The Alinea Experience

When one enters a career where rankings come into play a competitive nature follows that ideal as well. When you want to be a great doctor you go to the best school and study under the best doctor; when you want to be a great painter you go to the best school and study under the best painter; when you want to be a lawyer you go to the best school and work at the best firm. The distinction is no different in the cooking realm.


I am a clear case of that: go to one of the premier schools and work at the best restaurant in the country; easy way to move up the ladder, quickly. Right?

I must admit that I did not want to go to school, rather go the route of being a stagiaire at many great restaurants, getting little to no pay, until one day having a great enough repertoire to work my way up in a great restaurant then open my own. Why did I think that? Well, that’s how the system is built, that is how it is done, and that is how it will always be done. Well, maybe.

After much convincing from my parents, I decided to go to Johnson & Wales University over the Culinary Institute of America (or the CIA) – the Yale versus Harvard of cooking schools. Johnson & Wales plays the role of Yale in this one: always great, but never the best and, therefore, getting pooped on from our bosses who probably went to the CIA. Many graduates of the CIA went the route of staging in places before becoming a great chef; I too wanted to follow that route – even if a small voice in my head said otherwise.

This last weekend I staged at Alinea, the best restaurant in this country, nay, continent, nay, hemisphere. Before going I had talked to a good friend of mine about his experiences at the French Laundry, the restaurant that was of the same status Alinea is now. He, after four months of being a kitchen bitch, despised it and, with all his talents, is on the ropes as to whether or not he wants to continue cooking. Though him and I approach food differently, we have very parallel ideals about our mentality approaching a kitchen and cooking as a whole. It boils down to, very simply, “Here’s a valium, now relax!”

In the weeks and months prior to going to Alinea I had begun to imagine my life in a kitchen as a rebuttal or a retort to the ways of how a kitchen should look like. Rather than spending countless hours picking herbs, juicing fruit, or dicing onions I would assemble a team of likeminded cooks and open a restaurant: a half dozen or so trustworthy, respectable cooks who could push each other, creatively, without an air of competitiveness. That last word is the word I was probably most worried about when I entered the kitchen of Alinea this last Friday, and, I must say, I hate it when I am right.

Walking around Alinea is an awe inspiring event, it is a near Mecca in the food world: its nearly unfathomable ability to blend into its surroundings in the Lincoln Park district of Chicago does give it an air of mystery and of reverence; both of which would be squashed by the end of my trial there. Upon entering the back of the kitchen I met the chef de cuisine who told me simply, with a slight huff and indignation in his breath, that I needed to go in the basement and there I could “get set up.” I, still, am unsure what he meant by that and, by the occurrences of the following events, I might never truly know what that means.

After getting as “set up” as I could reasonably asses, I climbed the stairs and gingerly opened the door the kitchen that was rivaling Europe’s most elite, aged, and heirloom restaurants. Let me say that I have never felt my hand shake so hard. I was also anticipating something horrible to happen: I would close the door too hard and everyone would stop and stare at me (and yes, that does happen there); or I might turn the corner too quickly and stab someone with my knife that I had to carry because I was not allowed to bring my knife kit upstairs; or I would hit someone who was working furiously, knock them over, and cause a huge ruckus; really none of that happened (especially because I was warned by a friend of the first item). There was no time, though, to appreciate the grandeur of the moment as I was quickly shifted in prep mode as there were chestnuts to peel, and peel I must!

Now I knew that the prep at a place like Alinea would seem unnecessary at times (understatement) or even an abomination of what I love about cooking (still an understatement), but, as my second job pointed out, that even having an understanding that I might have those feelings or sensations did not slow their haste into my thought process. After peeling the chestnuts (that had to be done while still in the boiling water they were cooked in) I was handed a bucket filled with five gallons of coconut meat so that I may juice it. I now ask that you take a few moments to digest that last sentence.

(Pausing)

Good.

First off I could write many more pages on the intricacies of how much that statement delineates the biggest issues I have with the “great” restaurants in the world – mainly for the very simple fact that we are in Chicago, I have lived in Chicago for more than a decade, and I have NEVER seen a coconut tree growing in Chicago – rather I will continue on with the more immediate economic implications of that statement. It is so easy to open up a can of coconut milk (which was essentially what I was making) and save money, time, and way too much wear and tear on my arm (the latter is just for my sake, the two former are for the sake of the restaurant). Yes, fresh coconut milk is incomparable to the can, but the amount of money put forth to deliver said coconut to Chicago is astronomical and, honestly, a frivolous expense that has, and will continue to, undermined whatever is left of the sanctity of this industry.

Again, I do not mind doing something extra to give that certain edge to the food for quality, aesthetics, or flavor, I do not even mind doing many extra things to achieve that, but there is a line somewhere and though I am still trying to find it I know, of a certainty, that it was crossed in this moment.

That was the issues I had with just the food. The way one treats another person is really the clinching moment where I knew that this restaurant was not the one for me.

I knew, again, from the beginning that I, in their eyes, was a partial step up from garbage and whatever I knew, in regards to cooking, was irrelevant at best. That much I knew upon gingerly creeping into that kitchen. Still, that is not, nor will it ever be, an excuse for me to mistreat another human being especially when, at the end of the day, no matter how much you try, someone is still going to poop out what you just made. With that said, a level of detachment has to occur, somewhere. Yes, I am going to put my heart and soul into that food and yes, I will be upset if I or anyone makes a mistake, but STILL it is a digestible and temporary art form. You have to detach yourself and understand that once outside of your physical grasp it is no longer yours to keep, no longer something you can alter, adjust, and edit – it is a past tense attempt at perfection and what you are making right now is all you can offer to the guests.

You move on.

When someone makes a mistake, you move on. When someone is told to vacuum seal squab stock, all twelve gallons of it, and spills about five tablespoons, in my book, that is an accomplishment. In this establishment, one so grounded in perfection that it has lost the love and the wonderment of food, that accomplishment is seen more as a fault. Which is hard to digest for someone who has been noted for taking things too personally in the past.

When conversing with my friends who work or worked in restaurants I made sure they understood the effervescent and resounding air of competitiveness that sickens nearly everyone there. The analogy I made was that it is like becoming a really great high school quarterback (maybe you win state), then you go on and have a very successful college career (maybe you win the National Championship or the Heisman), just to get drafted by the Indiana Colts. Though you are excited and very nervous to be playing for a professional football team you quickly realize that to get the notoriety you, maybe, deserve or want you have to beat out Peyton Manning at his own game. Not to mention, that, for some reason, there are thirty other people all with equal or exceeding credentials to your own stellar ones, who, just so happen to be vying for the same position. The kicker in all of this is that only the top ten quarterbacks on the team get paid, and only three backups get a livable wage. So you kick, and scratch, and claw, and bite until one day you are getting paid very well just to realize that whatever dignity, self respect, and personal morality has turned into indignation and self depravity of the utmost regard. Nothing, like I said earlier, is worth that.

I will always be a proponent of the chase for perfection – I try to live it – but there is a price to pay for it as well. When one gets to the level that Alinea is at you have to make clear and concise sacrifices for what you want. Usually it is a social life, family, friends, and things of that nature. In the realm of consciousness that I follow those things are not things, they are the fabric of life; cooking is a glorified hobby that I can get paid doing. I love it to death, I have lost a lot of good and bad things in my life pursuing a career in this field. But, still, I have my sanctity, I have balance. I want a family and I want a great restaurant, both of those things I know I will get with a lot of hard work and, still, some sacrifice. But I will get them, I just will not go about it the way I have been told I should go about it.