Alinea, Chicago – ** – Final week of the classic experience

This is my review for Alinea in Chicago from a couple days ago. Alinea is a highly acclaimed and legendary restaurant that focuses on molecular gastronomy and other interesting techniques.

Several of the dishes here are some the most iconic dishes ever, and so they continue to be served even decades later. More recently the dinning experience has become controversial, with many people calling it dated and very style over substance. It also just lost its 3rd Michelin star.

Last week the creator of Alinea announced that after the following week (so after this current week), the current experience and all of the food at Alinea would be completely changed and instead be something brand new.

I had never been to Alinea before and it has always been one of the places I wanted to visit the most, so I immediately booked a reservation for this current week once I heard about that (and got a very last minute plane ticket and hotel room) to be able to experience it before it changed forever.

Of course if I was going through all this trouble I decided to go with the bigger “gallery” experience, which requires 2 people and is $666.29 per person (including taxes/fees but not including any drinks). So since I had to pay for 2 people and I was coming alone, I posted on reddit/discord to try to find a second person to split the experience/cost with. I did indeed find someone from the chicago food page, and it was very fun dinning together!

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Service: Service was both very professional and friendly, and the “free” glass of champaign is always nice to receive. I was busy talking to my +1 most of the time, and it felt like the servers successfully did everything they could to enhance our experience without bothering us. Service was basically seamless to the point where I didn’t even notice them taking/bringing some things, and basically had no flaws except for one time where they accidentally smeared some sauce on my plate with one of the utensils – 8.5/10

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Ambiance: Of course there are lots of cool things about the experience, and you do some things in the kitchen too and most of it is quite cool. Part of the gimmicks is just usage of some odd tableware which may have once been considered innovative or something, but these days most of the funky tableware just feels unnecessary and does’t really add anything to the experience.

By far my least favorite part of the ambience were the tables in the dinning room. They are heavily scratched metallic tables, that may have perhaps once invoked a feeling of being in a spaceship or something, but these days feel like something you would expect to find in a prison cafeteria. Like literally the worst tables I’ve ever seen in fine dinning and basically single-handedly destroyed the ambiance, which overall I will therefore give – 4/10

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Overall I can definitely see why some people absolutely hate this place and some people absolutely love it. I do agree that lots of the things are simply dated, like a lot of the freeze dried things and jellies. Maybe once these things were not being done anywhere else and were therefore so innovative that they were worth it for the experience, but these days you can find a lot of them at random stores for a few dollars. At the end of the day a lot of the versions here just dont taste better than dippin dots or some freeze dried food from some novelty store.

I do think its good to have some whimsy and child-like fun and wonder in fine dinning. In some other places its lacking, while here its absolutely everywhere and a lot of it is still fun. However when you are paying almost $700 per person for a meal filled with gimmicks, and a lot of the gimmicks just don’t land, I do think its a real problem.

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All that being said, there were several things that I thought were still phenomenal. The “hot potato cold potato” dish, though simple in concept, is just perfect and still a work of genius. I think the two desserts have also stood the test of time, and while very gimmicky, are just some of the funnest desserts ever. I usually “like” fine dinning desserts but don’t “love” them, and often just think a good bakery has just as good of a dessert as many *** restaurants do flavor wise. However here the desserts still taste good, while being so much fun and more unique than almost anywhere else.

During my stay in Chicago I also went to Smyth (which ended up being my favorite restaurant here overall), as well as all of the other ** restaurants, and some other highly recommended places. Alinea probably had more misses than all the rest combined, but the potato dish was still probably my number 1 dish of the trip, and 2 desserts were probably my 2 favorite desserts too.

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Food:

Caviar with baguette and cheese (pic 2) – Fun super thin crispy baguette, rest was just good – 6/10

Sunflower sandwich (pic 3) – Not bad but very forgettable in all aspects – 5/10

Corn snow (pic 4) – Interesting strong corn flavor, but too one note for the portion size. Its basically corn flavored dippin dots with some seasoning. Its interesting and tastes fine I guess, but honestly flavor wise I probably prefer actual dippin dots – 4.5/10

Peanut sponge cake (pic 5) – The cone part is just the plate basically, but regardless this one was actually quite tasty and fun to eat with good filling – 7/10

Grape jello orb with sesame oil (pic 6)- This actually worked better than I expected and was actually pretty interesting and good with the sesame oil – 6.5/10

Freeze dried white asparagus (pic 7) – Very artistic looking but the asparagus was bland and not very pleasant. These days you can easily find freeze dried stuff at certain gimmick stores or festivals, and I think the taste of this one was no better than those, which are already not great. I didn’t even finish half of that asparagus – 2/10

Hot potato cold potato (pic 8) – By far the best tasting dish of the night, and also by far the best I’ve had at what it tries to do with contrasting hot/cold temperatures in a single bite. And its just extremely tasty too. Basically its on a little contraption where you combine the hot and cold element in the exact millisecond before you eat it. Any restaurant that has a hot/cold dish but doesn’t have some method to guarantee this level of perfection of in contrast of temperatures for a single bite, cannot have a 10/10 dish and should refer to this dish for inspiration – 10/10

Skatewing with tamarind sauce (pic 9) – This comes on a giant plate for some unknown reason and I didn’t love the texture of the fish, but overall this was actually very tasty with the sauce and other flavors in this dish – 7.5/10

Crab with crab shell caramel (pic 10) – They said to cut this in half, but one look at it and gently putting my knife against it made me decide not to take that advice at all. So I basically 1 bited it and it was amazing, but my +1 took their advice and regretted it. – 8.5/10 (when not cut in half)

Pineapple and iberico ham carpaccio (pic 11) – Kind of like the Hawaiian pizza version of carpaccio, but I just didn’t like the taste of it – 4/10

Turbot with banana (pic 12) – Definitrly better than I expected, some good flavors and interesting – 6/10

Duck skewer (pic 13) – You go to the kitchen and they use some antique shaker to make you a cocktail which was actually quite good. Then they instruct you to make your hand into a certain shape, and use that to cut through what looks like a big glass Pringles can, and inside you grab like a little duck kebab on a branch. Even for someone who obviously likes gimmicks enough to spontaneously fly to Chicago to eat at Alinea, I thought this was just dumb. And the tiny duck kebab thing was just too salty – 3/10

Chicago hotdog jelly (pic 14) – The jelly itself doesn’t taste great … I mean its basically a jelly that tastes like hotdog water. But it wasn’t actually as bad as I expected and the tiny condiments actually do go well with it and add some fun textures. Its a purposely absurd dish, and I love the idea of it and how it brings in the most casual and iconic Chicago dish into the highest tier of find dinning, I just wish it tasted better – 5/10

Cherry, kombu, truffle crisp (pic 15) – I just didn’t like the taste of it – 3/10

Duck (pic 16) – The duck itself was pretty good and had nice flavors. Some of the other things on the plate were good while some I thought were just bad. Especially the “twizzler” in the background was horrible, it was very tough and I really didn’t like the flavor, I would much rather just have an actual twizzler instead – 4/10

Truffle explosion (pic 17) – the very first moment tasted really great but then it was just too salty, and I wish it was a bit warmer – 6/10

Wagyu (pic 18) – The wagyu was quite tasty and I really liked the spicy red “udon” that came with it. Some of the other things like the bread puree weren’t for me flavor wise, but they were at least interesting to try – 7/10

Grapefruit sorbet with avocado oil and chili (pic 19) – Mostly horrible, I often hate pallet cleansers and this was another such example – 2/10

“Paint” dessert (pic 1) – Very fun of course, and the various elements taste good too and the dish is quite good overall. Flavor wise its probably around a 7 but its just such a memorable and fun experience that this is one of the few times I think the gimmick significantly enhances the actual dish – 8.5/10

Balloon (pic 20) – Very fun and had a nice apple candy flavor. Flavor wise its probably around a 6 but again the gimmick is just so fun that I think it actually significantly enhances the dish. I much rather have this than almost any other final bite that all the fine dinning restaurants offer these days – 8.5/10

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So at the end of the day, I am very glad I got to try the experience at Alinea at least once in my life, and I did really enjoy several parts of it. I am also glad that they are kind of reinventing the experience, I think thats exactly what they need and have potential to rise to the top once again, and I will definitely try it the next time I’m in Chicago.