CHICAGO (By Christopher Borrelli,
Chicago Tribune) October 11, 2009
―
Rick Bayless moves without a word
from the kitchen of his new
restaurant to the counter. He stands
before a torta resting in a shallow
pool of tomato broth. He leans in,
grabs the two halves of the sandwich
that has been placed standing on
end, and presses on the thick pieces
of bread, pushing the carnitas and
black beans and pickled onions
together. He does this to
concentrate the flavors, and he does
this because it's a torta and if you
order a sandwich and the filling has
toppled out and the bread slid from
its foundation, you wouldn't think
highly of your torta. He does this
gently and though he does it without
a word, he does it with more
intensity and irritation than he has
all afternoon. You would have to
watch closely, for many hours,
before noticing the slightest sign
of a fissure in his bright,
energetic composure. Nonetheless, it
is happening.
Rick Bayless is starting to fray.
"No, no," he says to himself,
pressing another torta together.
Things are unraveling.
It is 2:35 p.m. on a Thursday. The
line at his new restaurant, Xoco,
which is committed to Mexican street
food, is out of the door and down
Illinois Street. At 3 p.m., the menu
will switch from tortas and Mexican
snacks to caldos, or soups, which
means the assembly line of cooks
behind the counter needs to prepare
for the switch, which means doing
things they don't have time to do
because the line is not easing.
Which means tortas are starting to
come out wrong, and the floor behind
the counter is getting dirty.
Despite their ubiquitous mutter of
"Behind you," cooks are banging into
one another. A chef from Bayless'
Frontera Grill, next door, wants to
assure him that new pans were
ordered. A television crew from WGN
stops by. A reporter from Univision
wants to talk. Then a photographer
from Zagat.
He looks dizzy.
So, without a word, Bayless wipes
his hands on his apron and abandons
his post alongside his cooks, most
of whom are not that used to having
the boss, let alone a celebrity chef
who draws intent stares from
customers, cooking alongside them
all day.
Bayless walks with his head down
through a side door connecting Xoco
with Frontera Grill, his first
restaurant, which opened in 1987 and
eventually spun off a line of jarred
salsas, a cookbook empire, a PBS
series, etc. There, his wife, Deann,
is sitting at the bar with his
longtime manager, Jen Fite. He says
they are stopping. For maybe 15
minutes. Just to reboot. "It's
tenuous over there!" he says in a
harsh whisper. Heads crane in his
direction. Then, softer, he says:
"This is the first time since
opening we started serving crap! I'm
letting crap clear that counter.
Because we cannot keep up."
Deann says no, you are not serving
crap.
Fite, who looks stricken, says he
should not close, not now; the whole
point of the new restaurant is to
stay open when the other Bayless
restaurants are closed, so customers
can get his flavors all day and not
just during the lunch and dinner
times. He nods. For a long moment,
no one speaks.
Then Deann asks: "How much staff do
you need to get back to a normal
pace?"
"I just don't know."
He turns, walks through the kitchen,
rejoins the line, his jaw set, his
face hard, and stops serving food
for 45 minutes.
Rick Bayless has a cold.
This is the first thing he tells me
when we meet, a day earlier -- that
he has a cold, and that he has
laryngitis, and that he feels
terrible, and that he's really sorry
I picked this week to shadow him but
maybe, you know, now
is not
the time, that maybe I should come
back next week or something. He does
not smile when he says this, and he
does not say this with any apparent
degree of apology, but rather a
barely concealed annoyance that I
actually showed up. I had planned to
be at his side for two days, morning
until night, to listen to every
conversation, to watch and taste,
and see what emerges from the small
details and fleeting moments of the
daily life of this superstar chef,
arguably the most recognizable
American chef of the moment. He
agreed, but at this moment, a punch
to my face seems a more likely
emergence. Xoco (pronounced SHO-ko)
opened 24 hours earlier, and he
bares a look of irritation and
anxiety that, friends and associates
assure, is rare for him to show in
public.
"He has two faces," said Amado
Lopez, the night chef at Xoco. "They
shot (the PBS series 'Mexico: One
Plate at a Time') at Frontera last
year. He was low key, then the
minute they yelled 'Action!' he got
really animated. But that's not
phony. The pressure is on when you
work in his kitchens. So many people
come here just to look at him, or
with an idea of him, there is
pressure to perform, to give your
best face. Everyone feels that. But
it's a more subtle pressure than in
other kitchens. Other chefs get mad
faster. Rick is colder, more
subdued. You never see him lose it.
I never have."
Bayless is unusual.
Unusual in the unrelenting grin that
is his public face. Unusual in that
he built an empire on Mexican
cuisine, despite growing up in
Oklahoma City, the white son of
barbecue chefs. Unusual in that few
chefs, famous or otherwise, have
done years of doctoral work in
linguistics (at the University of
Michigan). Unusual in that, despite
winning both chef and restaurant of
the year awards from the James Beard
Foundation (then following up with a
Beard Humanitarian of the Year
Award, in 1998), he decided to
endorse a chicken sandwich for
Burger King in 2003.
But also, unlike other well-known
chefs who have reached his level of
respect, his restaurants -- Frontera,
Topolobampo, now Xoco -- have stayed
financially approachable. And then
there's the decision to do "Top Chef
Masters." Despite being among a few
Chicago restaurateurs still firmly
established decades after arriving,
he chose to appear on the popular
Bravo reality show and risk that
reputation before a national
audience.
Bayless, 55, said he wondered about
that himself, but in the end, it was
more important that he keep trying
something new, even if he failed. He
said he didn't want to become "one
of those chefs always making the
same thing they made 20 years ago."
He said later, "We don't really make
a lot of money in this business.
It's a hard one too. Hours are long.
And the one thing you never have is
time. I think for a lot of people
who do this, the most meaningful
thing becomes their time, and how
they spend it."
Hubert Keller, the French chef of
San Francisco's Fleur de Lys, who
ran neck and neck with Bayless on
"Top Chef Masters," said he has
known Bayless since 1988, the year
they both appeared on Food and Wine
magazine's annual Best New Chefs
list.
"Rick was the person then that he is
today," Keller said. "He is that
earnest guy you see. During the
show, he suggested I use a pressure
cooker for one dish. I said I have
never used a pressure cooker. Once
the show was over, he sends me a
pressure cooker. The thing is, there
is little one can hide after you've
been in business as long as we've
been. Everyone in the industry knows
who the good guys are and bad guys
are, and what they say about you
after so many years is either truth
or has become truth."
Bayless is unusual, too, in that,
with few bumps over the years, he
has gained more than he has lost.
Particularly the last year or so,
which began with the Obamas swinging
by for a postelection dinner. It
continued in the spring when the
James Beard Foundation held its
nomination ceremony for the first
time outside New York and chose
Frontera Grill for the location. In
August, it was revealed that he won
"Top Chef Masters" and $100,000 for
the Frontera Farmer Foundation,
which he started six years ago to
promote sustainability among small
farms. By Labor Day, waits at
Frontera were stretching as long as
four hours -- which hasn't been true
in years -- and reservations at
Topolobampo required eight weeks'
notice. The next day, he opened his
first restaurant since 1989. (Frontera
Fresco, a fast-casual space in
Macy's on State, opened in 2005.) By
October, his 140-member staff, in
three restaurants, was serving 2,000
people a day.
"Rick makes us all look like
underachievers," said Carrie
Nahabedian, the chef/owner of Naha,
which has been cater-corner from
Frontera for nine years. "Despite it
all, he has not expanded (outside
Chicago) -- if a lot of us get
offers to open restaurants across
the country, imagine the offers he
gets. But he is firm about not
prostituting himself. He has learned
where to draw the line and he knows
better than to jeopardize the future
of everything just because of this
moment he's going through right
now."
Bayless hasn't worked the line in 15
years. Which means he hasn't stood
through roughly 12-hour shifts,
chopping, washing, arranging -- the
day-to-day, dish-to-dish life of a
busy kitchen. He tells me, in fact,
that he has been less of a presence
in the dining room over the years.
"I used to poke my head into the
tables more, but servers tell me it
slows everything down."
And yet because he hasn't opened a
restaurant in a while, and because a
lot of people are looking at him
now, he decided to camp at Xoco for
the week. He places a cloth to his
left, a tasting spoon to his right.
The spoon stays in this spot for 12
hours; after he uses it, he returns
it to its exact spot, every time. He
says it's compulsive, "the way kids
need to have things exactly where
things belong."
A few hours later, Lopez kicks a
cook off the line. He thought the
guy wasn't organized, that he was
slowing everyone down. Bayless
sighs. "I think the poor guy was in
tears," he says, then returns to his
place, glancing at order tickets,
slicing bread. He cracks an egg,
stands over a pan, shifts the yolk,
steps back, flips it with a flick,
says "Egg," turns and slides it onto
charred toast.
Behind him, Shaw Lash, Xoco's
morning and afternoon chef, whom
Bayless met on a trip to Mexico, is
shifting tortas around the
wood-burning oven. Bayless watches
and nods, then leaves for the
Frontera kitchen. He walks that
line, lingering over a bubbling
sauce a moment, then moving on. He
does this three times a day,
tasting, then suggesting, asking a
few questions.
As he steps back into Xoco, he is
immediately grabbed by a customer, a
small, round woman. "I just want to
thank you for opening another
restaurant and representing my
country," she says to Bayless, who
steps back, pauses and says, "Thank
you."
As Bayless moves on, a young man
waiting for food calls after him:
"Rick, do you like being a
celebrity?"
"No, yes, no, yes," Bayless mumbles
to himself.
Back on the line, he leans back
against the counter and pulls out an
iPhone. He texts his daughter, Lanie,
who left the weekend before to start
freshman year at New York
University. Then he answers a few
questions from fans via Twitter --
people forget, but Bayless'
promotional streak is so ingrained,
his first cookbook came out a month
before
he opened Frontera. He cooks awhile,
then walks back into the Frontera
kitchen and finds Brian Enyart and
Richard James, chefs de cuisine at
Topolobampo and Frontera. He wants
to show them something. He walks
them over to a new fire door, a
bulky metal thing, with steel chains
strung along its frame.
"I am horrified by this!" Bayless
says, hands at his cheeks. "Have you
seen anything so ghetto in all your
life? A health code violation? It's
terrible. The most ghetto-looking
thing I've ever seen."
At 8:30 p.m., a server at Xoco locks
the front door and the kitchen stops
taking orders, a half-hour before
the official closing time. If they
don't, Bayless decides, they will be
serving food for hours. At 10 p.m.,
he says, "I'm going home."
We walk through Frontera's kitchen.
He says he comes here now for quiet.
We talk a little about whether he
could ever own the block, because
they rent the building now. Not
enough capital, Bayless says. Then,
apropos of nothing, he tells me he
hates sports, and in his breathless
style:
"I grew up in a family of people who
were and still are wild about
sports, and I hated sports. I was
always the outcast of the family. I
don't know if you know my brother,
Skip, a sports writer (formerly of
the Tribune). He's on ESPN. Well, my
mother is totally into sports and
suddenly now I'm OK in my family
because I was in a competition and I
won. But, see, all the awards I have
won are judged my peers and that
doesn't really make a difference to
my family. All those James Beard
awards -- nice, but they don't care.
It's all, like, so what? They don't
see being in business and being
successful is to be competitive. No,
now they see the competitive side
because it has been acknowledged.
"My mother was thrilled about 'Top
Chef.' She said, 'I have gotten
calls from all over the country and
people can't believe
you
won.' Thanks, Mom. My mother's
neighbor three doors down found out
that I was her son and she said,
'When he comes back to visit, could
I meet him?' And my mother's husband
said to me, 'You would think you
were some kind of sports guy or
something!'
"See, that's the world I come from.
The only people who matter in that
world are sports people. But now I'm
legitimate. I wasn't legitimate
before, no matter what I won. And
now I'm legitimate."
The next morning, after breakfast
rush subsides, Bayless removes his
apron, turns to me and, coughing out
the words, says he is going to a
doctor. With comedic precision,
moments after he leaves, a city crew
moves in and erects a large fence
strung with a green curtain around
the corner of Illinois and Clark
streets, obstructing Xoco's front
window, where pastry chefs can be
seen grinding chocolate beans, a
living advertisement for Mexican
desserts. Next, large orange
barricades are installed. An hour
later, Bayless returns. I see him
crossing Clark, lower jaw jutted,
arms flapping with incredulity. He
stalks in, expression frozen.
"Can you believe this?" he says to
Andrew McCaughan, his assistant.
"Gone in a week, they said."
"They could have said they were
coming."
The Frontera Empire, which has grown
large enough to stretch across the
tops of the restaurants and through
a network of basements and
sub-basements beneath, is "almost
single-handedly responsible for
renovating a stretch of Clark, I
think," chef Charlie Trotter told me
later. "People forget how seedy it
was over there, full of porno shops,
before Rick stepped in. He made a
difference. But he is incredibly
scrupulous."
Indeed, though the restaurant
business can be a transient one for
rank and file, it's not unusual for
staff to stick with Bayless a decade
or more. (Deann told me they
recently had two employees celebrate
their 20th anniversary with Frontera
and, as a thank-you, were given a
week off with pay and a trip --
anywhere in the world.)
By 11:30 a.m., the line has started
another ominous creep out the door,
its third in three days of business.
Bayless spends 15 minutes chatting
with an owner of La Quercia, a
popular Iowa-based prosciutto
producer. There's a discussion of
whether to start takeout. Bayless
wants to start. His managing
partner, Carlos Alferez (a dead
ringer for Howie Mandel), making hot
chocolate, turns and disagrees. The
issue is left in the air. An hour
later, Xoco, overwhelmed, grinds to
a halt for the first time.
Bayless turns to McCaughan, his
white goatee in a scowl, and says,
"We need time to reset."
"I think that's fine," McCaughan
replies.
"If we don't we're going to be
serving caldo at 5!"
"That's fine."
Nobody speaks again for 20 minutes.
They clean, chop, slice.
An hour later, you would never know
anything unusual happened. The
parade of cell phone cameras begins
anew, and Bayless, each time,
switches seamlessly from steely to a
gosh-golly-gee-do-ya-like-it gush of
modesty, then back to steely. Enyart
swings by to have Bayless taste a
dessert headed for the fall menu at
Topolobampo, a yogurt sponge cake.
Bayless would like it a bit sweeter.
Around 9, Enyart can be seen through
the window, headed home. "Check out
that guy," Bayless says. "That guy
works banker's hours." An hour
later, Bayless unties his own apron
and neatly folds it in squares,
turns to me and says, "OK, I'm
heading home." Deann appears. "We
have a Skype appointment with our
daughter," she says. "And then
home," Rick says.
Earlier this year, Bayless' name was
thrown around as a possibility for
White House chef -- the truth is, as
people close to him said, if asked,
he couldn't stay away from Clark
Street for a presidential term
anyway. He prefers a large amount of
control over a smaller kingdom. At
the moment, as it has been for
almost 25 years, his vision remains
manageable -- that is, a vision
predicated on how much of that
vision he can manage without killing
himself. He prefers to expand
laterally, demographically. "This is
the main audience for Bravo and
Twitter," he said about Xoco's
customers, much younger than the
typical diner at Frontera or
Topolobampo.
He passes tourists shooting pictures
of him through the glass from
outside. He walks through the
Frontera kitchen and stops a moment
to stare at the fire door again,
then groans and continues past the
sinks, dodging a man with a large
pot. He continues through the doors
to the dining room, hooks a right
and walks the Frontera line once
again. He stops and rests an arm on
the counter. The line glances up at
him, then quickly down, in one
motion. "So, sell many 'Top Chef'
tasting menus tonight?" Bayless asks
no one in particular.
"Um, a few," comes the sarcastic
reply, from a line cook who never
stops chopping. "Like, I don't know,
90?"
