Travel | Is Alinea the best restaurant in America?

Travel

Is Alinea the best restaurant in America?

You’re more likely to have heard of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry or Daniel Boulud’s Daniel but last year Gourmet magazine put a relatively unknown Chicago restaurant, Alinea, at the head of its Top 50 American restaurants, joining Charlie Trotter in making the city one of the US’s great dining destinations.

The nomination has a particular poignancy as its brilliant young chef, 33 year old Grant Achatz, discovered earlier this year he was suffering from cancer of the mouth. He took time off for treatment and is now back in his kitchen turnng out some of the most exciting food that I’ve ever eaten.

From the time you walk through the door of the discreet grey brick building and down its long cool space age corridor you know you’re in for something special. Like Trotter’s (for whom Achatz worked for a time) the menus are prix-fixe - 12 or 27 courses with optional wine pairings.

It’s one of those places - and this you may like less - where dishes not only have to be explained but instructions given about the way they should be consumed. Several consist of a single mouthful or shot. Others are so complex and unfamiliar I can barely recall what was in them. Those of you who like a blow-by-blow description of great meals should read on. Others should skip to the end of the piece for my overall conclusions.

* When you start the meal a couple of shrink-wrapped key limes are brought to the table in a glass vase. “These will serve as the centre piece to your table tonight" announces our server.

* The first liquid offering is a champagne cocktail that includes Lillet Blanc, Pineau de Charente, Vya (vermouth) and Campari. It accompanies an intensely aromatic forkful of minutely diced ingredients ‘Duck, pumpkin, banana and Thai flavours perched on a bowl of fragrant Thai-style broth. “Please take the bowl and do not put it down. First you take the food off the fork then drink the soup” We have difficulty co-ordinating this without dropping the fork along the way so the waiter has to come to our rescue. Refreshing but possibly the least interesting dish.

* Next a dish described on the menu as Brook Trout, watermelon, kombu, coriander - another Asian spiced dish that arrives with a pairing of Masumi “Arabashiri” Junmai Ginjo Namakaze sake from the Nagario prefecture. The watermelon flesh is a jelly like lozenge, soaked in tamari, the rind crisped and the trout skin brined and pickled. There is also a sesame pudding, sesame oil and seaweed braising liquid and cilantro (coriander) puree.

Finding this hard to follow? We certainly did but imagine trout cooked in an Asian-style broth with lots of umami flavours from the sesame, a touch of sweetness from the watermelon and some saltiness and crunch from the seaweed. Perfect with the sake.

* Next a large pillow arrives (no kidding) filled with rosemary vapour. Or at least that’s what we were told - I couldn’t smell it. On the plate were all sorts of variations on heirloom tomatoes, cut into cylinders, served as jelly, with basil sorbet and - I think from my hastily scribbled notes some goats cheese on a pile of savoury biscuit crumbs (The dish is described as Tomato: plum, sherry vinegar, rosemary fragrance) It was partnered with this year’s fashionable grape variety sylvaner - a 2005 Sommerhauser Olspiel Silvaner Kabinett from A Steinmann in Franken - and with an onion focaccia roll (breads are also matched to the dishes here). It worked pretty well but I’m not sure a Loire sauvignon wouldn’t have been better. The dish was quite delicious anyway.

* More vapours. Lobster with parsnip, orange and hyacinth vapor. The lobster was poached in butter, served with parsnip puree, jicama, puffed lobster and lobster dust (my scribbled notes struggle to keep up at this point - suffice it to say it was very lobstery). The bowl containing the lobster was perched in a bowl of water infused with hyacinth flowers and orange peel (maybe it was the air-conditioning but I didn’t pick up on these aromas either) There was a matching milk and honey roll and a glass of 2005 Cuve Laurence Pinot Gris from Domaine Weinbach in Alsace which went quite perfectly.

* Next a curious shot: a cinnamon-flavoured ball flled with cider, floating in roasted walnut milk with vegetable ash and Murray River seasalt. Not easy to get down in one and slightly too powerful a cinnamon note but interesting.

* On to sweetbread, cauliflower, burnt bread, toasted hay - possibly my favourite dish of the whole meal. The cauliflower had been cut into little cylinders and wrapped with a crispy cheese coating. Ultimate cauliflower cheese. There were also chestnuts in the dish and a roasted hay sauce which I imagine was hay-infused milk. It was warm sweet, soft and delicate - slightly too much so for the bitter-sweet dark cherry flavours of a ripasso Valpolicella (Cesare Valpolicella Superiore ‘Ripasso Bosan’) It provided an intriguing contrast to the smooth richness of the dish but I’m not sure I wouldn’t have preferred a classic white burgundy such as a Puligny Montrachet. The bread pairing was an orange chicory rye bread which actually picked up very well on the wine.

* Another mini course of warm potato on a cold potato puree with a fine slice of truffle. Pretty well as it sounds. Heaven for potato lovers.

* Then, just as we were getting lulled into a sense of security another shock. A bowl of conifer leaves. Only of course there was something underneath it. A cube of Wagyu beef sandwiched with matsutake mushroom (Japan’s rarest and most exclusive mushroom) There was also a little yuzu sauce. A perfect match for the glass of Chateau La Gaffelire Saint Emilion 2000 that was paired with it.

* Another small dish described as Black Truffle explosion, romaine, parmesan. My notes get a bit hazy at this point beyond commenting ‘orgasmic food’! I seem to remember a sensational mouthful of truffle filled raviolo - again great with the Saint-Emilion.

* Another sensational dish that at first looked like a patchwork of white and vivid green sauces but which turned out to be an undulating white plate with little pools of pea puree. (Achatz uses a designer Martin Kastner from a company called Crucial Detail to create appropriate plates for each dish. This plate was supposed to represent the rolling hills of Winsborough, Pennsylvania where the accompanying lamb - tenderloin and ‘puffed’ - was reared. There were also flavours of porcini, fenugreek, mint and yoghurt, some kind of umami rich stock and peashoots and I suspect a good few other ingredients I missed. The overall taste sensation - sweet young lamb and peas - was a perfect pairing with a 2004 Clarendon Hills ‘Hickinbotham’ Grenache which provided a vividly contrasting mouthful of redcurrant and raspberry fruit.

* Finally on to dessert and cheese. Or rather a pre-dessert - a transparency of raspberry, rosepetal and yoghurt. A translucent raspberry-flavoured crisp that shattered in your mouth.

* Then the most original cheese course I’ve ever eaten. First the key limes (remember them?) were juiced then the juice poured over a dish of brie, avocado semi-freddo and basil ice cream and a marshmallowey guava ‘sponge’ Round the edge of the dish were crumbs made with brown sugar and rum scattered over pinenut oil powder (my notes, possibly rather unreliably by this stage of the meal, say) Oh and a guava soda was poured over the top. I realise this utterly fails to describe this quite extraordinary cheese and fruit plate which was mouthwateringly light and delicious. It was paired with a honeysuckle-sweet 2006 Moscato d’Asti ‘Bricco Quaglia’ from La Spinetta which miraculously managed to cope with all the different flavours, textures and temperatures.

*Another mad ‘mini dessert’ impaled on a long wire which you had to eat ‘hands free’ off the end. Frozen liquorice, spun liquorice sugar and at the heart of it all a tiny cube of what tasted like orange jelly. There was also supposed to be hyssop in the dish but I couldn’t tell you which part. My least favourite dish but then I don’t like liquorice.

* A totally wild plate next - Chocolate, Passionfruit, Lemongrass, Soy the centrepiece of which was a winding snake of dark Venezuelan chocolate. There was also rice pudding with a soy glaze, lemongrass icecream, passionfruit, soy marshmallows and soy powder - an extraordinary assault of sweet and savoury flavours. “It’s very important to mix the flavours and textures” our server announced solemnly. It was hard not to.

The dish was paired with a dark red Moscato, the Abbazia di Novacella Moscato rosa ‘Praepositus’ from the Alto Adige - a brilliant wine for chocolate - and virtually everything else on the plate

* Achatz left the most show-stopping dish till last. A cube of pumpkin in a sugared pie crust speared with a branch of maple (I suspect) which was borne to the table, smoke billowing, with its leaves still burning. I fear it might cause a nasty accident someday but it was an unbeatably dramatic - and delicious finale.

What to make of all this? Well certainly the impression that Achatz is one of the most talented new chefs of his generation. Even if some of the dishes were a little over-gilded they were always thrilling. Like Rene Redzepi of Noma whose food I wrote about earlier this year, his passion to innovate doesn’t overwhelm his passion for food that tastes great, something that occasionally gets the better of such culinary experimenters as Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal.

The wine pairings were similarly daring, if a bit more hit and miss. With food as complex as this I’d have liked to see a few more unchallenging pairings. But the whole experience is quite, quite memorable and fascinating. Whether it's the best restaurant in America or not I leave you to decide but it must be pretty well near it. A must for any food lover.

Alinea is at 1723 N. Halsted Street, Chicago, IL 60614 (Lincoln Park area) 312.867.0110 www.alinearestaurant.com The 12 course tasting menu is $135, the 27 ‘tour’ (which I suspect would be a challenge) $195

If you found this post helpful and would like to support the website which is free to use it would be great if you'd make a donation towards its running costs or sign up to my regular Substack newsletter Eat This, Drink That for extra benefits.

CONTRIBUTE HERE

Comments: 0 (Add)

Recent posts …

About FionaAbout FionaEvents and appearancesEvents and appearancesWork with meWork with me
Loading