Alinea

I begin this post with yet another warning: there is a lot of abstracted, pretentious twaddle in the following. If you’re not up to dealing with it, I suggest you click out now and come back in a day or two when I might have some more humorous observations about drunks or something.
Last Saturday I, along with the Mrs. and a friend of ours from Chicago had the full 20 course tour at Alinea.

I wanted to write a review of the experience. Then I realized there is no point. More qualified people than I have written extensively about the place. Go on and google it and find out for yourself. Anything I would add would be redundant, superfluous, and frankly boring since I am terrible at writing about food.

Instead of a review, this is a reaction to the experience.

But first, we need to discuss the nature of art.

(I heard that groan. Go click on this if you don’t want to hear about it).

I am not an academic. I am not an art critic, food critic or any kind of critic. I am, however, a human being who consumes art and food. Therefore, I can offer an opinion as to what I think art is (the definition of food is, I think, not open to as much debate).

My definition: Art is something that is consumed through one or more of the senses that then provokes an intellectual and emotional reaction.

Yeah, there are a million holes in it, but for me that’s what works. Therefore, I reject Michael Ruhlman’s definition of cooking as pure craft. If I can see a painting and react to it or if I can hear music and react to it and I can see, smell, feel and taste food and react to it it’s all art to me. Bear in mind that I’m also implying that not all paintings, music and food are art; anything that’s just background noise or wall covering or utility food is just there, it isn’t art. So what I really mean is that most of the music, visual arts, and food in the world isn’t art because I really couldn’t give a crap about it.

To someone else of course, any or all of the stuff I exclude from the definition of art could be art. My definition has the advantage (or some would say the intellectual dishonesty) of being purely subjective and therefore inarguable. So what? Life is subjective. Some like it some don’t and who am I to judge?

“Get to the point?” Friend, there isn’t one. Except this:

A meal at Alinea is a work of art.

More precisely, it is the expression of one person’s vision. One person’s disciplined creative vision executed by who-knows-how-many assistants.

It is an experience of great pleasure. It is an experience that provokes thought. Retrospectively, it is an experience that inspires melancholy and frustration. Melancholy and frustration like that expressed by the apocryphal rock guitarist in the legend that goes “The first time I saw Eric Clapton/Jimi Hendrix (I’ve heard both versions) I wanted to give up the instrument”.

After eating at Alinea, I wanted to give up cooking.

I won’t, but on top of being frustrated by the fact that I can only spend significant time practicing in the kitchen about once a week (if I’m lucky) I have now experienced a level of vision and execution that I could never achieve if I spent every day for the next 30 years banging around at the stove.

That is disheartening.

It gets worse when I consider that at this point in my life, not only could I never be that good of a cook, I could never be that good at anything. The bar is set that high.

Would I eat there again? Absolutely. In a heartbeat. If I started avoiding everything in life where I knew my own efforts would fall short of the ideal I would wind up in the fetal position in the basement clutching a bottle of cheap whisky. I suspect the same is true for most of us except those that are extremely gifted, extremely driven, or extremely un-self-aware.

“So besides feeding your neuroses, how was the food?” you ask?

The “black truffle explosion” was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my life. The “venison, forest flavors and smells” makes me smile every time I think about it. “Six flavors, frozen” makes me laugh, especially when I recall the facial expressions of my dining companions who hated it. The wagyu beef dish that is first presented as a centerpiece and then slowly thaws at the table until the cheesesteak-thin slices are placed atop a hot miatake mushroom and date combination and finished with hot rendered beef fat is every bit is good as you think it is.

Those are the highest of the highs for me.

And those descriptions are inadequate in conveying the experience. Bah, more failure!

But….unfortunately for any of you who stumble onto this site, I’m not going to give up posting here either. I’ll keep flailing at the keyboard long after you’ve stopped reading. And that’s OK. Whatever any of us creates in any form, we are ultimately doing it for ourselves. Failing repeatedly is OK as long as you enjoy doing what you’re doing because at the end of it all life fails all of us.