'Life, on the Line' a story for the food-obsessed

Grant Achatz's memoir, "Life, on the Line," is a Horatio Alger story for the food-obsessed: A young boy starts out washing pots and cracking eggs at his family's Michigan eatery and grows up to become king of the culinary world when his iconoclastic Chicago restaurant, Alinea, is named Best Restaurant in America by Gourmet. Shortly after, he's diagnosed with Stage IV tongue cancer. Refusing to allow doctors to remove his tongue, he finds a medical team that will do chemo and radiation. After ravaging treatments that leave him bald, scarred and unable to taste, he's declared cancer-free. And, yes, invited to appear on "Oprah."

Even with wide press coverage of Achatz, considered a pioneer of "molecular gastronomy," the book's subtitle - "A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat" - seems a bit presumptuous. How many Americans have had their eating habits "redefined" by a place where a 24-course meal (including a "black truffle explosion") is eaten off specially designed trapezes and catapults?

Achatz, who comes off as driven but likable, has an eye for character. He does a brief stint with iconic Chicago chef Charlie Trotter, a soul-stifling martinet. ("I never saw Trotter cook," he writes.) Another Man Behaving Badly is Esquire food writer John Mariani, who conducts himself at Alinea with stunning entitlement.

In marked contrast is Thomas Keller, chef-owner of French Laundry in Napa Valley, where young Achatz gets a job as sous chef. Keller, a chef who isn't too proud to sweep his own floor, becomes a mentor; later, a friend.

Interestingly, Achatz, who reads others so well, seems blind to his own shortcomings. With women, he can be passive and self-centered. He has two children (Kaden and Keller, named for the chef) with Angela, his roommate-turned-girlfriend, who finally pressures him into a wedding that becomes "the source of constant tension." He leaves three weeks later.

Co-author Nick Kokonas, a steady customer at Trio, the Chicago restaurant where he becomes executive chef, offers to bankroll a solo enterprise for Achatz. The segments of the book that Kokonas writes stall the story, though he does provide the nuts-and-bolts details of starting a restaurant. His writing gains significance when it comes to Achatz's "Shakespearean" health crisis, which might not have ended so well had Kokonas - a real go-getter - not done the research.

Ultimately, Achatz's own words work best. Try not choking up yourself during the scene where he and his mother find themselves in tears, post-treatment. Or inwardly cheering when he writes, "My taste buds came back in waves. . . . I was back."

This, however, doesn't happen until after he receives the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef award in 2007. Then, in 2010, Restaurant Magazine names Alinea No. 1 Restaurant in America and No. 7 Restaurant in the World.

How to follow that act? He and Kokonas are about to launch another Chicago restaurant, where the cuisine will continually change, focusing on a different country and era each season (such as "Paris, 1925").

Its name? Next.

LIFE, ON THE LINE: A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat, by Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas. Gotham Books, 390 pp., $27.50.