Secure Life, On The Line: A Chefs Story Of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, And Redefining The Way We Eat Generated By Grant Achatz Displayed In Mobi

review inpoints:

, Achatz built his internationally renowned Chicagobased restaurant, Alinea, from scratch,

a. You can't afford to eat there, Me neither.

b. It's likeon Gourmet's toeat list,

c. The food is so hoitytoity that it comes with instructions,

d. A meal at this restaurant costs something like,

. Achatz caught cancer of the tongue and endured badass experimental therapy so he wouldn't have to have his tongue amputated and replaced with arm muscle.


. This book isn't about the food, That foie gras recipe It's not here,

. This book does not focus in any meaningful way on surviving cancer,

. Kokonas The joker is the business partner he shouldn't have written anything at all,

. The two insertpages of theirinvestor update about the restaurant, Puzzling.

. There isn't one nugget of explanation about what spurs Achatz to make artsyfartsy food,

. The similarity to Gary Dell'Abate's pedestrian sitelinkThey Call Me Baba Booey is positively eerie, Believe it.

. A wild time for him is something like, "Holy shit, this guy is going to plate food on the dishmachine drain board! No way!" Way, Grant.
I've been doing it for years,

. Quote: "A fucking mushroom cooler, A cooler just for mushrooms, No shit. " Actually, Mr. A. , there's a lot of shit therethat's what mushrooms eat,

Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, sitelinkBooks for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal.
Copyright Library Journal. For some reason, I am fascinated by chef memoirs! The work seems incredibly difficult, with very long hours and in many cases a very tense atmosphere.
With this book, we have a young man growing up working in his family restaurant, who has an intense passion to have his own restaurant someday, that will not only offer unique and creative food presentation but also be the best in the country.
Often described in reviews as a food genius, he manages to do just that, To me, the most interesting part among many, is his early awareness that he could not work with the typical critical and negative head chefs and had the very good fortune to train in an exceptional restaurant with a superb head chef at The French Laundry.
With a high standard established, he then opened his own restaurant and quickly won awards and ended up as top restaurant in the country, Alinea in Chicago.
At the peak of his very young but distinguished career, he was diagnosed with Stagetongue cancer,

His business partner coauthored this book and the format of them each writing during the same events was so interesting.
The bolder print was written by the chef and the lighter text, by his business partner, This started about half way through, when they met, and their dynamic was so interesting, I dont think I have come across such an intense creative person in my reading of memoirs, albeit one so completely focused on new ways to present food!

Because Im obsessed with restaurants and talented chefs, this book was right up my alley.
Since reading it I had the opportunity to dine at Grants masterpiece, Alinea, and watched the maestro in action, The reality not only did not disappoint it blew away all expectations,
This story the ups amp downs of his career and personal life was mesmerizing, Excellent book if you are a foodie and into the best chefs in the world, I'm a big fan of TV shows Top Chef and Top Chefs Masters which bring the best chefs in the US into competition.
The shows are very entertaining, My review for AP:
"Life, on the Line: A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat" Gotham Books,. by Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas: Grant Achatz had already won acclaim as one of the nation's top chefs when he was diagnosed, at age, with advanced cancer of the tongue.
The recommended treatment was devastating: A surgeon would remove his tongue, lymph nodes and a portion of his jaw, There would be chemotherapy and radiation, and still his chance of survival would only bepercent,
Achatz decided to reject treatment, Even if he survived, he wouldn't have a life he wanted, He couldn't be a chef without a tongue he couldn't cook if he couldn't taste,
It many ways, it was his business partner who saved him, Nick Kokonas researched treatments and pushed Achatz to see specialist after specialist, Then he turned to the media, An article in the Chicago Tribune got Achatz into a pioneering program at the University of Chicago, where doctors used chemotherapy and radiation to shrink the tumor before surgery, making it possible to save the chef's tongue and his life.

Achatz and Kokonas recount his battle with cancer in "Life, on the Line," which is nearly certain to be one of this year's topselling food memoirs.
Achatz already has a strong following among foodies, Gourmet magazine named his Chicago restaurant Alinea the best in the nation in, and Achatz received the James Beard Foundation's award for outstanding chef in.
His story also is sure to win a following among cancer survivors and those battling the disease,
But don't let that keep you from reading the book, This is an autobiography that rises above both those genres, Achatz's story is a compelling tale of artistic genius that will make you cry and, if you are in the Chicago area, perhaps shell outa person to eat his food.

"Life" starts, as Achatz's did, with his childhood in a small town in nowhere Michigan, His parents owned a restaurant and Achatz, an only child, grew up cooking, By high school, when his best friend was dreaming of flying fighter jets, Achatz had only one goal to own a great restaurant.

Achatz had the requisite work

ethic and selfconfidence bordering on arrogance, He graduated from the worldrenowned Culinary Institute of America, where he found the other students lacking in dedication, Then he spent a few months being berated in the kitchen of the legendary Charlie Trotter,
He couldn't take it, Achatz writes, "I wanted oneonone time and mentoring, but instead I got asskickings, "
The passage is notable because Achatz later dresses down some of his own chefs in what seems to be a similar fashion.
This is not a guy who will always warm your heart,
Achatz found his mentor in Thomas Keller of Napa Valley's The French Laundry, went on to overhaul Trio in suburban Chicago and then created Alinea as part of a wave of chefs interested in molecular gastronomy the application of scientific techniques to cooking.

He opened Alinea with Kokonas, a derivatives trader who retired in hiss and had been a regular at Trio for years.
The latter part of "Life" is told from both their perspectives, and while the transition is jarring at first because you've dropped so deep into Achatz's psyche, the second voice lends a welcome dimension to the story.
While Achatz withdrew into himself during his fight with cancer, Kokonas kept things going, He recounts how the chef's illness affected everyone around him,
Achatz is the kind of artist who sinks everything into his work, He writes about neglecting his exgirlfriend, with whom he had two children, and his gratitude that his first son was born on a day the restaurant was closed.
Again, not very heartwarming.
But, such things might be forgiven in a great artist consumed by his vision, and Achatz certainly seems to be that.
One of the most impressive aspects of "Life" is the way in which he leads the reader along the train of thought that produced a great dish.

"I remembered the wine glasses breaking," he writes, "and the smell of the raspberries, And just like that it happens, Raspberries are fragile like fine glassware, maybe even clear like stained glass, They smell like roses, so we'll pair them with roses, "
Brilliant.
"Life" ends with Achatz and Kokonas planning a new restaurant, Next, which is expected to open in Chicago this year, Achatz notes with irony and appreciative humor that the restaurant gave him an answer when people inquiring about his recovery asked, "What's next"
It's getting to a point in our culture where everyone writes a memoir.
Whether they are famous or not, regardless of their job, regardless of having anything to say, . . However, the concept of this memoir is interesting, Grant Achatz is a chef who ends up getting tongue cancer and losing his sense of taste, Poetic, right However, this doesn't even come up until about ¾ of the way through the book, The whole firstis about his restaurant and being trained as a chef, Almost nothing is mentioned about his personal life, and when it is mentioned, it is in an offhand way, no matter how serious what he is telling you is.
“Oh, then I fathered a kid with a woman I never loved, Let me tell you about this amazing French dish I made!!!! etc, ” Very disconcerting.

Also, I love cooking and food, but I can only take so much of his talking about the very strange dishes he likes to create e.
g. Candy cap mushroom ice cream with spun muscovado sugar and BliS maple syrup OR Pheasant, shallot, cider gel, and burning oak leaves and how he is a genius and how so few people understand him etc.
He is probably very egotistical in real life, however, to his credit, this does NOT come through in his writing, just very faint glimpses sometimes.
That is much appreciated, a lot of people who write memoirs are intolerable,

I think the last quarter of the book, where Chef Achatz struggles with his cancer, and tries to deal with the fact that tasting is his whole life, career, joy, etc.
and it might be taken away from him, is the best part of the memoir, Unfortunately it is very short and doesn't go enough into his mind for my liking,

Also, it should be noted that half of the book is written by ANOTHER guy, a business partner and close friend.
Why do I care about his life I guess he does offer some insight on Chef Achatz, He writes about a quarter of the book,

Overall, I would say: not badly written, but not personal enough, and he brings in the cancer too late in the book when really that is why everyone is reading in the first place.
Very disappointing. Also, the fact that it is coauthored is unnecessary and quite annoying, I didn't know what all went into making such excellent restaurants, Loved the attention to every detaila good account of his life, I really loved this book, I agree with my fellow friendreviewers that the sudden insertions of narrative from the business partner were sort of odd after reading the first twothirds of the book in Achatz's voice, but the oddness didn't detract from the enjoyment.
In any case, by that point I was invested enough in Achatz's story, and liked him enough, to appreciate seeing him through other eyes as also pointed out by a fellow friendreviewer.


It's hard to describe why I loved the book so much I've been asked twice now and failed both times but it has something to do with having vision, working like a dog, and executing it well.
Reading about the evolution of Alinea and Achatz's vision for food made me want to experience molecular gastronomy apologies to Achatz for calling it that something I've never been curious about before no mean feat.
Reading about this kind of passion and achievement was also enriching in that it is blessedly far, far removed from what I and many do for a living with such little fulfillment.
So much so that Achatz's survival and recovery are even more poignant, It's hard to imagine someone recovering from a grueling bout of cancer and feeling excited that at the end of it all, they get to go back to work at their.
. . law firm. .