Chef Grant Achatz talks lifetime achievement award, cancer journey, what's next for Alinea
Later this month, Chef Grant Achatz will receive a lifetime achievement award for culinary excellence at the Jean Banchet Awards in Chicago.
It will cap off a season of personal and professional milestones for the influential chef, whose groundbreaking fine dining restaurant Alinea, 1723 N. Halsted St., is celebrating 20 years.
"This year really surprised me," Chef Achatz said.
For a chef whose name is synonymous with culinary surprise, leave it to life to catch Achatz off guard.
"I turned 50 last year. So I'm right in that, you know, that age where everybody's like, 'Oh, midlife crisis,' he said, "and I remember being younger, and I'm like, there is no such thing. There's definitely such a thing."
Achatz, whose world-renowned restaurant was built on the ethos of near constant change and creativity, is no stranger to the swerves of life. Being diagnosed with stage 4 tongue cancer at the height of Alinea's early success was no doubt the biggest. But this season has offered its own opportunities for change — marrying the love of his life, becoming a mentor, and leaning into what's next for Alinea.
"This will always be home," Achatz said of alinea. "But creatively, I think the future for us is responding outside of these four walls,"
For now, that means taking Alinea on the road. In its anniversary year, Achatz brought Alinea to Brooklyn, Beverly Hills, Tokyo, and, more recently, Big Sky, Montana.
"The thing that I enjoy the most about the pop-ups is that each one of them has its own set of challenges and therefore its own set of potential creative outcomes," he said.
In Beverly Hills, the Alinea team took over eight areas of a hotel for a dining experience they called "Progression."
"Each area was thematically heavily built out by a production team," Achatz said. "So, it was like an interactive play with our food. And to me, it was like the most creative we've been in 20 years. and it felt new and fresh. And I was like, uh-oh."
Achatz began to reflect on how meeting his wife and how love had changed his life
"It's changed me a lot," he said. "You know, I was finally ready to allow another love in my life for the first time. I didn't have space for that. It was all about this. And I was young and silly. And maybe I didn't then. But now it has only made this work side of the brain more powerful and have more output. Yeah. It's really something."
When it comes to receiving the lifetime achievement award, Achatz said it makes him really want to give back.
"I feel like looking back and being honored for a breadth of work, a body of work that is so dense, it makes me really want to give back," he said. "And that has been sort of a revelation of this year. like, engaging more, being more of a mentor, it's time. Like, for me personally, that was never in the front of my mind. It was always about, let's go today. And now it's like, oh yeah, I remember how I felt when I was 25. I'm going to go chat with him, and when you have something like the Banchet committee, go, hey, what you've done over your career thus far has made a major impact on the industry, that's really special. yeah."
Achatz said sometimes he thinks about how he would feel the day he closes shop.
"Sometimes I walk in when nobody's in here, and I look around, and I'm like, I wonder how I'll feel the very last day when I lock the door and walk away. That would be a very emotional day," he said.
But it should come as no surprise that day is a long way off.
Achatz did not answer questions about Alinea's recent loss of a Michelin star, but he did talk about how artificial intelligence could be used within the Alinea group.