CHARLIE TROTTER'S

A Reprise

On Monday, August 31^st of 1987, we walked up the steps of the townhouse at 816 West Armitage in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago for the very first time. Charlie had flown Janet and I up from our home in Key West to be his honored guests. It was a grand celebration of a vision the world would be awakened to over the next years. We really had no idea how grand it would all become! 

38 years later … on February 7^th of this year, we walked up those stairs again. The first time Charlie was waiting for us, pacing. This time it was his son, Dylan. The driver dropped us off. Despite the freezing weather I asked Janet to wait a moment. I wanted to take it all in. The Relais & Château plaque gleamed in gold. The matching townhouse where Charlie had his private party room, television series tapings, and upstairs offices stood quietly, not illuminated to the right. It was time to go in. 

Before we entered, I could see Dylan, pacing. I could see in the intervening years since we last saw him, he’d come to resemble his father so much more. If he wore the thin wire-framed glasses Charlie did, it would be even more the case. He saw us and quickly opened the door to greet us. Many times, we have been in that foyer. The ceiling there reaches two stories. So many past times, voices and laughter filled the air. This time it was just the three of us. Then I saw that Dylan had laid out a very special grouping of photographs across the small, elegant bar Charlie had built with his father. Once again, I wanted to stop time. Take it all in, let the spirit seep into me. I turned to see that Dylan had installed a massive painting of Charlie. It was the prize one wins for receiving the Robert Mondavi Lifetime Achievement Award. During his life, Charlie kept it in his garage. I gazed up in this half-light, an altar light. “That is a nice touch.” Dylan laughed slightly, unsure if I was teasing him. I wasn’t. It was proper for the son to do so. A candle held to a world that seems hell bent on rushing. To what? To where? I knew Dylan had to attend to many guests and I needed to let the night progress. We passed two hostesses that nodded knowingly. One whispered to the other smiling. Then down the short hall and into the full illumination of the kitchen. A kitchen I knew in my soul. Dylan had preserved it lovingly. We were part of the first seating and for the first courses we sat at the famed ‘Kitchen Table’ Charlie had installed before anyone in America had considered such an idea. 

The sommelier came over and offered us Champagne. “Please.” So began the 14-course meal with wines to match. Charlie style. 

Dylan had worked out this ‘pop-up’ by collaborating with Grant Achatz and his “Next” team. They began doing them at Grant’s restaurant. Then, with what must have been round-the-clock efforts, Dylan and his group got the original restaurant in shape to move the show there. Grant worked his magic too. Fittingly, as Grant was a young cook in this place too long ago. 

Sitting at our dining table from my vantage point, looking out over the kitchen and the movements of the chef in charge and the line cooks at their respective stations and the servers leaving with the plates of food and returning for more, I could not help but remember the volcanic activity of what it was like to be there when it was Charlie expediting, pushing, guiding, exhorting, conducting. In some moments, I felt like I was seeing a kind of time-lapse film with the number of people disappearing, frame by frame. I wondered in some future time would that scene reverse and once again be flooded with a mission so bold.