The kitchen was approximating gridlock on a blistering day, with 40 or so white-jacketed chefs maneuvering amid a tight maze of blasting burners, grills and ovens.
But the real action was in the cool of the garage next door.
Here, some of the best chefs in Chicago — and the country — were watching a science project otherwise known as dessert: Ben Roche, pastry chef for the Near West restaurant Moto, was handing his boss, chef Homaro Cantu, multicolored balloons containing watermelon and saffron liquid and enough nitrogen gas to make the shape perfectly round.
Cantu was then rolling the balloons in a liquid nitrogen bath that was producing the kind of big bubbles and wispy white smoke you might associate with a production of “Macbeth.”
“The alchemy in the garage,” David Myers, chef of Los Angeles’ Sona, laughed admiringly as he watched Roche hang an instantly frozen balloon on a bent hanger affixed to a clothesline. After a few minutes Cantu would cut away the balloon, revealing a glistening orange sphere to be wrapped in cellophane and placed in a top-loading freezer.
A few hours later these hollow balls would have a hot kumquat soup poured over them to become — along with a garnish of two grapes injected with CO2 to make them fizzy — the ninth and most far-afield of 10 courses served at Sunday’s James Beard Foundation dinner at Charlie Trotter’s.
The event ostensibly was a fundraiser and show of support for the scandal-racked foundation, whose former president pleaded guilty earlier this year to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the non-profit organization. But the evening also was a showcase for nine chefs who used to work at Trotter’s and were asked back by their former boss to prepare a dish each for this $250-a-plate dinner — and it could be seen as a highly collegial scrimmage in the competitive world of what Trotter calls “the grand cuisine.”
Trotter may have sparked headlines and heated debate with his recently revealed foie gras ban and scathing attack on Tru chef Rick Tramonto (a Trotter alum who, no surprise, was not one of the dinner’s participants), but Sunday’s event was more representative of the true battle for the soul of fine dining.
(And no, no one served foie gras, although Roche noted that at Moto the orange sphere typically is presented alongside the controversial fatty duck liver. “I was kind of hoping that everyone would be banding together and every chef would be serving foie gras,” joked Roche, another former Trotter cook.)
Trotter was one of the revolutionaries when he opened his restaurant in 1987, emphasizing fresh domestic ingredients and bold flavor combinations over the traditional heavier, saucier French preparations. His approach has since become the norm for many contemporary American chefs, and his influence was inescapable Sunday night, with not a bearnaise or hollandaise sauce to be found on any plate.
Amid the kitchen frenzy, Trotter sous-chef Giuseppe Tentori said most of the Beard dinner courses would fit comfortably into the restaurant’s approach. For instance, Sven Mede, chef of Nob Hill in Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, was preparing Alaskan Wild King Salmon with Red Wine-Braised Sweetbreads, Morel Mushrooms & Baby Beets.
“This is totally Charlie Trotter kind of style,” Tentori said.
Trotter’s course Sunday night was Slowly Poached Goat with Black Cardamom-Charred Eggplant and Porcini Mushrooms, one of those dishes in which each bite reveals a different taste experience.
But Trotter also had invited three of the most nationally recognized up-and-comers on the Chicago dining scene: Cantu, whose science-based approach has attracted much attention; Graham Elliot Bowles, whose innovative work at Avenues (in the Peninsula Hotel) recently earned a rare 4-star rating from Chicago magazine; and Grant Achatz, former chef of the then-4-star Trio, whose new restaurant, Alinea, is the most highly anticipated foodie mecca in years; it’s scheduled to open May 4 less than a mile south of Trotter’s on North Halsted.
`Forward movement’
These three are often grouped together in “the whole forward movement,” as Bowles calls it, and their dishes strayed the furthest from the Trotter style.
“There’s a certain bond, a certain respect that we all share,” Achatz said of the chefs participating in Sunday’s event. “But if you really came down to it, you would see the divide.”
That divide could be perceived just from listening to the chefs discuss their philosophies.
For his dessert of Chino Farms Carrots with Venezuelan Chocolate, Myers emphasized how the vegetables and accent herbs had been picked just the previous day, and he had devised the dish’s final preparation just that afternoon. “For us, it’s all about simplicity and the truth and finding each element and being able to have such a master technique and control that you can go in any direction at any moment and the dish will still be something really brilliant,” Myers said.
Mede said his salmon dish was representative of his overall approach: “It’s very fresh product cooked very simply. Small, tight, clean flavors.”
Bowles, who is far keener on manipulating ingredients (Avenues serves a chilled foie gras lollipop called a “foie-lipop”), has little use for the naturalistic approach.
“To me, the most boring thing is to talk about `I like to use farm fresh products,'” he said. “Who doesn’t?”
Flavor-packed
Bowles’ dish, which opened the meal, packed a lot of flavors into a light package that included soy caramel, slivers of yellowtail, shaved radish, pickled maitake, shiso oil, yuzu foam and hijiki seaweed powder.
Achatz’s course was more of a departure. He skewered cubes of cobia, a meaty fish, plus a cherry and a chunk of beet on grill-kissed cinnamon sticks and served them face down in highball glasses partly filled with red-wine pudding and bittersweet cocoa foam. Beforehand Achatz was nervous that Trotter might disapprove of his wanting to serve the dish without utensils — you ate it off the sticks, thus allowing the cinnamon smell to waft into your nose — but he got the OK.
Achatz acknowledged that walking back into Trotter’s kitchen 10 years later after toiling there for one brief summer was a loaded moment. “There’s a certain tenseness to it,” he said. “The air was thick — but in a good way.”
“It’s kind of like going back to a high school reunion where you’re not quite sure if you’ve lived up to people’s expectations of you,” said Bowles, who worked at Trotter’s restaurant and To Go store for several years.
Cantu, who worked at Trotter’s for four years, said he had moved on.
“I think if [my work] was an extension of what I did at Trotter’s, I’d probably still be working at Charlie Trotter’s,” Cantu said, noting that he’s more influenced by other industries. “Like right now we’re starting to get into flavors, working with flavorists of major corporate companies where they spend $10 million a year learning what the flavor is in cheese and why that flavor is also found in peaches and how we can capitalize on that. Maybe have a piece of peach that tastes like blue cheese but looks like a peach.”
Achatz said he half expected Sunday’s chefs to engage in a game of “Can you top this?” but they didn’t. The atmosphere in the kitchen, stuffed with more than twice the usual number of personnel, remained happily cooperative as the dishes had to be prepared assembly-line style, with 125 servings going out almost simultaneously.
Chefs whose courses were served early on hung around to work the line for their colleagues, so there was Zealous chef Michael Taus calling to Achatz, “Give me a job to do, chef” — he and Bowles wound up doling out red wine pudding — and longtime Trotter sidekick Geoff Felsenthal of the Illinois Institute of Art directing the assembly of salmon dishes with Myers at his side.
Crazy `Igloo’
When it was time for Cantu’s “Igloo” to be prepared, one of the Trotter cooks quipped, “This is the crazy one.”
Tucked between a burner and counter, Achatz was enjoying watching the bright orange spheres being placed in their bowls. “I gotta say it’s pretty cool. I wish there was something in the ball — if pouring the hot soup did something or released something.”
To Bowles, the future of gourmet dining will be determined in the struggle between the open-minded and closed-minded.
“This is a food revolution,” the 28-year-old chef said. “Food now is not what it was two years ago, and it’s going to continue to evolve. Everybody who is doing this new type of food seems to be younger, seems to be much more open-minded.
“And I think it’s great that somebody like Chef Trotter or Chef Tramonto or any of these other chefs that have established themselves already are sticking true to what their food is. They’re not trying to do this kind of food and be crazy. It would be just as pathetic as the Rolling Stones putting out a hip-hop album.”
Trotter, who makes a point of not repeating his own dishes, dubbed the varied approaches “exciting” but noted: “Validity comes through `Does anything have some staying power?’ There’s always going to be `What’s the next new thing?'”
Meanwhile, Trotter seemed to be having a jolly time playing host and directing the spotlight at his former employees. He told his service staff how “fantastic” it would be to have Alinea down the street, and he told the happily satiated diners of the common mission he shared with the chefs flanking him:
“We’re all trying to go to the next level and move food forward.”
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What, no foie gras?
Below are four of the 10 courses served at Sunday’s James Beard Foundation dinner, which was a showcase for some of Chicago’s — and the nation’s — top chefs.
IGLOO OF FRUIT. A hollow frozen sphere of watermelon and saffron (made with the help of nitrogen gas and liquid nitrogen) with hot kumquat soup poured over it. — Homaro Cantu, Moto
WILD FLORIDA COBIA (A FISH) on grilled cinnamon stick skewers with cherries, beets, red wine pudding and bittersweet cocoa foam. — Grant Achatz, Alinea (opens 5/4)
SEA URCHIN PANNA COTTA with a Kumamoto oyster inside, yellowfin tuna wrapped around the perimeter and seawater ponzu on top. — Michael Taus, Zealous
CHINO FARMS CARROTS AND VENEZUELAN CHOCOLATE with chocolate crepe, milk jam sauce, Indonesian long pepper ice cream, chocolate caramel sauce, cherry vinegar and microbasil. — David Myers, Sona (in Los Angeles)
