My first Chicago post has to go to Chef Achatz. Before I came here for school I kept sinking into this “why am I going from Paris to this godforsaken place called Chicago” funk, and the only thing holding me together was a Ferrandi friend consoling me with “well, at least you can go eat Alinea on my behalf.”
Then, I actually got to Chicago and coursework, socializing, the change of season, and general pressure all came at me like wild animals. The first time I actually sat down and felt relaxed was a full month into the semester, right after midterms.
Overall I was satisfied, though maybe because everyone praises Chef Achatz so highly, or because Chef’s Table already told his entire story, I never felt genuinely blown away. A lot of friends warned me it was very salty. Personally I thought it was fine, except for the extra course they serve in the kitchen, which I couldn’t have gotten a third bite of without the paired drink.
Immediately after I entered I could sense the American fast pace-ness. I’d barely sat down before a server came over and rattled off a canned list of rules, which felt a little off. Before I’d even ordered wine, the same server who had just been leaning on the counter was already coming at me with two dishes of caviar, which startled the first “can we go slower” of the night out of me.
The wine list is thin, but fine, two budgeted students who have to go home and finish assignments only deserve one bottle anyway: a 2020 Alphonse Mellot, a lesson learned from another dear Ferrandi chef, that people in restaurants with low budget but still want to drink are only fit to order sancerre (just a joke).
I also asked for a glass of champagne, and this is where I (extremely nitpicky person) got annoyed for the second time. For a three star to have no selection is one thing, but the glass arrived and before I could even react it was being filled to the brim, with the introduction happening mid pour, and then after I drank that overfull glass I was asked whether I was satisfied, as though I were being pressured into satisfaction.
Rant over, on to the food. First question: when will fine dining places be able to stop using caviar, truffle, and uni. That said, apart from the truffle, the pairings were all pretty good.
The first amuse bouche, caviar plus radish, neutralized the fishy and milky notes really well. My friend thought the truffle ravioli was salty; my complaint was that there was too much pasta, but the burst of liquid in the mouth is genuinely unmatched.
Hot potato cold potato is enormously fun to eat, though there’s no way to get the whole dish down without making a fool of yourself, and the solid potato was too hot, so beyond the richness I couldn’t really taste anything carefully.
My favorite was the spiny lobster: the sweet acidity of the mango against the sweetness of the lobster, with pork fat and chili powder, all pulled together at the end by the most American thing on the table, strata. The balance was excellent.
The uni ice cream I unfortunately did not understand at all. Maybe the chef was going for seafood plus fat plus palate cleanser. Not getting it. Really not getting it.
The two main dish meats were ok but unremarkable. I asked them to slow down twice more during service, so the dessert I’d been most looking forward to finally didn’t get rushed at me.
Even after seeing it online this many times, that dessert still stuns you. Completely structural, from the plating to the decoration to the physical destruction of the cake itself, then folding the traditional palate cleanser plus main dessert plus petit four into a single form.
All I can say is that it’s brilliant (the petit fours were genuinely bad though, and why was one of them a sandwich). The balloon really is just eating air, pure filming time.
Honestly the most impressive part was the tableware. There are ones shaped like caviar and uni themselves, which are adorable, and a cork holder I wanted to own the second I saw it, plus the disappearing ravioli plate and the pin you stick into hot potato cold potato, which are very playful and go beyond the concept of “a plate holds food.”
Let’s stop serving things like this
Sadly the glassware and cutlery were all thoroughly conventional. The chicken was the truly baffling one. With the incense they lit you could smell the other spices, but the dominant note really did evoke a traditional Chinese medicine shop, and it created no resonance whatsoever with anything that followed.
Having just binge read Marx for a month, I’ve realized I still prefer the more unpretentious farm to table and source local approach (yes, Alain Passard, I miss you). Alinea feels like a science kid marinating in a lab, and maybe the “molecular” in molecular gastronomy carries that metaphor too.
The production chain of anything starts the moment someone works the soil, and Alinea coldly severs the diner’s connection to the land, to the point of not even telling you where the ingredients come from (could have been a great marketing hack). Someone who didn’t know better might assume the produce sprouted in your own kitchen.
The whole restaurant carries that same distance. Everything is dutiful and correct. For a birthday, the staff dutifully and correctly say happy birthday, and then that’s it. Service that’s dutiful, correct, and impossible to fault, and therefore completely without character.
All in all, my first proper French meal since leaving France a year ago, and it was decent. I don’t know if it’s the academic training since the semester started, but the reviews I write now are no longer fun and have started turning into analysis, and I find them slightly boring by the time I finish.