65a commonrefrain:Whydidn’tI thinkofthat?Youprobably
couldhave.Grillworksis thebrainchildofCharlesEisendrath,
a compulsivetinkererandwordsmith.In 1974 heendeda
globe-trottingcareerasaTimecorrespondentinBuenosAires
and,withhiswifeandtwosonsintow,decampedtoteachat
theUniversityofMichigan.Buthemissedtheafternoon-long
Argentinemealsmadeonaparrilla—ahearth,usuallyhome-
made,witha grillthatcanberaisedandlowered.
HesoonenlistedsomeofMichigan’sfamouslyskilled
metalsmiths to turn his notebook doodlings into a breath-
ing, burning grill. He arrived at a version he liked in 1978
and began casually selling a few, mostly to friends who came
over for dinner. In 1984, Eisendrath locked up a patent and
began gaining traction in the food world thanks to a lunch
invite from James Beard, the famous cook and author. The
Eisendraths flew to the Beard estate with a grill, enjoyed
a long meal, and were told that the grill would be staying.
But Eisendrath wasn’t interested in leaving academia;
Grillworks would be a hobby, a side gig for lazy summer
afternoons. “He called it recreational capitalism,” says Ben
Eisendrath, his son. “He always said he’d only want to run it
out of his left bottom desk drawer, and that’s what he did.”
Eventually, the metalworkers started retiring, and
Grillworks cranked to a stop in the late-1990s, right around
the time the younger Eisendrath began working at AOL in
Washington, D.C. A decade later the tech giant was foun-
dering, and he took a buyout. He was 37 and single and
had spent half a career cobbling together esoteric revenue
streams for a blundering empire of email. A steel box of fire
suddenly looked pretty good.
“I thought,What’sthe downside?” Eisendrath says.
Grillworkswasrebornin 2007 witha notebookfullofold
designsanda waitlistof 20 orders. He gravitated to commer-
cial kitchens, acting as a sort of one-man R&D department,
studyinghowchefsusedhisproduct.Thegrillsbecameslightly
morenuanced,morecarefullybranded,andquitea bitbigger.
“Itoldmyguys,‘Thisis a warship.Thisis JulesVerne,’” he says.
When a restaurant is running at full steam, the entire back
of a Grillworks unit is a wall of rippling fire. Wood burns down
into orange embers, which fall through metal grates and get
shoveled forward under the grill by attentive chefs with pink-
flushed faces. Smudged with soot and clad in leather aprons,
they could pass for brakemen on a 19th century train.
Sachs, the food writer, had a Grillworks installed in (yes,
inside) his Brooklyn home, an expense he calls an “absurd
luxury.” Nevertheless, he uses it habitually, sometimes
bummingwoodfromthelocalpizzajointina pinch.He
turnsbabypigsona spit,roastseggplantandgarlicand
mashesit upintoa “baba ghanouj-type thing,” and grills
slabs of salmon on top of a thick bed of dill. “I have a
lovely French oven on the other side of the room, and
it’skindoflikeanunlovedchild,”hesays.
Theenterpriseisprofitablebutnotasthicklyas
onemightexpect.Eachgrilltakesatleast 20 hours to
build, work that’s split among 25 or so welders in rural
Michigan. Eisendrath, who’s still based in Washington,
has put a premium on customer service and has a full-
time “grill doctor” on staff in New York, ready to
fly to one of the installed machines. Even so, he
usually manages 50% revenue growth each year.
“Sales are mostly inbound these days,” he says. “The
restaurants turn into our showrooms.”
Bill Langelier, a real estate investor in San Francisco
who ordered his first Grillworks in 1983, recently
bought his third, a 54-inch model for about $20,000.
Dispatched at various properties, they’re all getting
regular use. “They are the gold standard,” he says.
At his Napa Valley home, Langelier, 75, cooks over
olive branches. “I’m sure that these grills are going
tobearounda lotlongerthanI will.”First,though,
he’llhavetheunitinhisPacificHeightsbackyard
reinforced with steel plates in the eventofan earth-
quake. Then he’ll put on some oysters.<BW>SUMMER FOOD SPECIAL Bloomberg Pursuits June 24, 2019
Waist-high basting
pans catch the
concentrated juicesWood-smoking
oven for pizza,
ribs, etc.TheInfiernoX100is
sonamedbecauseit’s
100 inches—ormore
than 8 feet—long