If you watch “The Bear” or read enough chefs’ memoirs or talk to enough restaurant workers, it’s clear that adversity is a rite of passage in order to make it in the business. Dramatic tales of difficult upbringings, of lives upended by addiction or illness or tragedy, have become practically de rigueur. It’s like we don’t want to eat if someone didn’t suffer greatly for the chance to cook our burger.
It’s a phenomenon I wanted to discuss with serial restaurateur Steve Flynn, who is the co-owner (with wife Vicki and business partner Greg Bankston) of the newly opened Blackstone Grille on Cummings Highway. But first, I wanted to eat there. And I wanted my husband to go with me. This, I knew, would not be an easy sell.
My husband is an interesting man. He was raised on buttermilk biscuits, fried country ham and red-eye gravy, but over the years, he’s become a more adventurous eater. He’s had sweetbreads at The Purple Pig in Chicago, chicken hearts at Hamilton’s James Beard award-winning Prune restaurant in Washington, D.C., and cricket pâte off the side of the road in Mexico. His culinary adventures haven’t always ended well; he’s a tall, strapping man easily felled by a tiny bite of the wrong thing.
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Nevertheless, he’ll try almost anything. Operative word: almost. Years ago, when a Lookout Valley friend invited us to eat at a Mexican restaurant a mile off Exit 174, my husband was blunt.