My girlfriend and I went to a very fancy restaurant Friday night in Chicago called Alinea, truly a dining experience. Up until now I have been wary of spending too much on meals, but this restaurant eased those concerns in a terrific way, everything from the hostess being knowledgeable about our names, taking our coats, multiple servers taking our orders and presenting us with food (and giving us more than we ever needed to know about the ingredients), the lighting of the venue set to a low atmospheric mood, allowed my girlfriend and I to feel, for one night at least, in a completely different world of dining,
My favorite dishes:
1.) Wagyuu beef held with beef marrow. Unfortunately, only one bite to eat the whole thing, the crispy rice crumbled in the mouth "like a rice krispy treat," as the server said. Personally, it might as well have been a rice krispy treat; I couldn't tell the difference.
2.) Short Rib Bitter cocoa Cassis- basically, I liked all the dishes that included meat.......there wasn't that much of it. The short ribs were especially tender and contained ample flavor, definitely could tell the difference between it and normal rib places. Except for the fact I don't think I've ever complained about having ribs, so there wasn't much they could do to mess it up.
3.) Sanma (秋刀鱼), a Japanese type of fish, purportedly imported from the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan, like I would know the difference, but nonetheless a very strong fish, shaped like a sardine, not much larger than a sardine. Nice cultural reference to a culture I'd been researching to match the refined taste, couldn't complain about this one.
4.) Pork Belly with curry and banana- gotta admit the pork belly was so good and so well cooked, but this is one case of almost doing too much, not sure the curry and banana helped the pork belly in any way, kinda just mixed up the tastes, and not sure the dish (which we held in our left hand while used a utensil in the other) helped in any way, especially since I held it for long enough to eat the pork belly in 1 or 2 bites, then sat it down again.
5.) Bubble Gum Sour cherry banana: interesting concept of making an edible helium balloon that allowed us to break it and have a very high-pitched voice for a little bit.
Lessons learned:
1.) For a high class restaurant, presentation is everything, taste is important but secondary. Bring the food in as many different variations as possible, including on pieces of ice, on a flmaing piece, a funnel that's gassing up, in a balloon shape, on top of what looks like a glass vase, etc.
2.) It's OK to leave the customer hungry (especially 175 pound highly active with high metabolism adult males, apparently.) as long as it's exceptional food.
3.) courses come regularly and only after the prior course had been consumed. Standard, of course, but I can't help wondering if I would have been better eating all these items together and at my own discretion: I guess the chef decides the order of what goes down the gullet to get the best effect.
4.) add as many sweet dishes as possible, skimp on meat and main courses. Isn't a bad strategy: sugar and sweet things tend to get tons of approval, no one complains, restaurant saves money. I personally would have preferred a lot more MEAT! (but I guess that's what a steakhouse is for).
5.) Have a foreign-sounding name for each dish, make it seem special and memorable to the guests, make it seem better than it was because it had a name (people love having names to remember stuff by) "Spectrum," "Swirl," "Cloche," and "Nostalgia" were just some of the dishes we dined on (and in some cases, gulped in one bite)
6.) It's like modern art or opera: the high class have different standards than the common folk, and can taste the refined nuances of the Sanma (Pacific saury) from Tsukiji Market v. other types of fish caught in specific places and would pay a premium for that kind of meal, much like a connosieur of art would pay thousands more for a certain type of painting from a certain type of artist. I personally just divided food into categories of "good food" v. "OK" to "bad food." and whether it tastes good or not, call me dense for not appreciating modern art or opera or high class restaurants (But I DID really appreciate my girlfriend treating me to this and opening my eyes to this high class dining lifestyle! - ah how the rich live)
Overall, as not a food critic, I thought it was a unique dining experience, like trying skydiving or rock climbing, except it was a bit expensive, and I didn't even get full. On a very practical level, it was a total loss: paid full price for not much nutrition, didn't even get a full meal. On an aesthetic level, though, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I prefer somewhere in the middle for most of my meals, but for a once-in-a-while thing (maybe once-in-a-lifetime experience it was a great meal I'll remember forever. I just wish there was more.
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