriedly and inadequately trying to dispose of his victim under twigs and brush—inevitably to be discovered by the first passing dogwalker.

What saved him that week was another contestant’s shrimp scampi. While Erik had thoroughly fucked up a hard task, she’d managed to make a hideous botch of a very simple one. Her twist on scampi involved three very basic, very simple elements—all of which she’d botched indefensibly. The shrimp was overcooked. The accompanying “flan” had curdled into an unappetizing, smegma-like substance. And she’d criminally oversalted the dish.

As happens sometime on the show, someone who failed utterly was saved solely by the fact that someone else sucked worse.

Two weeks later, the ax fell. He was sent home over a soggy corn dog.

“Did you ever belong on the show in the first place?” I ask him.

“No. I knew it all along.” He stopped watching the show after he was thrown off.

Was he ever scared? “What scares me,” he says, “is growing up. Having kids. I’m deathly afraid of having kids. Probably ’cause I
am
a big kid.” He drains his beer, examines the empty pint glass thoughtfully, and offers, “But that would probably make me a good father. I love Disneyland. The whole pirate thing. I love Disneyland.
That
makes me want to procreate.”

Of his
Top Chef
experience, he has no complaints. “They didn’t turn me into something I wasn’t.” And of his life and career in general? The good, the bad?

“I’m pretty happy with the way I’ve done things, where I’m at. I’m going down a good path. The quality of life is good. Hanging out…my friends, eating great food.

“Look,” he says, “I love cooking food. I’m not pressing any culinary envelopes. I know that. There’s a few sick fuckers like us who were actually meant to do this.”

A
while back, I had the uncomfortable
yet illuminating experience of taking part in a public discussion with one of my chef heroes, Marco Pierre White. It was at a professional forum, held in an armory in New York—one of those chef clusterfucks where the usual suspects gather once a year to give away, in the front lobby, samples of cheese, thimble-size cups of fruit-flavored beers, and wines from Ecuador. An unsuspecting Michael Ruhlman attempted to moderate this free-for-all—an unenviable job, as trying to “control” Marco is to experience the joke about the “six-hundred-pound gorilla” firsthand: he sits wherever he fucking
wants
,
when
he fucking wants to sit, and fuck you if you don’t like it. Marco was the Western world’s first rock-star chef, the prototype for all celebrity chefs to follow, the first Englishman to grab three Michelin stars—and one of the youngest chefs to do so. Every cook of my generation wanted to grow up to be Marco. The orphaned, dyslexic son of a working-class hotel chef from Leeds, he came up in an era when they still
beat
cooks. Years after famously handing back his stars at the peak of his career, he’s now got more money than he knows what to do with, has had every woman he’s ever wanted—and, as he likes to say, contents himself these days with the full-time job of “being Marco.”

He may spend much of his time stalking the English countryside with a $70,000 shotgun, contemplating the great mysteries of the natural world, half–country squire and half-hoodlum, but he’s paid his dues. He’s a man who, if you ask him a direct question, is going to tell you what he thinks.

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 “greatest” 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.