Grant Achatz (born 1974) is an American chef and restaurateur who is considered to be on the cutting edge of the movement of menu item construction often referred to as molecular gastronomy or progressive cuisine. Achatz has won numerous awards from prominent culinary institutions and publications including the "Rising Star Chef of the Year Award" for 2003 and "Best Chef in the United States" for 2008 from the James Beard Foundation.
Grant Achatz was also a guest of Harvard University in October 2010, giving a lecture in a series of science and cooking lectures on “Reinventing Food Texture and Flavor.”
Achatz' early culinary career included time spent working in his parents' Michigan restaurants as a teenager, followed by enrollment in The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Following graduation, Achatz landed a position at Thomas Keller's highly acclaimed restaurant, The French Laundry, in Yountville, California. Achatz spent four years at The French Laundry, rising to the position of sous chef. In 2001, he moved to the Chicago area to become the Executive Chef at Trio, in Evanston, Illinois, which, at the time of his arrival, had a four-star rating from the Mobil Travel Guide. Over the next three years, with Achatz at the helm, Trio's reputation soared. and in 2004 the restaurant was rewarded with a fifth star from Mobil, becoming one of just 13 restaurants so honored at the time.
In 2005, Achatz went out on his own, opening Alinea in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. The restaurant is located up the block from the famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company and is housed in a modest gray brick building which bears no external markings beyond its street number. Inside, the restaurant has no bar, no lobby, and seats just 64 guests. Achatz serves diners a choice of two small-course tasting menus, running 12 or 28 courses. After less than two years of operation, the Mobil Travel Guide bestowed its Five Star Award on Alinea, reaffirming its approval of Achatz and making Alinea one of just 16 restaurants nationwide to rate five stars for 2007.
In October 2006, Gourmet magazine named Alinea the best restaurant in America in its feature on "America's Top 50 Restaurants".
In 2007, Restaurant magazine added Alinea to its top 50 restaurants in the world at number 36, the highest new entry of the year. In 2008, that publication moved Alinea up its list 15 spots, to number 21 in the world. Alinea cracked the top ten in 2009, moving up to number 10 in the world, and advanced to number 7 for 2010, when it was also the highest ranked North American restaurant honored.
In November 2009, Achatz and his Alinea team designed the menu for Ikarus, a restaurant in Salzburg, Austria which brings in a top chef from a different restaurant each month to design the menu for that month and train the staff.
On July 23, 2007, Achatz announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth, which may have spread to his lymph nodes. Some of his colleagues and friends have expressed worry that radiotherapy or surgery may impair his sense of taste.
On December 18, 2007, Achatz announced that he was cancer-free. He credited an aggressive protocol of chemotherapy and radiation administered at the University of Chicago Medical Center for driving his cancer into full remission. The treatment regimen, administered under the direction of Drs. Vokes, Blair and Haraf at U of C, did not require radical invasive surgery on Achatz' tongue.
In October 2008, Grant Achatz and co-author Nick Kokonas published Alinea, a hardcover coffee-table style book featuring more than 100 of the restaurant's recipes. The book's narrative follows life in the kitchen for Achatz and his crew, and includes more than 400 behind-the-scenes photographs by Lara Kastner.
In June 2009, Achatz and Kokonas sold Life, On the Line, their dual-voiced recount of their collaboration on Alinea and Achatz's battle with cancer to Gotham Books. The book is expected to be released in Fall 2010.
