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"The infamous gathering of great chefs at the Chicago restaurant Schwa in October of 2007 included one man whose name you might not know: Michael Carlson. It\u2019s likely the ruinous events that followed would not have occurred had he merely eaten with them. Instead, as chef-owner of Schwa, he was obliged to cook for them.\n\nThe reservation was made by Charlie Trotter, and Carlson would have been tense enough had it just been the city\u2019s most famous chef stopping by. Instead, Trotter asked to book the entire twenty-six-seat dining room for the evening and bring along Ferran Adri\u00E0, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, and the like, a collection of the greatest chefs on earth. \u201CThis was the Justice League, the Super Friends\u2014Batman, Superman, and those guys,\u201D Carlson says. \u201CHow can you say no?\u201D\n\nHe was so apprehensive, he initially did just that. Then, realizing he\u2019d never again have such an opportunity, he telephoned Trotter and said yes. He bought new plates because he didn\u2019t have enough that matched. He decided one of his cooks wasn\u2019t worthy of such guests and fired him. \u201CI shot myself in the foot with that,\u201D he admits.\n\nHis kitchen staff, regularly sleeping three hours a night, was reduced to nearly none for the next eleven days. \u201CYou couldn\u2019t imagine the anxiety,\u201D he says. \u201CAnd I\u2019m already the most anxious motherfucker in the world.\u201D\n\nAnd so they came, the legends, to Carlson\u2019s storefront restaurant, located in a nowhere, no-account Chicago neighborhood, directly across the street from an ornate tire dealership festooned with fake palm trees, the coconuts neon bright. \u201CIt looks like a gay Colombian nightclub,\u201D Carlson says.\n\nPierre Herm\u00E9, pastry chef without peer, got off a plane from Russia, took a car directly to the restaurant, tried to remain awake. Keller, with multiple obligations, showed up only for dessert, but he was there. Wylie Dufresne, New York chef and sympathetic friend, briefly calmed Carlson by unexpectedly walking through the door. \u201COne heavy hitter after another. I was hearing angels singing in the background,\u201D Carlson says. He and his assistants decided they needed a drink, a glass of Trotter\u2019s champagne. After that, they got to work.\n\nBy all accounts, they cooked well. Trotter recollects that the restaurant, which is barely air-conditioned, felt like ninety-eight degrees, and the visiting chefs were dripping sweat. Still, he says, \u201Ceverybody had a great time.\u201D\n\nThe meal was pure Carlson, unlikely products enhanced by unsurpassed imagination: a hollowed-out beet filled with chocolate-bacon ganache. Pad thai made with jellyfish noodles. Saut\u00E9ed sweetbreads with a green-cardamom marshmallow. Soft pretzels with mustard-seed-filled dates.\n\n\u201CThe food was definitely up there at the level of the top restaurants in the city,\u201D Trotter told me. \u201CEight of the fourteen courses were superb, and the rest didn\u2019t need more than a little tweaking.\u201D\n\nThe dinner went on for more than four hours. Afterward, Carlson heard little but praise, although he recalls that the venerated Spanish chef Adri\u00E0 ate the least and afterward said something tepid like \u201CI am impressed by your passion.\u201D Then Carlson came out of the kitchen to make what he is certain was a stupid speech, one that Trotter could have taken as an insult: \u201CI don\u2019t care if this is the twentieth anniversary of Charlie Trotter\u2019s restaurant. This is the most important dinner of my life.\u201D\n\nCharacteristically, Carlson refused to allow Trotter to pay for the meal\u2014dinner for twenty-two on the house. Then, with the pressure of the evening off but the strain of his life increasing, he went on a three-day binge. Alcohol, cocaine, Ecstasy. He makes it sound like all three were in equal proportion, but his girlfriend, Rachel Brown, says, \u201CMichael doesn\u2019t drink much.\u201D He canceled all pending reservations for the restaurant, announced he was closing, and disappeared from public sight. \u201CI did not know true mental stress until that day,\u201D he says. He lacked the strength\u2014and the money\u2014to go on.\n\nIt was heartbreaking, perhaps not up there with chef Bernard Loiseau\u2019s killing himself when he doubted his guidebook ratings would endure, or the seventeenth-century suicide of Fran\u00E7ois Vatel when his fish failed to arrive, but it was career suicide if nothing else. Carlson was 33, with a new baby. He was drugged out, exhausted, overwhelmed, broke, beaten down. He was done.\n\nAnd that\u2019s where the story begins.\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s almost a year later, and Carlson is in the kitchen of Schwa, puttering with a recipe he\u2019s created for beef tongue with fig kimchi. It\u2019s good for the Jews. It\u2019s good for the Koreans. It\u2019s good for Carlson, who loves nothing more than persuading diners to eat foodstuffs they wouldn\u2019t ordinarily tolerate. \u201CWe take what\u2019s intimidating and make it palatable,\u201D he says. \u201CWe like to educate, to challenge. We want nervousness, anticipation, but most of all we want conversation, because that\u2019s what makes a meal great.\u201D\n\nFacebookPinterestCOPYRIGHT \u00A92009 THE COND\u00C9 NAST PUBLICATIONS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.\n\nAnd that\u2019s only a small part of what it\u2019s like to dine at Schwa, a restaurant named after a vowel sound he loved as a kid. \u201CMakes no sense to anybody but me,\u201D he admits. He claims his style of dining is reminiscent of restaurants in Europe, but I\u2019ve been to more of those than he has, and I\u2019ve not encountered anything similar. Even the table accoutrements are abnormal: no bread, butter, flowers, candles, salt, or pepper. No wine, either, unless you bring your own.\n\nThe post-Trotter shutdown was a culinary cataclysm that sent most of Chicago into mourning, the exception being pissed-off nonpatrons who had never been able to get a reservation. Schwa remained closed for four months, and then, this past February, it was back. Carlson\u2019s explanation: \u201CI missed it here. I love the solace. I love ripping up the floor when it needs it. I love having all this to myself. I love it that here I can do anything I want.\u201D\n\nThe rebirth began when he put ads on Craigslist in late 2007, looking for cooks. The first hired was Jonathan Ory, 26, a Microsoft-certified systems administrator who wasn\u2019t interested in being one anymore. He says Carlson looked at his r\u00E9sum\u00E9, they talked for an hour, and he got the job. Gaetano Nardulli, 28, the sous-chef, was recommended by Carlson\u2019s closest friend, the sous-chef at Chicago\u2019s Alinea. \u201CI came in, we hit it off,\u201D Nardulli says. \u201CWe probably talked ten minutes.\u201D\n\nCarlson and his kitchen guys\u2014a precise description\u2014have come in early, the start of their customary sixteen-to-eighteen-hour workday. The kitchen is all male, three men working in an area that takes up nearly half the 825-square-foot restaurant. Carlson, Ory, and Nardulli work for salaries that are tiny, even by traditionally appalling restaurant standards. Ory estimates his pay at $4 an hour. Carlson puts his own at $6.\n\nThere are benefits, though. At Schwa all three are free to behave as they wish, to sound ridiculous and act childish as long as the food they prepare is neither of those things. They are different in appearance, identical in demeanor. They have the same vision and obsessions, the same coolness, maybe the same brilliance of purpose. They look and dress like ecoterrorists, and they know that righteousness of purpose is theirs. They all seem to be holding something in, maybe just mischief, maybe something more ominous. They might not look alike, but they are all the same.\n\nThe cooks revere Carlson, regard him as a breed of higher intelligence with a dark side. They concede his craziness and spaciness, but they also describe him repeatedly and consistently as compassionate and good-hearted. Says Ory, \u201CThe same people who love him and think he\u2019s entertaining might be the same people who think he\u2019s nuts, and people love to hang around with nuts. And remember, what makes him nuts is that he\u2019s striving to be perfect.\u201D Nardulli echoes that analysis of Carlson\u2019s eccentricities, adding, \u201CIt\u2019s not like he\u2019s trying to fight anything inside him.\u201D He calls him \u201Cthe nicest, most generous person I\u2019ve met,\u201D and indeed, what Carlson loves to do more than anything else is give food away. I watched one day as he was approached by a young cook who asked whether he could afford to eat at Schwa. Carlson replied, \u201CFor you we have a discount price of zero, man.\u201D\n\nWhen Michelle Obama came in for dinner, the secondary goal of the kitchen staff, after cooking, was trying to get the Secret Service agents on duty to crack a smile. \u201CI expected to get tackled whenever I brought food to her,\u201D Carlson says. He hoped her husband would also show up, but he wasn\u2019t able to make it. \u201CAs great as it would have been, I sort of understood,\u201D he says. \u201CI don\u2019t think the twenty extra Secret Service agents needed would have fit in here.\u201D\n\nThe restaurant has no front-of-the-house staff\u2014no reservationist, no ma\u00EEtre d\u2019, no waiters, no sommelier, and quite noticeably, no women. Says Ory, untroubled by the omission, \u201CWe\u2019re like a pirate ship, man.\u201D\n\nThe cooks bring out the food. Although they do that task well, they are always so impatient to get back into the kitchen that they are disinclined to patiently describe the dishes, which tend to be both playful and complex. The abbreviated menu description for that pad thai, for example, fails to mention that those noodles are jellyfish. (Carlson characterizes it as his \u201Cpasta course.\u201D) The new offal preparation that debuted on one of my visits included tongue presented two ways (one sliced and well pickled; the second cubed, less pickled, and topped with a mirin-sugar glaze), fig kimchi, fig puree, jasmine-tea broth, and what Carlson calls \u201Cthe snob stuff\u201D\u2014fermented soybeans, mustard, and Japanese lime.\n\nSchwa appears simplistic, which it is not. It has two windows facing the sidewalk, and behind each is a haunted-house-style chandelier. Pass by and you might think it\u2019s the home of a batty husband and wife who rarely go outside and scare the neighborhood children when they do. I was inclined to make fun of the modest interior decorations until Carlson told me his mother and aunt did them, and that held me back.\n\nThe place has small but adequate black tables, absolutely plain. The chairs are cushioned, but not so much that you feel you can settle in. The ceiling is tin, and the shiny wood floor was installed and polyurethaned by Carlson himself. \u201CI can\u2019t tell you how not talented I am at that kind of stuff,\u201D he says. The music is loud and generally performed by hip-hop artists found on the staff\u2019s favorite record labels, Def Jux and Rhymesayers, and it is intended to please the cooks, not the customers. When I ask how many of his guests complain, he says, possibly joking, \u201CNinety-nine percent.\u201D\n\nOn one wall are sepia-like photographs that Carlson took, one in Venice, the other in Paris. \u201CWe had a guy here, a curator of art from London, and he was making fun of them,\u201D Carlson says. \u201CTo tell you the truth, I\u2019d have velvet paintings on the walls if not for other people telling me not to. I\u2019d be asking customers, \u2018You like my velvet panther?\u2019 \u201D On the opposite wall is a flowing, wave-like wood sculpture that impressed me. \u201CThat\u2019s our coatrack,\u201D Carlson says. \u201CNobody uses it.\u201D\n\nThe kitchen seems nicely equipped, modern and metallic, but on the night of the Trotter dinner party, a temporary kitchen helper\u2014Carlson refers to him as \u201Cour 250-pound intern\u201D\u2014fell on the oven and broke its door. It no longer stays shut by itself, so a tiny stainless-steel bar latch, the kind you would expect to see on a shed door, was installed. \u201CA new door would be close to 500 bucks,\u201D Carlson says. \u201CThis guy came in, he charged us fifty cents. He was great.\u201D The rubber tiles on the kitchen floor, installed because dropped plates and glasses bounce rather than break, have started popping loose, and Carlson is now coming in on weekends to rip them up and install replacements, something else at which he is not skilled. \u201CObviously, I do not know what I\u2019m doing,\u201D he says.\n\nThe clientele is diverse, to be kind, and not especially well-dressed, in part because so many who dine here are local cooks whose attire reflects their incomes. He says, \u201CIf there\u2019s a guy in bad jeans and a torn shirt scrapping up crumbs of my [sea-urchin ice cream] cone and eating them with a knife, I consider that an ercise in respect, not coarseness.\u201D At the same time, he is intolerant of attitude, saying, \u201CAssholes get filtered out quickly. If anybody acts as though they expect to be catered to, they\u2019re in the wrong place. We\u2019ve had a couple altercations. One guy got up, gave us the finger, and walked out. One woman\u2014she was wasted\u2014accused us of stealing her wine. I bought her meal and told her to get out. There are not many places where the owner will come out and call a customer an asshole.\u201D\n\nNo restaurant could possibly do less to preselect customers or filter out undesirable ones. That\u2019s because no restaurant has a reservation system like Schwa\u2019s. It\u2019s a one-man operation, and to the regret of all Chicago, that man is Carlson. He complains that he is always getting terrible ratings on Web sites such as Metromix, not because the people who eat at Schwa dislike the food but because people who don\u2019t eat at Schwa are enraged when they can\u2019t get in. The entire system consists of a cordless phone with voice mail, but it accepts fewer than seventy messages at a time and invariably announces to callers that it is full.\n\nCarlson, who usually has no difficulty blaming himself for whatever goes wrong in his life, in this case blames the designer of the phone. \u201CIt\u2019s badly engineered,\u201D he complains. \u201CThe guy who did it should be red. When I put it under my chin, I hit the hang-up button.\u201D Ory, the cook and former systems administrator, offers a possible explanation for the difficulty of communicating with Schwa: Carlson is inept at anything involving electronics. \u201CI went to a restaurant trade convention with him,\u201D Ory says. \u201CI registered in five seconds. It took Michael like twenty minutes.\u201D\n\nWhen Carlson does pick up the phone, which is not often, the people on the line tend to gasp, \u201CI can\u2019t believe I got through.\u201D (That\u2019s Carlson\u2019s portrayal, and that\u2019s exactly what I did.) Then they start scrambling mentally, trying to remember what they planned to say and what day they hoped to reserve. When he returns a call to a potential customer, which is not often, his customer-service stylings are unique. This is what I overheard: \u201CHey, man, this is Michael from Schwa, man. Did I wake you up, man?\u201D A huge percentage of his sentences end with the word man. Carlson is the last hipster dude.\n\nNear the close of service one evening, I stopped a couple walking out of the restaurant to ask what they thought of their meal at Schwa. They weren\u2019t the only ones I questioned, but the stories are repetitive. Tolstoy once wrote that all unhappy families are different. At Schwa, all unhappy accounts of trying to get a reservation are the same.\n\nThe man, pleased at the opportunity to vent, says, \u201CTomorrow is my fortieth birthday, and we\u2019ve been waiting to get in forever. We kept trying the reservation line, but we didn\u2019t hear anything. I came down here, a letter in hand, asking for any of ten days, anytime between seven and nine, and they refused to take the letter from me\u2014they said I had to phone.\u201D\n\nHis girlfriend, eager to continue, adds, \u201CI mailed it anyway. They called four days later. I took the date closest to his birthday.\u201D When one of the Schwa cooks hears this story, he rushes back to the kitchen and brings out a tiny birthday treat of white chocolate on a toothpick, one for each of them. They leave happy. She says, \u201CYou know what? It was worth it.\u201D\n\nCarlson is thought by most of Chicago to be a recluse, with all collateral deficiencies\u2014inarticulate, inconsiderate, impossible. For the most part, his image has been shaped by his inability to communicate by means of the telephone or, for that matter, by computer. His closest friend, Nathan Klingbail, sous-chef at Alinea, godfather to his daughter, and kitchen partner during the first incarnation of Schwa, says of the likelihood of reaching Carlson by cell phone, \u201CHe never carries it, and the battery is never charged.\u201D\n\nCarlson was courteous enough to provide me with his e-mail address, and I wrote him at least a half-dozen times. Not once did he reply. He says that inevitably the first comment made by customers walking through the front door of Schwa is either to ask for another reservation or to complain how difficult it was to get the one they have. His sensible response: \u201CPlease, can\u2019t you just enjoy your meal?\u201D\n\nFacebookPinterestCOPYRIGHT \u00A92009 THE COND\u00C9 NAST PUBLICATIONS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.\n\n\n\nAt my first Schwa dinner, I decide Carlson is trying to become America\u2019s Ferran Adri\u00E0. Chicago, more than any other city in America, has warmed to the alternative style of cooking popularized by Spanish chefs. Carlson has expansive plate decorations, something I recall from eating at Adri\u00E0\u2019s El Bulli, and he mis and matches sweet and savory, which is absolutely Adri\u00E0. Carlson denies he is anything like Adri\u00E0. \u201CNothing is Adri\u00E0-like here,\u201D he insists.\n\nOry says the food is \u201Ccontemporary cuisine, modern American.\u201D Nardulli says, \u201CI don\u2019t think it\u2019s contemporary American, not at all.\u201D\n\nTo me, Carlson\u2019s food is one of a kind. You might find it peculiar. I find it earnest, innocent, irresistible, and imaginative\u2014a little art na\u00EFf, a little emerging rock band.\n\nI did not taste one bite of food, nor did I scrape up one dab of puree, that was prepared imprecisely. Not one drizzle, not a splash. No piece of protein was served too rare or too well-done. No taste was slightly off. His plates are filled with flavors out to the edge of the rim, and they tend to vary in appearance because any one of the cooks might do the plating and artistic interpretations vary. For that matter, nothing is mere decoration. There is no bit of food to skip or shrug off as irrelevant.\n\nFacebookPinterestCOPYRIGHT \u00A92009 THE COND\u00C9 NAST PUBLICATIONS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.\n\nOnly one of his combinations\u2014Kumamoto oysters with breakfast-style oatmeal\u2014made little sense to me, although the oat-crusted oysters were fried brilliantly and I would joyfully eat his oatmeal with cream, butter, and brown sugar for breakfast daily. With the oysters and oatmeal came golden raisins from the Himalayas and a shot glass filled with a nonalcoholic version of an oyster shooter\u2014oyster liquor, almond milk, cinnamon balls, and a raw oyster. Given all that, each component stunning, I\u2019d order it again. I\u2019d just finish the oysters before moving on to the oatmeal.\n\nClearly, he loves ingredients that intimidate: tongue, brains, jellyfish, tripe. He\u2019s recently become intrigued by root beer, the real thing, made with sassafras root. The FDA has banned this process, which delights Carlson more than it should. He gets the roots from his supplier of microgreens and edible flowers. \u201CMy husband took the tractor and pulled out a sassafras tree so we could bring him roots,\u201D the woman delivering the greens told me. He doesn\u2019t go into such fine points when he delivers a glass of root beer to customers, but he enjoys this line: \u201CIt\u2019s illegal. I can get you a nickel bag of it.\u201D\n\nAt the same time, to change pace, he prepares modern interpretations of Italian food that are so uncomplicated they border on rustic and so idealized they can haunt your gastronomic memory. The most popular, now thought of as his signature dish although it has little to do with his style of cooking, is a single raviolo stuffed with the yolk of a quail egg and laced with truffle butter, a preparation he learned while working at the restaurant San Domenico in Italy. More compelling is his homemade tagliatelle with juicy, fatty, crispy, boneless short ribs and topped with shaved black truffles from Australia.\n\nAnyone who dines regularly at Schwa knows to expect roe and purees, both favorites of his, and unequivocally adored is his dessert course of caramelized sweetbreads with vanilla-bean-parsnip custard. This might be the finest dessert ever to emerge from foodstuffs that have no logical reason being used in a dessert.\n\nBecoming too fond of any item at Schwa is maddening, because favorites are likely to disappear and not be seen again, possibly because Carlson writes almost nothing down. The same sort of problem exists at home. Brown says she still dreams about his combination of tagliatelle, butter-poached lobster, Napa cabbage, and shaved white truffles that he made her for breakfast exactly once. \u201CHe thinks what he did last year isn\u2019t good enough for this year,\u201D she says. \u201CAnd he gets a little bored. If he\u2019s bored with something, no matter how many people love it and demand it, he\u2019s done with it.\u201D\n\nMuch of his food appears unstudied and spontaneous, but it\u2019s entirely a product of perfectionism. Carlson has a dedication to the craft of cooking that is almost reverential, and he combines that with a purity of purpose dating from chefs like the idolized Andr\u00E9 Soltner, French-born chef-owner of Lut\u00E8ce, one of the great New York restaurants a few decades back. Soltner was absent from his post for only five nights in the thirty-four years he ran Lut\u00E8ce. Similarly, Carlson has missed one night at Schwa. That commitment to his restaurant and to his stove might be what he means when he calls his style of dining European.\n\nSchwa is unquestionably a throwback, except where cuisine is concerned, and Carlson to me seems like an Adri\u00E0 for Everyman.\n\n\u201CNah,\u201D he says. \u201CWe\u2019re the Three Stooges, man.\u201D\n\n\n\nTypical carlson: \u201CI had a normal childhood. I\u2019ve had it pretty good. The problems I\u2019ve had in life were brought on by me.\u201D\n\nHe was born in the Chicago suburbs, his father a financial planner and colonel in the army reserves, his mother a dental hygienist. He claims to have been a kid like most others, running through cornfields, snake hunting, bike riding. His parents divorced, and his father was called to serve in the Gulf War, which resulted in Carlson living for a short time with his elder brother at Illinois State University. He grins when he talks about that experience, a teenage boy living with another teenage boy in a college town. \u201CIs that comedy or what?\u201D he asks.\n\nHe went to culinary school but quit when the class on making pasta started with the teacher demonstrating how to open a box. He worked for Paul Bartolotta, the seminal Italian chef of the Midwest, who arranged for him to go to Italy. He also worked briefly at the Fat Duck, in England, the restaurant of Heston Blumenthal.\n\nEventually he ended up at Trio, the legendary Chicago restaurant where Grant Achatz, his primary inspiration, was the chef. Carlson says that when he was employed there, he earned $20,000 a year and went in on his days off. \u201CMy work ethic is ridiculous,\u201D he says. \u201CI might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I put the work in. Being a workhorse got me in the door, and then I learned how to be a good cook.\u201D\n\nAchatz, now chef-owner of Alinea, says he offered Carlson the position of sous-chef when he was about to open. Carlson planned to accept, but he was walking along with an old friend he hadn\u2019t seen in eight or ten years and the friend said he had a small restaurant space available. \u201CHe told me I could do something cool with it. I looked at it and said, \u2018That\u2019s some shithole.\u2019 But I fell in love with it. I knew we could have fun.\u201D\n\nHe met Brown through her roommate, who worked at Schwa as a waitress. That was back in the early days, when Schwa had one. When Brown came in, Carlson turned on the charm. In his case, that means bringing out food the customer doesn\u2019t wish to eat. She says, \u201CHe made me eat things I\u2019d never had before, and it opened my eyes. Sweetbreads. I couldn\u2019t eat sweetbreads before. Raw quail egg. Barnacles. I said, \u2018You can\u2019t make me eat barnacles.\u2019 He did. It was the best meal I\u2019d had, and I\u2019d eaten everywhere.\u201D\n\nHe asked her out. She accepted.\n\n\u201CI was really nervous,\u201D she says. \u201CWe had cocktails, and I spilled a whole glass on him.\u201D\n\n\u201COn my crotch,\u201D he says. \u201CWhat do you do when a pretty girl spills a whole glass of liquor on your crotch? Pretend it didn\u2019t happen?\u201D\n\n\u201CHe had strange ways about him when we went out,\u201D she says. \u201CHe was over and beyond a gentleman. He paid. He opened doors. It was a perfect date.\u201D\n\n\u201CPerfect for you,\u201D he replies. \u201CI had a wet crotch for hours.\u201D\n\nThe two of them, plus their 2-year-old daughter, Lily, and a sweet, skinny Siberian husky, Furious George, who resists all attempts to fatten him up, live in an airy, wood-paneled three-bedroom apartment in the Logan Square section of Chicago. \u201CI told you that you\u2019d be disappointed if you came out here,\u201D he says. \u201CI\u2019m pretty average.\u201D\n\nMostly, he spent the months between his closing and reopening at home with Lily. He gets dreamy when he speaks of her, saying, \u201CUp until the day I closed, I was a shitty father. Loving your child is easy when you\u2019re not there or everything is done by somebody else when you are there. Now I come into the restaurant two hours later, at nine thirty in the morning. I feel like I\u2019m already behind, but those two hours are the best part of my day, when I\u2019m getting punched in the face by my baby.\u201D\n\nThe apartment has a grill on the patio, a claw-foot tub in the bathroom, trees all over the lot, Fisher-Price toys strewn around, components of a lifestyle very much alien to Carlson\u2019s image. He is thought to be a pathologically shy cross between a sociopath and a hermit, yet he is articulate and outgoing in public. Unquestionably, people are influenced by his appearance: a short, wiry guy with arched eyebrows and a goatee, a cross between the Devil and Confucius.\n\n\u201CLook into his eyes,\u201D says Stephanie Izard, a Chicago chef who won the Top Chef competition on Bravo and has been Carlson\u2019s friend for nearly a decade. \u201CYou can see his mind churning in creative, crazy ways. His mind moves his eyes. You want to jump into his mind for a day. But you\u2019re also afraid you\u2019ll run away screaming. I think that mind of his doesn\u2019t stop. I don\u2019t know how he sleeps at night. He sees things in different ways than anybody else. He\u2019s mind-churningly brilliant. From his food, you see how creative he can be. You just can\u2019t guess what to expect.\u201D\n\nA psychological summation, typically brutal, is presented by Carlson: \u201CI still drink. I still dabble in shit. I don\u2019t do rails. I like to smoke a lot of weed. I am who I am. Sure, I come home late, and Rachel is hurt by that, but I never try to hurt anyone. I love people. I try not to pull shit on people. And I think my best quality is responsibility.\u201D\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestCOPYRIGHT \u00A92009 THE COND\u00C9 NAST PUBLICATIONS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.\n\nI say to Carlson, \u201CBefore I leave Chicago, I\u2019m going determined to figure out the economics of this place.\u201D\n\nHe replies, \u201CWe don\u2019t know the economics of this place. The restaurant lives paycheck to paycheck, just like us.\u201D\n\nHe is always saying how much his father hates him, how pissed off he is at him, but it is an attempt to make a joke out of fiscal unreliability. His father is an investor in the restaurant, owner of a 49 percent stake, and the restaurant apparently makes no money. On his best night, Carlson has taken in $4,000; on his worst, $800. He could easily bring in more customers, but that would mean subtle changes in temperament and style, plus modifications in the dysfunctional reservations system.\n\nHe says of his father, \u201CHe wants me to learn how to run a business.\u201D When Schwa was closed for four months, it was his father who gave him the money to reopen. Thus far, the response of the son has not been promising: \u201CI lost the company credit card and had to borrow his, and I lost that. It\u2019s like the fourth time I\u2019ve done something like that. He is pissed at me again.\u201D\n\nCarlson pays himself $42,000 a year and says that low pay provides a sense of freedom that more money would not. He also points out that his rent for the restaurant is $915 a month; for his apartment, $1,500 a month. Those minute sums are vital to the survival of Schwa, which seems to exist on optimism, whimsy, and talent, not the same as a business plan. Says Brown, \u201CMichael is not a businessman, not a numbers man. If he and I and our daughter were living in the woods, he\u2019d be fine.\u201D\n\nThe economics of Schwa are startling. \u201COur food costs are astro-fucking-nominal,\u201D says Carlson. \u201CThey\u2019re 60 percent. The stuff we use is the same stuff that Grant [Achatz, at Alinea] and Charlie [Trotter, at Charlie Trotter\u2019s] use. We supplement our food costs with the tips that are left for us.\u201D\n\nSchwa has two set menus, a nine-course meal for $110 and a three-course meal for $55, but no customer who orders three courses gets that little. Always offered are a few extras, either two more plates of food or a plate of food and a glass of wine from a bottle brought in by another customer. If the person in possession of the wine should happen to be a friend (and it seems that most guests are), Carlson will grab the bottle off his table and pour for anybody who requires a drink.\n\nThe corkage charge for bringing in wine is $2.50. Nobody except Carlson thinks it\u2019s smart of him not to have a list, but he rationalizes that, explaining, \u201CPeople bringing in wine is best for my education. The sommelier from Alinea comes in, customers come in, they teach us about wine. Because we have no set list and no distributors, we get to taste infinite bottles. We got to taste moonshine, for Christ\u2019s sake. The guys who brought it in made us do shots with them before they left, and that was not good. Those were three-ounce shots. When was that ever a shot?\u201D\n\nAchatz and Trotter despair at Carlson\u2019s finances (and both, according to Carlson, offered to help him out after he closed, as did the owners of nearly ten other Chicago restaurants). They are both businessmen as well as working chefs, and the explanations Carlson gives for operating Schwa as he does make no sense to them. It\u2019s fascinating to listen to all three\u2014it\u2019s as though Achatz and Trotter are discussing one form of commerce and Carlson something different. That they all dispense food seems a coincidence.\n\nAchatz describes Carlson as \u201Cfrank, honest, ballsy, a man who doesn\u2019t play the game,\u201D and the restaurant Schwa as perfectly fitting the owner\u2019s personality\u2014\u201Cweirdly Jekyll and Hyde, ultra-laid-back and extremely hyper.\u201D He also cannot believe that Carlson rejects prosperity. \u201CI tell him, \u2018Move closer to downtown, get a wine program, get more space.\u2019 At this point he can get investors, raise money, follow the path most chefs do, open something like I have here. That\u2019s pretty much the pattern. There\u2019s a transition we all do, from cook to chef to chef-restaurateur. He\u2019s still a transition away. I tell him this. He says, \u2018Nah, I\u2019m happy.\u2019 \u201D\n\nTrotter says, \u201CHe just has to have a wine program. It\u2019s the way to make a margin. Chicago is not a hard city to get a liquor license. Just have sixty, eighty bottles and still allow guests to bring their own. For some it\u2019s a convenience, and for him it\u2019s just one more way to make a little bit of money.\u201D\n\nTold that such a sensible-sounding scenario is of no interest to Carlson, Trotter says, \u201CI so admire what he\u2019s doing, I\u2019d bankroll the next move for him.\u201D\n\nSounds unlikely, I tell Trotter.\n\n\u201CHe could stay true to his form and make a lot of money.\u201D\n\nProbably uninterested, I say.\n\n\u201COnce you get it out of your system that it\u2019s a terrible idea, there\u2019s nothing wrong with making money,\u201D Trotter says.\n\n\n\nThe call came. Trotter, again.\n\nHe said he wanted to rent Schwa for the evening. He had celebrated chefs coming to Chicago. Sounded familiar. Sounded catastrophic.\n\n\u201CA year ago, Michael refused to take a dime. I was mortified,\u201D Trotter says. \u201CI understand that he was so excited and proud to host those chefs. I\u2019d do the same. That\u2019s what we live for. But this year, I said I wasn\u2019t coming unless I could pay. I put a check in his hand and told him if he didn\u2019t cash it in a week, he would never see me again.\u201D\n\nAnd so the night arrived. The city of Chicago was suddenly not so windy. Every resident with an interest in eating had heard about the dinner. Every breath was held.\n\nThe day after the meal, I phoned and left a message for Carlson, demanding that he call back, which he did. I asked him if he had survived.\n\nHe said, \u201CCake, man.\u201D\n\nAlan Richman is a GQ correspondent."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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