Design - Charlie Trotter

Why does Trotter do things this way? Here's a hint: Despite his insistence that perfection itself isn't interesting, he has a Winston Churchill quote framed in the room where members of his staff eat their meals each night before customers arrive. It reads, "To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often." "We've received some extraordinary reviews," Trotter says. "But you have to make sure that what you're doing remains lively and vital, and doing the same thing over and over again rarely accomplishes that."

To Be Great, Be Relentless

Reinventing yourself and your product every night is completely consuming, and Trotter is well aware that it's not for everyone. "I love what I do. I'm obsessed by it," he says. "But to strive for the levels that I'm trying to hit each night requires walking on a tightrope. If I were any less obsessed, then it wouldn't be worth doing because I wouldn't be doing a good enough job. If I were any more obsessed, then it might be perverse."

Every job applicant who walks through the door of Charlie Trotter's already has an interpretation of the restaurant's owner. Most of them have heard stories about how in his early days, when he was hopping from restaurant to restaurant trying to milk as much knowledge as he could, Trotter owned only a bed to sleep on, a chair to sit in when he read cookbooks, and a light to read by. "If I had to be at work by 4 PM, I'd get there at 11 AM," he says. "It didn't matter that most kitchens I worked in weren't paying any overtime. Who cares? My friends were all in graduate school paying tuition, and I was getting paid to learn."

This is the attitude that Trotter likes to see in his own colleagues. Given his reputation, his employees are probably going to be pretty ambitious to start with, and that's before he gets his hands on them. "I don't understand people who spend their twenties hanging out in bars and going to football games," he says. "That stuff is so boring compared to really applying yourself to what you do. All of a sudden, I turned around one day, and I was 30. And I had a level of understanding of my craft that I never would have had if I hadn't worked so hard. Plus, if you love what you do, then it's not even work."

Watching the staff interact with Trotter calls to mind the devotion that must have gone on in the studios of artists like Peter Paul Rubens. Trotter returns from a trip, and someone appears with a gorgeous plate of fruit and fresh-squeezed juice served in a lager glass. Later, someone else arrives with dinner. Three different people check to see if all is right.

Do they act this way out of fear or out of love? It's hard to say, though Trotter is slightly embarrassed by all of the attention and can be extremely gracious when cued. Take, for example, his approach to handling employees who are leaving. "If people give me a year or two of their best effort, then I am their friend for life," he says.

Be All Things to Just a Few People

Just as it requires a certain mettle to work for Trotter, customers also need to adopt a particular mind-set to appreciate what he does each night. Some people -- especially people in Chicago -- show up at dinner wanting a two-pound steak and a heaping pile of mashed potatoes. Other unsuspecting patrons don't want a dozen tiny dishes, nor do they want to spend the three hours that it generally takes to dine at Trotter's. "Only one-half of 1% of all regular restaurant patrons will appreciate what Charlie does," says Ray Harris, a longtime customer. "Everyone else thinks that the portions are too small, or isn't interested in complex flavors and cutting-edge ingredients, or thinks that what Charlie is doing is too pretentious."

This is not elitism, for Trotter has great respect for the fine art of street food and the brains behind more casual cuisine -- the barbecue-pit masters of the South, or the fishmongers of Chinatown. What he has done is market segmentation, taken to extremes. If Trotter can find 150 people five nights a week who want to pay a high price to eat the kind of food that he loves to cook, then he's got himself a business. "You have to know what you want to be and what you don't want to be," he says. "That may mean sacrificing a substantial part of a large customer base, but you shouldn't be discouraged if you're certain that you know exactly how to serve those remaining people."

Nor does it mean that the restaurant is entirely inflexible. "We always have at least a dozen things in the kitchen that aren't on the menu on any given night," Trotter says. "And we are prepared to make anything. There is no such thing as the word 'no' in our kitchen. If someone insists on having chicken and we don't have any at the time, then we'll duck out into the back alley, borrow one from another restaurant, and prepare it in the best way that we know how."