The Rock Face
A 1" slate-grey charcoal cracker with whipped goat cheese and thunder-honey — the ledge everyone was on when the storm rolled in
"We were all stuck on the side of the rock face when the thunderstorm came rolling in." He asked people to stay on half their take-home pay, and the argument he made was not financial.
Why this bite? Thirteen thousand people held the same ledge through the same storm. Rough, cool, then sweet.
The Story
There was no money in the pitch, because there was no money. What he offered was that there would be a company on the other side of the storm and they would want to have been part of it — and then the finance executive's observation about why that mattered: to regrow, you needed the muscle memory. This bite is grey and rough as the ledge, cool cheese for the nerve it took to hold on, and a dark smoked honey that lands after the salt does — the sweetness that only arrives once you are over the top.
Read Full Story →Ingredients
- Activated-charcoal crackers (1" squares)
- Whipped goat cheese
- Smoked honey
- Cracked black pepper
- Thyme leaf
Preparation
- 1.Bake charcoal crackers and cut to 1" squares.
- 2.Pipe whipped goat cheese onto each square.
- 3.Drizzle a thin line of smoked honey.
- 4.Finish with cracked pepper and a single thyme leaf.
More from this collection
People — Ben Erwin
The Aisle
A 1" cube of smoked brisket on a griddled potato coin, passed by hand — the CEO standing in his own booth
The Restartup
A 1" sourdough-starter crisp with cultured butter and black garlic — an eighty-nine-year-old company rebuilt from a living culture
The Last Person They See
A 1" warm gruyère gougère filled with truffled béchamel — served by hand in the wings, thirty seconds before the walk-on