Few chefs have caught the media's attention as powerfully as Grant Achatz, chef/owner of Alinea restaurant in Chicago. His food is inventive and constantly surprising, and Alinea was titled the Best Restaurant in North America by Gourmet in 2006, the seventh best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2010, and Achatz received the James Beard award for Outstanding Chef in 2008—all before he hit 40. But the onslaught of accolades became near-irrelevant when, in 2007, Achatz was diagnosed with stage-four squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth. More