Alinea
I am a food freak, I admit it. I’ve become somewhat better over the last couple of years, thanks to my husband’s obsession with sports. He addicted me to things like the NFL, that had really never held much interest to me before 2002. Anyway, just because my food freakiness is slightly better, doesn’t mean it’s cured. Although I spend less time watching Food Network, I find that I spend just as much time reading books about food. I love chefs, I like reading about what they do, what they make, how they put it all together (attention: this does not mean Rachel Ray). I like reading about individual foods, and tracing their origins (afterall, there is a whole book about salt. Yes. Salt). I like cookbooks, even if I can’t really make anything in my own kitchen (I do own a kickin’ knife set, though). I enjoy books about cooking technique (I long ago crowned myself the best theoretical cooker this side of the Rocky Mountains). And if a restaurant really captures my attention, and someone’s gone and written a book about it, I am very likely to read it. Which brings me to Alinea.
Alinea, the restaurant, is the creation of chef Grant Achatz (rhymes with jackets). A seemingly not-so-huge, no-so-celebrity chef sort of place, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. And the food! I must eat there. It’s been on my list for two years, since I read about Achatz in one of Michael Ruhlman’s books (Ruhlman opens Alinea (the book) with an interesting and lengthy essay), while he was still chef at Trio in Evanston, IL. However, Alinea is expensive for a peon like me; the shorter of the two tasting menus is $145 per person, not including wine. But my understanding is that it’s as close to a life-changing experience as one can get from a restaurant. At least, for a dorky food nerd like me. It supposedly may even be, may God strike me down where I sit if I am lying, more amazing that Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Yountville, CA.
Did I really just type that? Perish the thought.
Anyway, I can’t say whether it’s better or not, seeing as I am not rich and therefore unable to find $400-$600 dollars for me and my husband to dine in either of these establishments, but I can get just a little bit of a taste, pun intended, for what Achatz is trying to achieve at Alinea by reading his book. Part science experient gone terribly right, part art, and part just delicious, amazing, evocative creations that I can only hope pass over my palate someday, the book really is amazing. The food photography alone is worth the purchase, as long as you’re OK drooling all over yourself. But reading others’ takes on Alinea, and getting inside Achatz’s head, and finding out how he comes up with his individual dishes and menus makes the $50 retail price a little easier to…uh…stomach?
Honestly, I wanted to lick the page. But, I refrained. It was property of the Cuyahoga County Library, after all.
