GAF wrote:I remember when some years ago I ate at Trotters with my wife. She had the vegetable menu which was absolutely perfect. I had the excellent chef's menu, and I mentioned to the waitress after I finished a fish dish that it had been a little overcooked for my taste (not enough to send back, but enough to mention). The menu continued, and as well were leaving Charlie came up to us with a collection of his cookbooks (signed) as an apology.
He kept himself to the same high standards that he kept his employees.
Jean Blanchet, Grant Achatz, and Charlie Trotter are the chefs who created Chicago as a global culinary destination.
I will save my Banchet and Achatz memories for another time, but with Trotter it was a tale of two meals.
In the 80s, probably his first or second year of operation, my beloved grandmother (also my primary food muse) took my new wife and me to dinner at Trotter's. That place was so open, light, relaxed and we went on a weekday evening when perhaps three tables were occupied. My wife, who is picky about her meat, chose the vegetarian tasting, while Gram and I stuck with the meat. By the second course, a basil broth, it was clear to me that I had ordered badly. That broth was an ethereal experience, an aroma so wonderful and enveloping, yet subtle and not overpowering, as anything I have ever enjoyed. On the palate it seemed to evaporate, leaving a clean, essential and perfect flavor of basil - a feat of culinary magic. It left me with a wonderful, vivid, enduring memory, and changed how I view food.
I believe we went back once or twice in the 80s, but my grandmother soon passed away, children came, and we ventured in a lot less frequently from the suburbs.
The other meal was about 20 years later, a late reservation at 9pm with some friends and exquisite wine (La Tour from the 60s). The place could not have felt more different - crazy busy, much more formal and stiff, harried staff. They did not seat us until after 10, no real apology beyond stating that the previous reservation ran late, and we did not get our main courses until after 11. Too late for this old guy, and the meal and experience left me feeling that the place I remembered so fondly was long gone, and I never had to go back again.
As a person I feel for Charlie. It is too easy to see the path of his restaurant and the nature of his death as some sort of expression of who he was, a sort of Greek tragedy about an individual who needed but was unable to find the grace necessary to navigate the life he created. I have no idea of the truth of that, though I do know that a public persona rarely looks much like the reality of the person behind it. Perhaps time will reveal more. As a chef and restaurateur he lost me years ago, gradually becoming a caricature of himself, and a staid, overbearing institution that demanded a sort of obeisance that is neither unique or unreasonable, but in return I expected something a lot more delightful and interesting than what was delivered in recent years. Trotters the restaurant was done for me.
For all that, I will always remember that one meal and the joy he gave me.
d
Feeling (south) loopy