Trinna Schramm has never cooked in a restaurant kitchen, nor has she ever aspired to. But how you enjoy your dining experience at Alinea–the best restaurant in the country according to Gourmet’s most recent list–depends heavily on her. As Grant Achatz’s unglamorously titled “expediter,” she does a job that at most other restaurants falls to the chef or sous-chef, coordinating the kitchen and dining room staffs to make sure your meal is perfectly paced.
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When an order comes in, she marks down the time she receives it, takes note of any dietary restrictions, and shouts, for instance: “Order in, two tour, one person no pork.” The appropriate cook acknowledges the order verbally and then plates the first course, currently a sour cream and smoked steelhead trout roe croquette. Schramm will then call to the runner something like “Two croquettes coming up for table 24”; and he’ll respond, “Thank you, 24.” If there’s a restriction, she’ll state it–“No roe, P-1,” for example–and he’ll repeat it. P-1 indicates the position of the diner; it is one of many terms the staff must use to avoid mix-ups among the dozen or so people who wait on a single table. Schramm also alerts the cooks to what’s “on deck,” so they can start setting it up; this extra prep time is crucial at Alinea, where dishes may have as many as 20 elements. After receiving a “clear call” from the dining room, she’ll let the cooks know to “fire” the next course.
Almost nothing is conventional in Alinea’s kitchen. Achatz has redefined everything from the cooking stations (fish may come from the meat station and vice versa, for instance) to the service pieces (his dramatic pedestals and steel bows and juniper-scented pillows) to the roles of his staff. Because his complicated multicourse menus require greater coordination with the servers, when he was planning Alinea he wanted an expediter with front-of-the-house experience.
Achatz, who says he taught Schramm the job so he “wouldn’t be chained” to it, appreciates her efficiency. “She’s like a computer mainframe: everything funnels in, and she pushes out the commands for the restaurant to run smoothly,” he says. “She combines the self-confidence and capacity to process a lot of information rapidly, communicate quickly and efficiently, make split-second decisions, and assimilate an enormous amount of stress, including the pressure of me looking over her shoulder and holding her to a higher standard. You might say I built the perfect expediting robot.” –Anne Spiselman
