Alinea

If you plan on going to Alinea for the food, save yourself a few bucks (more than a few) and head to any number of Chicago's worthwhile restaurants. It isn't that the food isn't worth the cash--it is. But Alinea is more than a place to fill your stomach; it accomplishes chef-owner Grant Achatz goal of providing diners with experiences that link food and emotion, senses and memory. Alinea is pillows filled with warm, nutmeg-scented air, bacon wrapped in butterscotch and suspended from a Calder-like contraption, tender beef and intoxicating black truffle. Eating at Alinea is like eating in a foreign country; looking back on the meal years later, (yes, you will remember), you won't simply recall the flavors, the presentation, the cost--you will recall the feeling of being someplace different, an entirely different environment that colors the way even the most familiar flavors are perceived. Now, how on earth do they do that?

Well, it wasn't luck, I'll tell you that much more free. Speaking of free, Alinea is not. Not even close. The cost per head for the 24 course chef's tour tops out at around two hundred, before booze. Which is why it's best to think of it more like a vacation than a meal out. You won't be disappointed. As a friend of mine put it, you may go in expecting the kind of haute cuisine, frou frou food we all love to hate, but the reality of Alinea is unexpected, original, intoxicating, delicious.

Alinea
1723 N. Halsted
312.867.0110
http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/