alinea, Chicago, 2006
Tasting Menu: $135, Tour Menu: $195
Paired wine with the tour ~$175, chance to upgrade a couple glasses, extra ~$25
First off I'd like to just say that there's no chance my review is going to compare to any of the gillion other reviews that are out there and googlable. It will share my experience though as best I can.
The first surprise we got from alinea was that it was inconspicuous enough from the outside that our cabby had to loop around the block because he missed it the first time. Located basically in a yuppy shopping neighborhood, the reworked townhouse sort of feel doesn't really shock from the street.
street view image
That changes the second you walk in the door though. All doubts that maybe you're in the wrong place are quickly gone. The space is definitely more contrived than Trotter's, but also much sexier, and though it lacks the museum showpieces of Tru, it doesn't suffer from it.
entryway image
After ditching our coats we were led to our heavy (I think) mahogany table with large comfortable chairs. No tablecloths.
We each had a great glass of champagne (we were celebrating, after-all), and when we were comfortably started on that glass, the waiter came back to talk to us about the menu. Since the seating times for the two menus are different by a lot they prefer if you tell them which you'll prefer ahead of time, but it's not like they'll kick you out for changing your mind. We went ahead with the 24 course Tour Menu, got the paired wine, and splurged a tiny little bit extra to upgrade the wines. This meant getting 3 or 4 of the glasses changed out for truly rare things that otherwise we might never taste, so it was an obvious choice. (Not that the other wine selections were common or anything.) In total wine service was 13 pours beyond our original champagne.
I don't know if I can do a plate by plate review, so I'll hit some highlights and then maybe a lowlight or something:
Hot Potato
hot potato image
Was the opener and one of the big stars of the meal. Served with cold potato, trufle, parmesan, and a rose champagne, it set the perfect tone. Many of the dishes are served on plates or utensils created specifically for the restaurant or that dish. The meal mixed well between flavor combinations that are obvious, well liked, and classic, done well - like this dish, and plates that featured either or both new and interesting flavor combinations and ingredients you rarely see used.
Another star for me was the Pear
pear image
Served with celery leaf & branch, and curry. This dish is actually a sphere of pear juice, wrapped in an incredibly thin layer of cocoa butter, rolled in a coating of curry. Eaten as a shot, when it hits your tongue, the whole thing shatters and give you a great "wow." Asking the waiter how this was done/if I could do it at home was a lot of fun.
Several other plates really were impressive both in taste and in presentation:
Bass, with vanilla and artichoke, served on a plate rested on top of a pillow filled with orange scented air, so it deflates and pushes orange scent was inventive and really tasty.
Granola with saffron, served in a rosewater envelope (I didn't know that rosewater could be made solid, let alone in to an envelope) was I felt a bit out of place because well, though tasty and cool (served hanging from a wire) I was almost looking forward to the bacon hanging on a wire i'd heard about, and well, it's granola in the middle of dinner?
Other sort of misses but sort of nots for me included:
Skate with caper lemon and brown butter powders. I just though it was too much powders. Very tasty, again, pretty interesting that you can make these things powders, but it was also pretty easy to not get the amount of powder you wanted with your bite of skate.
Asparagus with egg yolk drops. Made by dropping individual drops of egg yolk into I think just water, and cooking incredibly briefly, the drops were interesting but a little weird and rubbery at the same time. Not a favorite. I think that it's reasonable to have 2 or so out of 24 courses that you're personally not a fan of though, and since the skate still tasted good, and the egg drops were less bad than "that's just weird" I wasn't too sad.
To those thinking maybe the meal was a bit froofy, other courses unpictured and undiagnosed included:
Bison, Lobster, Kobe Beef, Foie Gras. All of which were truly excellent, and inventive (like the Foie Gras served with hibiscus, licorice, and blueberry soda). Sadly the Foie Gras is gone at the moment due to idiotic city-wide bans.
For more pictures and more review, (since I've been using this guy's pics already anyway)
this guy, over at a foodie messageboard went at a time when they were serving many of the same dishes I enjoyed, and took a bunch of pictures. alinea's website also has a gallery of some of their work and the interior of the restaurant.
The service was amazing, our waiter was only working with one table in the room we were sitting in, and was assisted by 2 guys who carried plates in to the room, a guy who made sure you always have the right utensils, the sommelier- who was absolutely amazing and came to introduce each new glass of wine we were given and ask about our impressions of previous glasses, and appeared to be able to do this with every table in the restaurant, as well as a couple of other miscellanious helpers. They were never intrusive, always there when we wanted them, and obviously did the little things like having your coat ready when you wanted it, having a cab ready when you step out the door, etc.
The restaurant's decor was brilliant, and the only regret I had the whole evening is that even though there was plenty of space between tables, we could hear the couple at the next table: "Oh no, I don't eat eggplant, asparagus, beef, fish, granola, yogurt, green vegetables, meats, etc, so just make me an entirely different menu." Yeah, that guy got his money's worth with his trophy wife...
Total tab for 2 was somewhere between $1100 and $1200. Dinner can be done far, far less expensively though.