In his Aftertaste Test bedfellow editor intro, Nick Kokonas recounts affair chef Grant Achatz and founding Alinea, a restaurant that cooks aliment by freezing it, distills ingredients' essences to breath and questions the actual bistro accoutrement you use everyday.
Let's angle history a bit and pretend it is 1948 and a 22-year-old Miles Davis is arena in a baby club in burghal New York. He is able-bodied known, but not absolutely acclaimed yet. You are a applesauce fan and accept been to the abundant clubs in New York, Paris, Chicago and some crazy collective in Helsinki. You sit down, the music starts, and you are assertive that you apprehend the approaching of applesauce appropriate there: Altered colors, altered cadence, the aforementioned yet somehow different—modern but still accessible.
That is not the history of Miles Davis—not even close. But that is how I acquainted if I aboriginal tasted the affable of chef Grant Achatz. I went to Trio restaurant in burghal Chicago for cafeteria on a Friday, went aback the afterward anniversary for banquet on a Wednesday... again ate there about 15 added times over the next year. Grant was creating at a new level—not alone was the aliment delicious, it was modern, avant-garde and intellectually stimulating.
In January of 2004 Grant and I batten about possibly partnering to body a restaurant. If you accommodated Miles Davis at a adolescent age, you gotta advice to body him a world-stage right? If you didn't you would be blame yourself in the ass for the next 50 years. On May 4th 2004, we captivated a banquet at my abode to acquaint the abstraction to abeyant investors, an artist and an autogenous designer. On May 5th 2005 we opened—exactly one year to the date later. My dad acclimated to acquaint me that if you accept a abundant idea, the apple conspires to advice you accomplish it. It formed a bit like that. In October 2006, Gourmet Magazine called Alinea the Best Restaurant in the US. This year Restaurant Magazine in the UK placed us at # 10 in the world.
If you're apprehensive about the name, Alinea actually agency "off the line." The restaurant's symbol, added frequently accepted as the pilcrow, indicates the alpha of a new alternation of thought, or actually a new paragraph. There's a bifold meaning: On one duke Alinea represents a new alternation of anticipation about food, but we are a restaurant, and aggregate still has to appear "off the line."
Grant's accomplishments is in the basics and the classics. He grew up affable in his parents' booth in St. Clair, Michigan, went to the Comestible Institute of America, again abstruse his haute cuisine chops from the best chef in the land—Thomas Keller. A cruise to El Bulli restaurant in Roses, Spain beneath the administration of chef Ferran Adria let Grant apperceive that you could yield classical technique, administer according measures of whimsy, intelligence, adroitness and technology, and transform the dining experience. He spent a few canicule there, came home, and began to innovate in means he could not accept absurd at the time.
I am not a comestible professional, nor do I accept a restaurant background. I accept a BA in philosophy, spent my adolescence programming on a Apple II (including an accounting affairs for my dad's business that was in use until 1991), and the majority of my able career trading derivatives and advance in small, mostly web-based tech companies.
We congenital Alinea to blow all the senses—not alone taste. The card is composed like a symphony or a play, afflictive diners, arduous them, and authoritative abiding they feel... happy, sad, nostalgia, humor... the abounding ambit of animal emotion.
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Food and technology... not absolutely the best of accompany lately. With the books Fast Aliment Nation and Omnivore's Dilemma (both must-reads in my opinion)—and the documentary Food Inc.—there is the faculty that anytime technology is activated to aliment bad things happen. Genetically adapted vegetables, beasts fed blah and a accomplished agglomeration of drugs to acquiesce them to abstract it, and whatever keeps a Twinkie about for 50 years—none of that can be acceptable for us, right?
I am actuality to acquaint you that addition if activated to aliment can be a acceptable thing.... newer can beggarly better, added plentiful, added delicious. You can administer technology while still getting admiring of the ingredients, the environment, and the consumer. It can aswell advice yield an accustomed banquet and accomplish it artful. Grant's cuisine questions assemblage while anniversary it. And if necessary, he uses technology and science to accomplish new tastes and textures that adjust with the ambition of authoritative the dining acquaintance the best it can possibly be.
Some aliment critics and foodies administer the "molecular gastronomy" characterization to the cuisine of Chef Achatz. [His name is arresting like "rackets", as Wired's Mark McClusky already acicular out.] There is a lot accounting on that, but we don't like the tag... it seems limiting, abbreviate sighted, and in abounding cases just apparent wrong. Abundant of the time, low tech is acceptable enough—why use a laser to cut something if a knife will do the job just fine? Unfortunately, the atomic gastronomy of today generally has added to do with the showmanship than it does with the aboriginal goals of the movement. If Herve This coined the appellation way aback in the '80s, he advised for it to be, essentially, the MythBusters of the kitchen, a criticial attending at how and why things work.
What the Alinea kitchen does accept in accepted with MG is the admiration to catechism everything, try new techniques, and accomplish the dining acquaintance bigger all the time. Alinea has a agents of 60+ humans committed to that ideal. And those basal goals are abundant the aforementioned as the best articles and technologies that are featured on Gizmodo everyday... The aberration being, you can eat these.
I achievement to appearance a few examples of what Chef Achatz and the Alinea aggregation of 25 chefs does everyday, how they catechism and create, and the abstruse innovators we plan with consistently to accomplish these goals. We may blow on a few broader capacity of affair to anybody who eats. But mostly, we wish our Aftertaste Test posts to be absolutely like the acquaintance at Alinea—fun and delicious.
Nick and Grant (center two) in the Alinea kitchen:
Nick Kokonas co-founded Alinea with Grant Achatz in 2005, and works with the chef on Alinea-related projects, recruiting innovators to claiming and advance every aspect of the affable and bistro experience. A accounts guy and web-oriented angel broker by trade, Kokonas got his alpha aback in his boyhood years autograph business software on an Apple II. You can grab the attractive Alinea cookbook here, or just appointment Alinea's home page.
Alinea Alinea AlineaAmazon.com: $39.27
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Taste Test is our weeklong accolade to the leaps that action if technology meets cuisine, spanning aggregate from the celebrated breakthroughs that fabricated aliment tastier and safer to the Earl-Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently anticipate in the future.
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