From Stage 4 to Three Stars: Chef Grant Achatz Reflects on His Culinary Journey, The Bear, and Finding Strength in Community
“Within five weeks, I lost my ability to taste completely — it was just gone. This thing that had been my driving force, literally my lifeblood since I was a young boy — becoming a chef and having one of the best restaurants in the world — seemingly vanished overnight.”
I had the pleasure of talking with Chef Grant Achatz. Grant Achatz, one of America’s most influential chefs, is widely recognized for his innovative approach to modernist cuisine and his resilience in the face of personal adversity. Born and raised in a small agricultural town in Michigan, Achatz’s early exposure to the restaurant industry came through his family’s diner, a staple gathering place in his community. It was there, working alongside his parents from a young age, that he developed a fascination with food and a desire to pursue cooking as a career.
After high school, Achatz enrolled in culinary school and soon moved to Chicago to further his training. His ambitions eventually led him to the prestigious kitchens of The French Laundry in Napa Valley, where he spent seven formative years under the mentorship of acclaimed chef Thomas Keller. Achatz credits this period with shaping much of his culinary philosophy and discipline. Returning to the Chicago area, he accepted his first position as a head chef in Evanston, Illinois, where he began to gain recognition for his creativity and vision.
In 2005, Achatz co-founded Alinea, a restaurant that would rapidly ascend to international acclaim. Within its first year, Alinea was named the best restaurant in America by Gourmet magazine, and Achatz was celebrated for his imaginative, multi-sensory dining experiences. Alinea went on to earn three Michelin stars, establishing Achatz as a leading figure in the world of avant-garde cuisine.
However, at the height of his success, Achatz faced an unexpected personal crisis. A persistent white spot on his tongue, dismissed for years by dentists as a minor injury, was eventually diagnosed as stage 4B tongue cancer. The diagnosis was devastating, compounded by the fact that he neither smoked nor drank, and knew little about cancer. At just 33 years old, he underwent aggressive radiation and chemotherapy treatments that caused him to lose his sense of taste — a profound loss for a chef whose career depended on his palate.
Rather than stepping away from his work, Achatz leaned into the community he had built at Alinea. Relying heavily on his team, he adapted by trusting others to taste and refine his culinary creations. Though the experience was grueling, it ultimately deepened his creative process and leadership skills. After more than a year, his ability to taste gradually returned, albeit in stages — first sweet, then salty, sour, bitter, and finally spice.
Achatz’s journey through illness reshaped his understanding of food and dining. He became an advocate for cancer patients, emphasizing the importance of being one’s own health advocate and encouraging hope and persistence. His experiences also led him to participate in initiatives aimed at supporting patients undergoing treatment. Among them is Tasting Notes, an educational campaign launched in partnership with Johnson & Johnson to address the common issue of taste changes, or dysgeusia, experienced by cancer patients. Drawing on his own story, Achatz works alongside a registered dietitian who specializes in oncology nutrition, Abbey Reiser, to offer practical advice and emotional support to those grappling with the loss of taste during treatment.
Resources from Tasting Notes can be found here: Gettastingnotes.com.
Throughout his career, Achatz has remained committed to innovation. In 2025, he and his team celebrated Alinea’s 20th anniversary with a series of international residencies, bringing their unique dining experience to cities such as Brooklyn, Miami, Beverly Hills, Barcelona, and Tokyo. Beyond Alinea, Achatz has expanded his culinary ventures with restaurants including Next, The Aviary, and Roister, each pushing the boundaries of dining in its own right.
In popular culture, Achatz has also contributed to the portrayal of high-end kitchens, serving as a consultant for the acclaimed television series The Bear, which has been praised for its authentic depiction of restaurant life. His behind-the-scenes role helped ensure that the intensity, creativity, and community spirit of professional kitchens were portrayed with accuracy and respect.
Despite the challenges he has faced, Achatz maintains that his priorities have remained largely unchanged. Throughout his diagnosis and recovery, he continued to work and push forward with his culinary ambitions. He credits this drive — and the unwavering support of his team — as key to both his personal and professional survival.
While Achatz avoids commercializing his story or leveraging it to promote his restaurants, he uses his platform to advocate for resilience, community, and hope. He emphasizes that dining is not solely about taste, but also about nostalgia, social connection, and the emotional experiences tied to food.
Today, nearly two decades after his cancer diagnosis, Achatz remains a symbol of creative perseverance and an influential voice in the culinary world. His story continues to inspire not only chefs and food enthusiasts but also individuals facing their own personal battles, offering a reminder that passion and community can provide strength even in the most uncertain of circumstances.
Yitzi: It’s a delight to meet you. Before we dive in deep, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share with us a bit about your childhood and how you grew up?
Chef Grant: Sure. I grew up in a very small town in Michigan. It was an agriculturally based community of about 3,000 people. My mother and father had a family diner in that town, and that type of restaurant was very common in my family. My grandmother and many of my father’s brothers and sisters also had restaurants in the community. They were places where the community would gather after church or on holidays, and people would sit in the same seat at the same table every time.
That was my first introduction to restaurants. I worked my way through high school at the family diner, starting at a very young age, and decided I wanted to pursue cooking as a profession. I had always been very curious and pretty artistic with my hands, and I had a desire to do something a little more ambitious than meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
I went to culinary school right after high school, then moved to Chicago after graduation, and later to Napa Valley. I spent seven years in the Valley at The French Laundry, then moved on to take my first chef position in a suburb just outside of Chicago called Evanston.
I was at that restaurant for a couple of years, and that’s where I met my business partner. Together, we opened Alinea in 2005. We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary this year by taking the restaurant on a series of residencies throughout the world. We completed Brooklyn about a week ago, we have Miami this week, and then we move to Beverly Hills. After that, we’ll finish the year with Barcelona and Tokyo.
Yitzi: Do you feel comfortable sharing the story of when you got diagnosed with cancer?
Chef Grant: Sure. That journey I just described — if we go back to 2005 — I was incredibly fortunate and very grateful for the team I had around me and the resources we had. The restaurant opened to a lot of acclaim, and we moved up the ladder of national and international rankings really quickly. Before we were even a year in, Gourmet Magazine and its editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichl — who was the most powerful food critic in the world and still really is — announced us as the number one restaurant in the country. We were only nine months in.
I was on top of the world. All of my childhood dreams were coming true. It felt like we were an unstoppable force in the industry, and we were innovating creatively every single day.
For the five years prior, I had felt this little white dot on the side of my tongue. I went to several dentists, and they all said the same thing: you’re working 15 hours a day, you have two young children, you’re stressed, you’re probably just biting your tongue. That went on for five years. Unbeknownst to me, the tumor continued to grow without anyone recognizing it.
Finally, it was just so persistent that instead of going to a dentist, I went to an oral surgeon. They biopsied it and diagnosed me with cancer.
At that point, I was 33 years old. I’d never had a cigarette in my mouth, I wasn’t a drinker, and honestly, I was kind of a cancer idiot. I didn’t even know there were four stages. I started treatment for stage 4B cancer. It was incredibly aggressive radiation and chemotherapy. Within five weeks, I lost my ability to taste completely — it was just gone.
This thing that had been my driving force, literally my lifeblood since I was a young boy — becoming a chef and having one of the best restaurants in the world — seemingly vanished overnight. Because the most important thing a chef can do is have a discerning palate and creativity. That was a very significant moment.
Yitzi: Wow. Can you help share how you managed to continue as a chef? How did you pivot? How did you not let that crush you?
Chef Grant: Yeah. The irony became the energy in that. Because being a chef was my lifelong dream, it could have easily been positioned as unattainable because of what happened. But the opposite happened. It actually made it easier for me to fight because it was so deeply woven into the fabric of who I was. It also provided me with a very large community. I had spent so much time with these people — countless hours a week — and we were all fighting for the same thing. We were winning, we were moving forward, we felt creatively fulfilled, and there was a real camaraderie. That became my comfort, my support circle.
I would go to work every day, which is the opposite of what a lot of people do. Everybody has their own journey. Some people isolate, some people are scared and don’t know what move to make. But for me, it was about not doing anything different.
Yitzi: Wow. On a practical level, how did you address the lack of the ability to taste food and still be an award-winning chef?
Chef Grant: It was very difficult at first, for obvious reasons. It was really jarring. Honestly, I didn’t know if my colleagues and the guests at the restaurant would trust me. The basic, fundamental skill for a chef is to be able to discern taste.
So, I had to learn how to trust fully. That meant essentially having people taste for me, which is a very unusual process. But by digging deep into my creative side, I decided I just had to push forward with ideas and hope my ability to taste would come back. At that point, the doctors couldn’t tell me whether it would or not. Some people never regain it, and some people like me ultimately do.
It was about them trusting me to come up with ideas and show up every day, and in return, they gave me honest feedback, commitment, and dedication. It was a struggle, but it made me a better chef and a better person. I wouldn’t recommend it to people as a way to grow, but ultimately, it had a powerful and positive outcome.
That middle period was filled with a lot of new discoveries — learning how to interact with people differently, how to socially and professionally behave, and how to navigate something so basic that all of us take for granted.
When you lose your sense of taste, you realize how much of eating is tied to enjoyment and satisfaction. Once that’s gone, it’s odd. You still need food to live, but the desire to eat disappears. When you’re dealing with that, there’s a whole list of personal, internal, and social challenges you have to overcome.
Yitzi: Wow. Can you share with our readers what you’re doing to help other people who are diagnosed with throat cancer?
Chef Grant: I felt an obligation because of my platform to use it to raise awareness and help people feel like they’re not alone — people who have lost an ability or had their lives changed significantly. It would be a disservice not to try to send that message. A lot of it is letting people know there is a light at the end.
I also talk about being your own advocate. Several of my first appointments with doctors were pretty grim — they wanted to remove three-quarters of my tongue and both sides of my neck, and told me I’d never be able to taste or talk again. And yet here I am today, almost 20 years later, able to do both. So I try to show people that there are ways to navigate this in a positive way.
Yitzi: Unbelievable. What do you hope other cancer patients will learn and gain from this initiative?
Chef Grant: Similarly, they have to be their own advocate and not just listen to the first or second opinion. They have to really feel in their body what is right and listen to it.
They also need to find that space where they feel safe and supported. For me, it was work. For someone else, it might be something different. Community is a big part of it, too.
And don’t lose hope. I went a year and a half without being able to taste — that’s a long time. It would have been pretty easy to slip into a place where I thought it would never come back. But trying to stay positive is the biggest thing.
I feel responsible and obligated to use my platform and partner with people who can help push that message out. And because I’m a chef who lost the ability to taste, I think it really grabs people’s attention. It’s important we talk about it, so people don’t feel alone.
Yitzi: So on a practical level, how do you encourage people to enjoy food if they can’t taste? Is there another way to enjoy it, like maybe the smell, the texture, or the sight?
Chef Grant: Yeah. As part of this outreach, you have to explain to people that they should focus not just on the physiology of eating, but also on the nostalgic elements of it, or the social aspects that are so common around the table. They need to realize that meals, even if they can’t enjoy them through taste, still offer so much through being out, being social, and developing a support group.
A lot of what they can focus on at home or when they’re out is recognizing that we lose our taste in different ways. Some abilities remain stronger than others. For example, when I first started regaining my taste after a year and a half, it came back piecemeal. First, I could only discern sugar for about four months, then salt, then acid, then bitter, and finally spice.
If they’re able to identify even one taste sensation, they should accentuate that and focus on foods that highlight it, so they can find that little sliver of enjoyment.
Yitzi: Did your priorities change after you were diagnosed?
Chef Grant: You know, they didn’t. I feel like a lot of people go through a pretty significant life change, but for me, it was about normality. I know that probably sounds crazy, but the elements of normalcy didn’t change because I continued working through treatment, uninterrupted.
I was still chasing the same goals. I never lost sight of what I had set out to do, and the team and I made a pact that we were really going to go for it. We never let off the gas the entire time, and that continues now.
I think that was a really important focal point for me — and maybe even a little bit of a distraction from everything else that was happening — but it never wavered, and I think that was crucial.
Yitzi: Are there treatments or remedies on the horizon to help people regain a sense of taste? Like, for example, you have people with prosthetic arms or legs. Is there anything that could help replace the ability to taste for someone who’s had tongue cancer?
Chef Grant: I wouldn’t know that for certain, but boy, I hope that people are working on that. Especially now with the way AI is progressing — who knows?
Yitzi: Hopefully we’re putting it out there for someone to work on. Do you have a favorite story that stands out from your career as a chef?
Chef Grant: Oh, man. Favorite story. There have been so many milestones and so many wonderful people who have come through the restaurant. Honestly, I think it was the day before we opened. It was the day after my 30th birthday. I had always promised myself that I would open a restaurant before I turned 30, and I missed it by just one day.
I gathered the entire staff into the kitchen — many of whom I had only met once during the interview process. Some of them had worked with me before. I gave a speech and said, “You didn’t know it until right now, but we’re about to open the best restaurant in the country. And for those of you who aren’t willing to commit to that goal, that’s okay, but you shouldn’t be here.”
When I looked around the room, there were 55 of us. I saw 110 eyes looking straight back at me. Some were nodding yes, but every single face was saying yes. That is an incredibly powerful thing — to feel not only your own conviction and vision to achieve something that seems wildly unattainable, but also to know you have the full support of everyone in that room. At that point, it becomes a whole different ballgame.
Yitzi: It’s been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a humorous mistake you made when you were first starting, and the lesson you learned from it?
Chef Grant: Yeah. When I first started at The French Laundry, Chef Keller — who’s an icon, a legend, undoubtedly one of the best chefs of the last 100 years — trusted me from the very beginning. We had a special bond, and he would entrust me with projects that normally only he would handle.
Early on, he was making a very specific recipe, blanquette de veau, a white veal stew. He was only on step two of the process, which took a long time and required a lot of technique. The bones and the meat were just below a simmer in a large pot on the stove, and they had to be prepared in a very specific way.
He said, “I have to go to a meeting real quick. I’ll be back in 15 minutes. Go ahead and take that further.” In my head, I remembered step two as being to drain the liquid off the bones and the meat — but it was actually the opposite. We were supposed to drain off the bones and meat, discard them, and keep the liquid to reduce it down to a glaze.
Instead, I threw away the liquid — what he wanted — and kept what he didn’t. He came back into the kitchen, looked at the pot, and realized what I had done. He just smirked and said, “Better luck next time.”
I knew exactly what I had done wrong, but the fact that he just smirked, turned around, and chuckled — it may not seem funny to everyone, but when I look back now, it fills me with happiness. Even though I made a massive mistake, he was such a great mentor that we could both laugh about it and move on.
Yitzi: That’s amazing. There’s just one more question before we get to our final aspirational question. You were in The Bear, and as you know, The Bear is an extremely popular show. How would you compare and contrast the reality of running a restaurant like yours with the way it’s depicted in The Bear? What’s real, what’s not real, what’s unrealistic?
Chef Grant: The Bear is incredibly impressive with how they show the restaurant world to people who might not know what it’s like at that level. It’s such a true depiction. The first time I watched an episode, I was incredibly surprised because in the past, most movies or shows with restaurant scenes were just not accurate.
This was so accurate that I started trying to find out who the consultants were and who the director was because they clearly cared so much about getting it right. I was really impressed by how real it is.
Yitzi: That’s amazing. This is our final question. Because of your great work and the platform you’ve built, you’re a person of enormous influence. If you could put out an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most good to the most people, what would it be?
Chef Grant: Wow, that’s tough. I would assume that most people would think it should be something food-related — and obviously, there’s a lot we could do collectively to fix food-related problems — but honestly, there’s so much else wrong with the world right now.
It would be nice to share something that would unify people and bring a little peace. I’m not exactly sure what that is, but that would be really nice.
Yitzi: How can our readers continue to support your work? How can they visit your restaurants, purchase your book, or support your initiatives in any way?
Chef Grant: You know, I think people have to find their own way. We don’t like to commercialize what we’re doing. We like to use the platform as a support tool and an educational tool to help spread information. We don’t want to push people to come to our places or anything like that.
Yitzi: Amazing. Well, Chef Grant, I really appreciate your time and your insight. I wish you continued success and good health, and I hope we can do this again next year.
Chef Grant: Yeah. Thank you very much.
Yitzi: It’s my pleasure and my honor. Thank you, Chef.
From Stage 4 to Three Stars: Chef Grant Achatz Reflects on His Culinary Journey, The Bear, and… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.