Learn How to Cook and Create Like One of the Greatest Chefs in the World
The Lost Alinea Cookbook Essays Volume 5
You walk in through hidden sliding doors, saunter up a floating staircase, and sidle into comfy microsuede upholstered barrel back chairs. A champagne and liqueur-infused aperitif from the sommelier arrives at your table. The kitchen lobs a culinary grenade at you, an amuse bouche of butterscotch drizzled bacon swinging on a stainless steel trapeze or peanut butter and grape swaddled in a brioche coat nestled snugly inside a “squid”.
In this controlled context, working your way through unfamiliar flavor combinations like chocolate with dandelion or raspberry with red pepper taffy, you’re struck by romance, the idea of Chef Grant Achatz and his Alinea restaurant crew as conjuring artists. You may envision Achatz running around the kitchen, stealing inspired moments from his brain, slopping soy sauce and chocolate together on a spoon, tasting, and inventing in the moment.
Or maybe you think he’s a conductor of serendipity, guiding chance moments, like in an old Reese’s Pieces commercial where the chocolate accidentally falls into a jar of peanut butter. Even if you’re the most hardened skeptic, you likely think he’s indulging a cruel whimsy, maybe throwing darts at some ingredient board and taking down what sticks.
Though some of these things happen (there’s no dart board), it’s not the essence of Achatz’s craft.