I just arrived in Chicago for a work conference and only have a short few days here so tried to make the most of it. On this day of arrival, I had Alinea booked for solo dining in the Salon. Alinea has 3 tastings, the Salon upstairs (in the Tock reservation page, they call out that it is only accessible via stairs), the Gallery at ground level, and the Kitchen which I assume was the table set up downstairs in the kitchen. As a solo diner, I only had the option to book The Salon and I was only able to book the second seating. My understanding (from a reddit thread) is that the main difference is that going from Salon to Gallery to Kitchen, you get more courses and more of a show and interactivity.

Alinea came onto my radar from the Netflix series Chef’s Table (Season 2, Episode 1) where each episode focuses on the personal history (tongue cancer being a very big factor for him) and of course the cuisine. There has also been some business changes just this month at Alinea with one of the co-owners (Nick Kokonas) having just sold his stake in the Alinea restaurant group.

SPOILER ALERT: if you plan on dining at Alinea soon and wan’t to be completely surprised, read no further. You have been warned!

As I arrived at the door, I wasn’t quite sure where it was since the front of the restaurant is just a black door with no signs (“very demure, very mindful” haha). I asked the individuals standing outside (who presumably were diners from the first seating waiting for their car) where the restaurant was and the confirmed that I was at the right place. I had arrived a bit early (didn’t want to be late!) and even hoped they would seat me a bit early since I was in the first seating, but there was some prep they have to do and also there is something with timing as I’d later see. As I checked in I was asked if I used their valet (didn’t know about any valet), but I had just taken an Uber. Three more couples showed up (all also asked if they took their valet, but none of them had), all there for special occasions of course and amusingly just me who is there just for the food. I was the second table (5 tables total) seated in this further back section of the Salon. For seated tables or tables soon to be seated, there was some kind of banana-shaped creation hanging from the ceiling which no doubt would come into play at some point in the meal.

I hadn’t picked a beverage pairing and generally don’t so I have some flexibility when I get to the restaurant. Plus I assume Tock takes a cut of the transaction so I prefer to save the restaurant those fees. There were 3 wine pairings – standard ($155), reserve ($245), and the Alinea pairing ($395). I opted for the reserve (and when Andrea and I dine together and there are two or more offerings, we will always pick 2 different ones so we can try the maximum number of wines, but since I was just dining solo, the reserve was good enough).

The bite was an Osetra caviar (from Regiis Ova which we know well enough) and some Krug Grand Cuvee. Very nice start.

The next two bites were black truffle (from Perigord from Australia) bites with a bit of interactivity. The first truffle bite, the truffle Explosion – truffle and cheese filling topped with truffle. I was instructed to eat very quickly as it would deteriorate over time. I had to pause just a bit to take some pictures of course, but completed the assignment with one bite. It was a decent bite of truffle, but not quite an explosion to me (granted, I very liberally (perhaps excessively?) use truffle since I regularly buy 300g of truffle at a time from a truffle farm in Provence). The second truffle bite was some truffle atop a small bit of cold potato suspended with a pin over a small bath of warm potato (sorry, my photo doesn’t show this very well). To eat this, I had to pull the pin (like a truffle potato grenade, lol) which drops the cold potato/truffle bit into the warm potato slurry and then is consumed quickly like a shot. Another nice bite of food with a touch of creativity and interactivity. These two truffle bites were paired with a Puligny-Montrachet that was good by me.

After that I was asked to get up from the table and join 6 other diners for a trip downstairs to the kitchen for our next course. There was already a group when downstairs at an adjacent section (looking at the pictures now, I can see they were having the “Gold” course). Here we were served some apricot sangria and were served soccarat, the crisp carmelized bottom of a paella, with rabbit. Another tasty couple bites and a fairly salty (as far as I’m concerned better slightly over than under).

The next course came in two diskes – one with spiny lobster and pork belly and the other was uni-based. I’m loving all the ingredients so far. The pork belly was had a very concentrated rich flavor and with lobster made for a sort of surf and turf. The uni dish came in an impressive looking sea-urchin shaped glass dish with golden tips on the spines. The dish itself was an ice cream atop a bed of little bacon and macadamia nut bits (I have to admit that it made me think of super fancy Bac-Os and when I was kid, I’d just eat Bac-O’s straight), but the uni flavor was a bit lost, but I still liked the Bac-Os dish.

Next course came as another 2 part dish, but with a twist. The first part was the charred Arctic char with this carmelized maple syrup on top which was eaten as finger food. This was served atop this beautiful decorated pedestal. The surprise came for the second part where you turned the pedestal over and in the hollow of what was the foot of the pedestal, but was the second part of the course which primarily consisted of char roe. That was a wholly unexpected little trick with this course.

The next course is called blancmange which translates to “white eat” which was the primary color for this dish and is typically a dessert. It first starts with the multi-colorfed glass rooster in a basket with a brown “egg” being dropped off at the table. The small bundle of thyme from the hanging “banana” was brought charred to create some smoke and then affixed on the back of the rooster. The waitperson who served my the main dish had a French accent and he said this was his favorite dish as he presented it. The main dish itself is chicken served two ways, the breast and served two ways draped with a patterned rice sheet. On the side was a spiced and seasoned chicken veloute.

There was also another bite of chicken that was a big contrast and diverged from the blancmange concept; it was a a piece of chicken leg that was cured, aged, cooked, pressed, fried and served with a fernet sauce. I do remember that bite being quite flavorful. The “egg” in the basket with the rooster is actually a roll filled with foie gras. I was a bit mixed on this dish. I know a lot of technique went into the dish and I understand they’re going for a concept, but I don’t recall much from the main dish, so in the end it wasn’t particularly memorable flavor-wise for me.

The last savory course was a small piece of Australian wagyu and Okinawan sweet potato (much darker color than ube) topped with some pine nuts, white and black sesame, puffed rice, nori, and more. They shavings that topped the wagyu was more Okinawan sweet potato with soy, ginger, matsutake mushroom. On the side, there as a tiny turnip on top of a turnip and matsutake puree and red plum glaze. I love the color on this dish and I do remember the wagyu being quite a flavorful couple bites.

Then came the first dessert called Fairytale Pumpkin where they finally put the “banana” to use. The “banana” was in fact a bit of roasted fairytale pumpkin cured in rendered Jamon Iberico. This was mashed and topped with toasted Fairytale pumpkin seeds and on the beautiful black and white pedestal along side the robiolo cheese, date puree and iberico power topped with a brown spice snap cracker dusted with a white cheddar powder mimicking the pattern on the pedestal.

Then came a very short course called Gold which was basically a funnel cake made with the infamous tonka bean and some saffrom dusted in a gold color.

The table gallery dessert had the general form of an artistic interactive dessert, but lacked the intricacy and finesse. It was a spectacle, but not spectacular. See what it looked like from the Netflix series (picture below) and compare to my experience. A little more color (e.g. something darker like browns and/or reds to contrast) and variation in the shapes and flavors would have made a world of difference. I wondered if the dessert was “dumbed down” because I was a table of 1, but the other tables seemed similarly created, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to them to be sure. It was quite a large quantity of dessert and no way I was going to finish it alone and I didn’t find the flavor (or texture) particularly compelling. It was a somewhat anticlimactic penultimate course to the meal.

The final course was the helium balloon made from caramel apple and taffy along with an edible string made of apple leather string. For me, I was instructed to remove my glasses and “kiss” the balloon and to deflate the balloon. I could hear at other tables that they were also instructed to move back any hair which of course was not a problem in my case.

Overall, I did enjoy the meal…there were some great ingredients, meticulous, and creative preparation (at times) with some surprise and delight, and mostly delicious food. Service was uneven depending on who on the team was serving and even instructions were conflicting from what I heard said at the adjacent tables. The somm seem spread very thin often rushing from table to table (and actually missing for one of my wines that I had to ask about it) and was just merely perfunctory with the wine. I couldn’t help but feel that the dinner though that the experience was just a little bit watered down, perhaps partially due to being in the Salon (as compared to Gallery and Kitchen), perhaps being a solo diner, perhaps it being a Sunday second seating, and also based on lofty expectations set by the Netflix episode. It was a very good meal, a generally very good experience, but in this case, not a spectacular one. I would be interested one day to revisit and ideally do the Kitchen (or at least the Gallery) tasting as a couple and ideally as a larger table since I expect I would get a bit more of that spectacular experience.

https://www.alinearestaurant.com