The man in an apron casually tongs quartered slabs of zucchini off the hottest part of the grill to the cooler edges, where they can be turned to expose angled stripes of caramelized flesh. Then peppers, yellow and red and blistered, and saucer-sized portabello mushrooms too. And finger-thick spears of asparagus, now freckled brown and fire-kissed.
The flesh of filleted salmon is weeping surface puddles of its own oils. The swordfish steaks have been turned, and there is a crackle over the heat; the translucent red of sliced ahi tuna has disappeared beneath a checkerboard cladding of white and flame-brown.
The lid comes up on the adjacent grill, and the patio fills with the summer smells of smoke, cauterized rosemary and melted garlic over roasting meat. The bones on the rack of lamb are as clean and white as piano keys.
To the right, another man tongs the chops -- the dainty rounds of lamb are heaped atop the skillet-sized planks of Midwestern pork. That way the smaller pieces of meat will not overcook. On another fire, he lifts the lid on the beef -- strip steaks, marbled and cut as thick as your wrist, sprinkled with garlic and pepper, charred but still plump and glistening.
In a swirl of aroma, smoke and heat-haze, the meat is pulled off the fire to rest.
The relaxed murmur of patio conversation fades to quiet as appetite and anticipation become urgent.
We have invited ourselves to lunch at the home of the Weber kettle. The man at the center of things, the man working the fish and vegetable grill, has kettle in his genes.
Jim Stephen grew up with a father whose tinkering strove for the impossible: an invention that would improve on the cooking technique of our caveman progenitors. Improbable as it seems, he found it. In 1951, George Stephen transformed a Chicago Harbor buoy into a lidded, grated and vented kettle that changed the world's concept of backyard cooking.
It's a word too easily thrown around these days, but icon is no stretch at all when it comes to this ridiculously simple -- and so far, unbeatable -- invention.
In short form, the story goes like this:
George Stephen inherited from his father controlling interest in Weber Bros. Metal Spinning Co. of Chicago. Among other things, the firm shaped sheets of metal into harbor buoys.
