Was in Chicago last week and had an unbelievable time at Next/Aviary, Grant Achatz’s (chef at Alinea) new restaurant and bar, respectively.
Next changes their menu every 3 months and does a new theme based on a different time and place each time. This menu was Paris 1906 and they copied exact recipes from that period, which made the 8 course meal extremely authentic.
The restaurant also works with tickets instead of reservations. Each ticket is inclusive of taxes and tip and must be purchased online through their elusive ordering system. At the time I got our table, they sold over 100 tables in under 1 minute. Thousands of people wait on the website frantically refreshing the page.
We also got non-alcoholic pairings, reasoning that (a) we don’t know what we’re doing with wine and (b) not many good restaurants serve non-alcoholic pairings, so it’d be a unique experience. They were all really good (and almost definitely more preferable than wine), except for the carrot juice, which we hypothesized was simply the watery remains you find at the bottom of a 1 lb bag of carrots poured into a wine glass.
The highlight course was the duck, which was served family style:
Photo via Dan D.’s Facebook
Afterwards we got drinks at The Aviary, which is a sort of molecular gastronomy for drinks. The menu has about 15 drinks in order from least to most crazy and offers about 10 small bites as snacks. The drinks got good, but not great reviews, but the “coolness” factor was very high on all of them.
We also randomly were seated next to Nick Kokonos, the co-owner of Alinea, Next, and The Aviary. Chef Achatz talked to him briefly and after we said hi to Achatz, Nick talked to us a bit and told us about his background (trading!) and how he transitioned into this business. He seemed like a really nice guy and is a part of now 3 of the best and most influential spots in Chicago eating/drinking, though he still gets a hard time from all the people who can’t manage to refresh the Next website fast enough to score their tickets!
