Last week, I called Charlie Trotter, the Chicago chef who has been credited with popularizing the tasting menu, haute vegetable cooking, offal, raw. He was just about to serve lunch to Richard Geoffroy, the chef de cave at Dom Perignon. ?He was finishing medical school?his parents were bankrolling it?and with one year left to go he said, ?Mom, Dad, I want to be a winemaker,?? Trotter said. ?He followed his dream, went to Dom Perignon as cellar rat, rose to be the assistant to the assistant winemaker, then the assistant winemaker, before taking over. Normally that kind of story happens in America, not France!? He paused. ?It?s sort of the inverse of what I?m about to do.?
On New Year?s Eve, Trotter announced to his staff that he?d be closing Charlie Trotter?s Restaurant, after twenty-five years. (Its last day will be August 31st.) Instead of cooking, Trotter, who is fifty-two, plans to pursue a Master of Philosophy degree, most likely at the University of Chicago. ?I?ve always loved academia and the life of the mind,? he told me. I asked him what he wanted to learn. ?There?s only one question that really matters, and that?s the God question,? he said. ?Does He or She exist, and how does that affect one?s moral perspective? Dostoyevsky, the great Christian writer, said people are not used to meeting someone who devotes themselves to a God they don?t necessarily believe in. Nietzsche announced God was dead, and then at the end of his life changed his mind?Did you hear a kiss? I was just kissing the beautiful Mrs. Trotter.?
And what did the academics make of Trotter? ?They like the fact that I?m a late bloomer,? he said. ?One of the professors asked me, ?Are you concerned that you?re going to be a whole lot older than your classmates?? I?m not. There?s a great book by Saul Bellow, the Chicagoan who won the Nobel prize and taught at the University of Chicago, called ?Henderson the Rain King? about a guy who literally started medical school when he was fifty-six. I read that when I was eighteen and was inspired. I?ve always had a romantic vision that you can do anything you want at any time in your life. What?s the worst that can happen? I can always be a cook.?
?Is there anybody in America who has not at one point or another worked in a restaurant?? he continued. ?It?s a cool thing. I liked the physical activity of it, that you had to get down and dirty, but that it?s simultaneously a mental thing. In college??Trotter went to the University of Wisconsin, dropped out for a while to read great books, and skipped his graduation ceremony??I worked in this weird restaurant in a church, The Monastery, where we had to dress up like monks. I was a waiter, and I made it a point of pride not to bring my notebook to the table, so I could look everyone in the eye as I took their order. Then I?d run back to the kitchen thinking, Uh-oh. What?d the guy on the right want??
Artful iconoclasm is Trotter?s legacy: European sensuality (food that pairs well with wine) presented with Asian minimalism (no butter, mainly organic) in a place that, when he opened, was, he said, ?known as a meat-and-potatoes city.? ?Chicago had two or three extraordinary fine-dining restaurants, and the rest were steakhouses and ethnic restaurants. What we did was hard to classify. It wasn?t French, it wasn?t Asian, it wasn?t quite American. I felt very free in Chicago to pursue that.? Then there is the chef?s table, which he instituted a few months after opening and which is now a common feature in American restaurants. The idea came to him as he was travelling through France, dining at the great restaurants. Everywhere he went he?d ask if he could see the kitchen. ???No! It?s impossible!? they?d say,? he recalled. ???It?s a forbidden zone.? I?m thinking, Are you kiddin? me? I thought, I?m going to do the opposite.?
Then Trotter had to go. Geoffroy and his other guests were waiting in the kitchen. The menu: unagi terrine with ruby red grapefruit and grilled duck heart; bob white quail in a coriander crust, served with chicken liver and watermelon radish; sea urchin ice cream with white chocolate and guava?each course paired with Dom Perignon.
Photograph by Sally Ryan/The New York Times.
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