When the assembled spectators receive the order to pick up a baton of Arctic char to eat with their fingers, you can feel the room reacting as one organism to the interplay of the fish’s lush texture and sweet cure with its brittle, bitter skin. This works well in keeping the element of surprise: no peeping the neighboring table two courses ahead as you would in the Salon. Much like a carnival barker, the head captain stands in the center to announce each course. If you dine in the five-table Gallery, the team serves plates in one grand gesture. The sleights of hand have grown familiar, and the flavors don’t always add up.Īlinea’s trademark legerdemain still creates real moments of joy and anticipation. It is accompanied by a chewy, hard-to-cut crêpe drenched in butter sauce that I gave up on during both visits.Īlinea feels stuck in time, relying on its old bag of tricks. The caviar’s three-dimensional flavor has been reduced to two: salty and fishy. Less fun is osetra caviar that has been pressed, dried, and grated into papery black shavings.
#Fish bowl centerpieces mac
The rice bathed in a sauce of uni, coconut, and orange juice is such a dead ringer for Kraft mac and cheese that everyone stopped to marvel, if not question their brain synapses. Technical errors from the kitchen, like a cube of carrot in the bouillabaisse with an unpeeled corner, are picayune to be sure, but fissures in the sheen of perfection. The food can be delightful, but it can also be too salty, too sweet, too off-key, and just too weird. The sleights of hand have grown familiar, and the flavors don’t always add up. Yet Alinea feels stuck in time, relying on its old bag of tricks. Today, thanks largely to Alinea and its cohorts on the world stage, we have a much noisier and more exciting fine-dining world that has no truck with the stodgy, old-school past. In its early days, Alinea busted paradigms because it created indelible moments at the table: hot and cold in one slurp, truffle juice exploding, smell separated from taste, and ingredients seemingly switching bodies. I also dined in the upstairs Salon, which serves largely the same meal, albeit in eight blocks instead of 10, with a bit less razzle-dazzle and at three-quarters of the price. Astronomically expensive reservations vaporize in seconds, at least for the downstairs Gallery, billed as “a multi-sensory menu that combines fine dining with experimental moments.” After two months on the waiting list, I secured a spot in the Gallery at 9 p.m. Alas, not much else about the experience did.Īs the city’s only Michelin three-star restaurant, 17-year-old Alinea - now supervised by executive chef Douglas Alley - remains the pillar of the culinary community and a bucket list spot for diners. Smart move: It feels much more in tune with today’s dining mood. Unlike before, when a meal could stretch into its fifth hour, this format offers just as many bites but finishes in a sprightly two or three hours. They have cryptic names like Chipped, Japan Urchin, and Paint.
Chef and co-owner Grant Achatz has rewritten the menu to unfold in thematic “blocks,” which can consist of a sole dish or more than half a dozen that fill the table with custom ceramics and centerpieces. The combo is one of several edible tableaux that now define the dining experience at this once-groundbreaking Lincoln Park restaurant. Tip Can’t get a reservation? Tables open up late. Hi, Alinea.ĭinner for two Salon starts at $590 Gallery at $810 It bounced twice on the surface, creating a fissure, then slipped inside. The server hovered a spoon containing a yellow sphere of encapsulated aïoli above the bowl.
The “trampoline” - a membrane cast from modified potato starch and stretched over a bowl of bouillabaisse - was new to me. The papillote part of the dish looked familiar enough, a parchment bag I tore open to reveal a burst of steam and a tasty slice of scallop nestled on a tart sauce niçoise. Our meal’s third course, Trampoline Papillote, had the flavors of southern France literally all wrapped up.
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