worth the trip, to say the least!

[omegabeth]

On Alinea: I think Grant Achatz is a genius. He is also clearly mad as a hatter, or maybe just did ALOT of LSD in culinary school. There were several utterly perfect things (for my palate, at any rate), notably the caviar at the beginning, the potato truffle shot and the do-it-yourself pork belly...there were also absolute and total misses such as

Comments

[lcohen]

she neglected to mention that the two servers who did the tabletop construction were Dave Beran, the chef de cuisine, and Grant Achatz himself.

i didn't know this!

there is definitely going to need to be an additions/erratum post to go with my post after everyone else tells me all the things i didn't realize about that meal!

[omegabeth]

Yup--Dave was at our end, and the red-headed kinda dorky looking one at the other end of the table was Grant!

[lcohen]

i hope i smiled and looked happy at them, sufficiently!

[coraline]

yeah -- eric told me later (a week later) that that was the chef, and i said "NO!" and he said "yes!" and i said "well, fuck!"
not that i would have said anything different, but gah! i is a dork.
(who apparently didn't stalk her restuarant as well she should have.)

and yes, i didn't write anything about the wines -- i remember enjoying them, but NOTHING about them. please do write something :)

the service did feel gappy, though i do worry that if it had been any brisker, i wouldn't have been able to eat as much. and i'm glad i ate as much as i did.

[kcatalyst]

You forgot to mention that Grant Achatz, in addition to being a genius and completely nuts, is also the consummate top. I really really really want to see what he'd come up with for an actual kinky dinner, given how far he goes with regular old paying customers. Like, really. A lot. So desperate.

[coraline]

.....i am madly curious what you mean by this -- did you mean merely culinarily, or is there more juicy info there?

and OMFG, sign me up for kinky dinner with him. gah.

[kcatalyst]

I certainly have no info beyond having eaten there a couple of times. But it just screams out from his approach. It's not enough to control the tastes, sights and smells, he has to control the kinesis by making you eat things just so.

Plus, the hands-free bouncy-spear method of serving is kinky as fuck.

[coraline]

i cannot disagree with your analysis :)

we tragically were not served any bouncy-spear foods, but we saw them at the next table over.