The whole reason for our 24 hour trip to Chicago was to eat at Alinea. We've been hearing about and reading about Chef Grant Achatz and Alinea for a couple of years now, but we never have any reason to be in Chicago so we decided to make a weekend trip out of it. Alinea was all it's cracked up to be and more. The place is beautifully modern, serene and warm all at the same time. When you walk in the big, black door you are funneled into a long hallway that gets smaller as you progress. It sort of feels like you are entering a very modern fun house. At the end of the fun-house hallway, motion sensitive doors open into the restaurant. Before you is a fairly massive glass staircase which you follow up to the main seating area. Once there, the muted walls are peppered with simple, brush-stroke. The dark tables are lacking tablecloths, but don't seems stark and behind a long black velvet banquette in the dining room in which we were sitting was a beautiful lighting/art piece with large tubular opaque glass lights and large tubular vases filled with some sort of produce that looked like small or orange tomatillos and branches. Once food hits your table you are in awe of the specifically designed serving pieces and utensils, made by a local artist for the specific dishes.

The service was pretty close to impeccable, although they are using the team-of-waiters approach that Alexis isn't particularly fond of. All of the waitstaff that we spoke to were very knowledgable about the food and were very nice, yet not at all intrusive. The only 2 flaws, and we're really searching here. 1) Alexis asked for a piece of paper and never got it. Although, to their credit, she did whip out her own piece of paper to take notes on right after she asked for one. 2) We asked the sommeiller to suggest some reasonably priced wines. That means cheap, without wanting to say cheap. However the sommeiller kept suggesting wines in the $100 range despite the fact that the wine list contained a good selection of wines in the $35-$65 range.

The food was amazing, as we hoped it would be. Although there were many interesting molecular gastronomy style techniques used, the food rarely felt gimmicky. There were plenty of flavor combinations we'd never thought of, but which were totally delicious. The food was refined and sophisticated, while playful and whimsical at times. There are 2 options at Alinea, the 12 course tasting menu and the 24 course "tour". Since we flew out to Chicago specifically for this meal, we did the tour. Although 24 courses seems like a lot, many were a single bite and the meal was spread out over 4 hours. We really enjoyed almost all of the savory courses, although we weren't too into the desserts. However, that says nothing about the food, we just aren't really into sweets. One of the things we found quite incredible is that a lot of the dishes, even if only a single bite, contained many, many ingredients, yet nothing was overpowering and all of the ingredients felt necessary. The only thing we found a bit lacking was the temperature of some of the dishes. Because the bites were so small, by the time some of the dishes were in front of us, they were on the cooler side of warm. The "tour" was $195 per person, and well worth the incredible experience and delicious food.

We were asked by the staff to refrain from using the flashes on our cameras so we had to work hard for these pictures in the low-light environment of the restaurant. The pictures, for the most part, are ok, but keep in mind we were working under difficult lighting conditions.

Labels: decor: 3, Food: 3, molecular gastronomy, restaurant, review, Service: 2