 Every doctor Achatz saw—all second, third, and fourth opinions—recommended the same treatment: Removal of almost three quarters of his tongue. Only that would save his life. And it needed to happen soon or the pain would become so severe he would be begging them to remove it entirely. To say nothing of how the cancer (stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma) could take his life. Such a surgery would strip everything he ate of taste—food providing only fundamental sustenance. “I kept telling him, ‘Your life is about your brain,’ ” remembers Nick Kokonas, Achatz’s business partner. “ ‘They can cut off your tongue. They can cut off a limb. They can cut off your nose. Your
genius is your creativity.’ It’s a logical argument, but your heart isn’t in it.”
At some point his job seemed secondary. The recommended procedure (a glossectomy) would not only take the Achatz’s sense of taste but would seriously impair his speech. A makeshift tongue fashioned from tissue and muscle in the hip or thigh would aid basic function—namely, swallowing. “It was going to change my life in a radical way,” Achatz says. “I had to think there was an alternative method of treatment. It seemed so barbaric.”
Thankfully, an alternative did exist—nine miles south of Alinea at the University of Chicago Medical Center (opinion number five). Here, they told Achatz, they would give him aggressive chemotherapy. Radiation would follow—sometimes twice a day. The chemo would take his hair. The radiation would burn the inside of his mouth and throat, his tongue peeling as though badly sunburned. His sense of taste would be impaired for many months, and the chance persisted that it would never completely return. But they pledged that if the treatment eliminated the cancer, his tongue could remain.
Achatz began receiving chemo almost immediately. His doctors asked that he rest to better maintain energy and weight, but he ignored them. “It’s not that the treatment didn’t affect him,” says Everett Vokes, Achatz’s oncologist. “But you could see that this man loves his job.
After a while the worst thing we could do was discourage him from working. That’s what kept him going.”
Though Achatz’s conversation rarely involved his health, the well-wishers persisted. Another of Chicago’s culinary icons, Charlie Trotter, told the Chicago Tribune that news of Achatz’ diagnosis caused tears in his kitchen. During a visit to New York City’s Gramercy Tavern, Achatz’s presence inspired its chef (whose father was also once afflicted by tongue cancer) to assemble an
impromptu liquid menu for his guest. “It was nice to see him out and enjoying—as much as possible—the food prepared for him by a chef colleague who had already done that type of food and was sympathetic to the situation,” says Keller, a companion that evening. Back home, Achatz declined offers of a night nurse and car service, regularly driving himself to the hospital for treatment, almost always from Alinea, where he would return afterward. “It was nuts,” Kokonas says. “I don’t know if you do that out of bravery, fear, or comfort.”
From the outset, when he was not at the restaurant—a total of 14 servings by Achatz’ count, fewer by Kokonas’—he continually assessed the kitchen’s mood by spying with his iPhone or laptop. If he detected despair of any sort, he arrived at Alinea’s back door to reassure accordingly. In this way, hopefully, he would ensure that nothing changed—most of all, Alinea. As far as Achatz was concerned, if his health was to improve, his restaurant could not slip: “What if I had said during radiation, ‘This is too much. I need to focus on healing and treatment. I’m going to take six weeks off,’ and during that time, the Chicago Tribune would have rereviewed us and dropped us to three stars? That would have devastated me. Would it have been more devastating than dying? I don’t know. But I felt like it was.” He stops: “That’s silly, right?”
To Achatz’s eye at least, the cancer disappeared from his mouth sometime in late fall. Officially, remission arrived in December. He received the news slightly anesthetized, enhancing its dreamlike quality. The result seemed to surprise his doctors, who remain cautious. Their refrain: “It’s gone well so far.” For the next two years, he will visit them monthly. This kind of vigilance is necessary to quickly identify any recurrence.
At 145 pounds, he remains diminutive. A thicket of hair—darker than before—sits atop his head. His diet is limited to oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and a deli cup of extra soft orzo, his preferred food and drink continuing to prove agonizing. He devised the latest Alinea menu without the benefit of his
superior sense of taste. “But it’s certainly been coming back,” he says assuredly, and in late March he was named one of five 2008 nominees for Outstanding Chef at the James Beard Foundation Awards, the industry’s Oscars. In the meantime Achatz proudly relays that everyone he trusts considers the new dishes to be his finest. For now he must take them at their word.
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