Memories in Gustation-Martha Lou's Kitchen (Charleston, SC)

If you read my blog on a consistent enough basis, you'll notice one of my recurring gripes is with dull and uninspired landscapes.  You know what I'm talking about.  Those depressing stretches of road that are nothing but a myriad of strip malls and chain restaurants and for some reason like fifteen auto part stores all clustered next to one another. You can find the same drabness in suburbia in the form of one giant house built 25 times in a row and crammed in to one subdivision, invariably built atop formerly pristine wildlife. I don't know how to say it any other way, but all of that feels very "gray" to me.  It's the kind of setting that makes me want to take a shower just from driving through it.

My wife and I picked Charleston, South Carolina as our place to honeymoon, and I'm so glad we did.  Charleston gave us the exact opposite of that dreary, lethargic feel.  Everything was genuine, preserved and felt purposeful.  All manner of architecture, Georgian to Victorian, Federal to Italianate gave the city an engaging and captivating buzz.  Even the humid ocean air felt built-in, as if commanded to be there by the row houses and centuries old churches.  One particular moment struck me as especially charming; when my new wife and I decided to stroll aimlessly through the streets of Charleston just to see what we could find.  Before we knew it we had unwittingly stumbled in to a three hundred year old Unitarian cemetery; a truly incredible and humbling experience.

In case "places where dead people are stored" isn't exactly your bag, it should also be noted that Charleston is an overwhelmingly impressive city on the gastronomic as well.  The city itself has fewer than 150,000 residents and continues to find itself in consideration as one of the top culinary hotspots in the world. With the ability to boast being home to things like Sean Brock's flagship restaurants Husk and McCrady's; as well as being the host city to 2013's Cook It Raw event, it's hard to say those accolades aren't deserved

Still, behind the glitz and glamor and celebrity that exists in Charleston's food scene, something else truly magical can be found.  Guided by grand exaltation from Yelp! reviewers, my wife and I decided to head to lunch at Martha Lou's.  It should be said at this point that this entry isn't exactly blowing the lid off of any secret to the excellence contained within Martha Lou Gadsden's incredible restaurant.  We had entered at just the right time, which is to say we were sat at a six top with a family of four who we had never met before.  This is something I experienced several times in Charleston.  If a place was packed you didn't wait for a table, you were crammed in to wherever you could be sat.  Moments later the place was slammed to a standing room only capacity.  Most of the people left, but some of the loyalists decided it was worth it to stand and eat.  I am seriously grateful we came when we did, because truthfully I'm not sure I would have assumed it was worth standing in a tiny, sweltering restaurant just to get my hands on some reputable fried chicken.  If I knew then what I know now, I would understand that it would have been worth it to stand on hot tar for what I was about to eat.

Nothing could prepare me for the majesty that awaited me.  For something like $15.00 my wife and I gorged ourselves on literally the best soul food I've ever eaten.  Soul food is something that is very easy to assume will be delicious.  I mean who doesn't love a plate teeming with rice and beans, collards, macaroni and cheese and fried chicken?  I could eat that meal every day for my life and be happy, of course that would be before prematurely expiring from a massive cardiac episode. What isn't easy is making something like baked macaroni and cheese a truly excellent, stand out dish.  But there I was, in a restaurant about the width and length of a semi-truck trailer (maybe smaller) in what had to be over a hundred degree weather, eating pure bliss.

The most impressive thing about the whole experience?  How about the fact that when I got there, 83 year old Martha Lou Gadsden herself was working the fry station, making sure everything came out just right.  Towards the end of the meal when my wife and I (both disgustingly full at this point) had funny picked our plate clean, Martha Lou finally gave herself a break.  Sitting at one of the benches in her restaurant, waving herself with a menu, she yelled for someone to give her some sweet tea. After receiving her tea she noticed our sluggish visages melting away in the corner.  She asked who we were and where we were from.  Upon hearing that we were newlyweds she leaped up and gleefully demanded we sign the bible sized guestbook she had at the front of the restaurant.  We happily signed out names somewhere in the middle of the book, probably about 200 pages in.  I asked her how long the book had been around for.  "Oh that one?" she said "Maybe two weeks!". Patronage well deserved.

I hopefully don't live in a world so joyless that I need to pontificate anyone in to seeking out amazing food, but if a story needs a moral, here one is. We were loaded on newlywed cash on that smoldering July afternoon, we really could have dined anywhere in a city with five star restaurants on literally every corner, but a hunch and fifteen bucks led us in to one of the top ten meals of my life.  Never assume that money and quality stack up equally.  In or around Charleston? Make a stop at Martha Lou's. You will not be disappointed.

Panic At The Dish Pit-Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the Service Industry

Preface:  I work in a restaurant and I am diagnosed as having generalized anxiety disorder with panic attacks.  This is just my story.  I am not an authority on anything psychiatric.  I wrote this because I know I'm not alone in dealing with this frustrating and complicating problem. I also wanted to write something because the instinct anxiety and panic breeds in to a person's brain is to be ashamed enough of their disorder as to internalize it.  That strategy not only ignores the problem, it exacerbates it.  Anyways, here it is.
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It happened again last night.  I felt my stomach twist and noticed my nausea.  I say "noticed" because at that point I'm not sure if I just became nauseous or if I have been for hours, or maybe all day. Either way, that shitty feeling I'm just now noticing has now instantly become an obsession.  The checklist process in my brain kicks in.

"Could this just be the coffee I drank earlier?  Am I maybe a touch hungover? Oh wait, did I even drink last night... oh my god people often experience nausea right before a heart attack."

Cue full on panic.

"Shit, people always get really panicky right before they have a heart attack too. Is my arm going numb?  Why are my hands shaking so hard?!"

It should also be mentioned that at that exact moment I was driving on a freeway that was limited to one lane thanks to construction.  As always, my anxious mind fixated on possibility, not probability. It seemed, at that moment, completely reasonable that my tire was going to blow out at the exact moment I was going to have a stroke.

I had just delivered a pizza and was rushing back to the restaurant I work at when this all kicked in.  Making matters that much more urgent seeming was my bright orange "low fuel" sign blaring in my face.  Usually this half inch by three quarter inch light isn't a big deal, but with panic tearing through my brain it felt oppressive.  I stopped for gas and pumped something like $6.34 in to the tank because standing in one place for any longer felt literally impossible. Then I sped back to work.

The series of obstacles rearranges itself now that I'm back at my place of work.  The benefits live symbiotically with the negatives.  Yes, I like my coworkers and understand they know who I am and what I deal with and are supportive; which in turn makes me paranoid about alienating people who I care about.  Yes, it's a pizza restaurant and not heart surgery so it's not categorically urgent; but it is implicitly rapid paced and requires a rhythm and degree of proficiency in order to be performed with even a marginal level of competence.  That rhythm, that coordination, can't exist when thanks to some evolutionary misstep, your adrenal gland is misfiring like a goddamn uzi and your heart is palpitating and your eyes are dilated so all of the halogen lights suddenly morph in to white dwarfs and blind your eyes.

Eventually, panic subsides.  My heartbeat returns to relative normality and my hands regain control. A short time after that, after I've regained my breath and stopped hyperventilating, my muscles loosen and I can return to standard operating mode.  Panic seems to strike everyone on different levels and for different amounts of time.  Generally my worst episodes last anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Nine times out of ten I can detect it approaching and calmly motivate myself out of it by reminding myself that it's happened tens of times before and nothing truly awful ever happens.  When that doesn't work, all bets are off.  I've had to step outside mid-rush just to prevent myself from blacking out.  Anyone who's ever worked in a restaurant knows that a move like that is borderline sacrilege, something that should only be reserved for someone who thinks they are about to die. Believe me, that's about where I was.

I want this entry to be more than a self-pitying narcissistic rant about how difficult my life is, so I thought I'd write some advice to the young anxious individual who's in love with the idea of the restaurant life.  Truthfully the solution to all things anxiety, be it yours or someone else's, can be found in honesty. As a concept, honesty is something everyone is familiar with.  What people aren't familiar with is the raw, uncomfortable feelings that often accompany it.  Let's take an honest account of what a person with an anxiety disorder has to deal with if they want to work in the service industry.

First, the service industry is intensely competitive.  Whether your back of house, front of house, serving, cooking or whatever, you're always trying to maintain your rank or move up.  Yes, the camaraderie is real and you can find satisfaction like nothing else an ice cold shift beer with your co-workers after a brutal shift, but the operative word in that sentence is still "brutal".  Make sure you step in to life in the kitchen knowing somewhere along the line you will be stepped on.  It's difficult for the catastrophically-minded individual to operate in an industry where the traditional modus operandi for shaping young men and women in to respectable cooks is aggressive and repetitive negative reinforcement. This isn't to say that everyone who serves as a mentor in a kitchen is a heartless bully, but it is to say that you learn quickly that you have to totally bust your ass to be a good cook.

Secondly, the powers that be do not give a shit about you.  This is true in almost any profession, but the level of ambivalence doled out to kitchen workers is extreme.  Don't count on finding yourself in a position that awards you benefits, a 401K or anything else that might serve to protect you should the worst happen.  Think about basically every minor pitfall you could endure and realize that most of that shit won't get treated so long as you are working in kitchens.  Hernias, damaged teeth, broken feet, wildly infected burns, the list of things i've seen go untreated by kitchen workers who simply don't have the means to deal with them goes on and on and on.  This doesn't even begin to touch the gauntlet a young person seeking mental health must go through if they don't have benefits.  Our society basically damns mental illness right out of the gate.  Whether you're a normally functioning individual who happens to have panic attacks like me, or the paranoid schizophrenic who is a legitimate candidate to hurt themselves or someone else, you're essentially thrown in the same boat. Every free clinic i've ever stepped in to, every exhausted and overwhelmed doctor who's ever checked me out, have all concluded almost instantly that I'm seeking drugs and can't be trusted.  It should be noted that I receive that level of suspicion even though I'm a white male with zero prior convictions, far and away the most privileged sector of society. I can't even imagine what it's like for other people.

Thirdly, that stereotypical fun fast kitchen lifestyle is hard.  This seems like it goes without saying, but honestly so many of those youthful, self destructive things that make working in a restaurant romantic are the things that completely work to inflame anxiety.  Coffee? No good.  Cigarettes? Nope. Alcohol? Bad bad bad.  Basically anything that dehydrates you and/or speeds your heart up is more or less a recipe for disaster if you're prone to panic.  Maybe it sounds silly to consider these things at all, but look at the other two elements I wrote about up there.  Kitchens start to feel like families, of course you'll want to drink or have a smoke with your co-workers.  And if nicotine and alcohol (or other things) don't sound appealing based on that alone, then just wait for the harsh realities of life to catch up.  When I have a lousy paycheck or a hard day at work, I don't want blended wheatgrass to get me through the night.

Again, I'm just one person with one perspective.  Nothing I am saying should be taken as a general truth and nothing I am saying should be given any credit from a psychoanalytical perspective.  I am writing what I would like to have been told when I was 17 and got my first job washing dishes.

None of what I'm saying is meant to discourage anyone from getting involved in working in kitchens. Truth be told, if I could do it all over again, I'm not sure I'd change a whole lot about the trajectory of my life.  Kitchens have an amazing and empowering feel to them.  It's honest work done by honest people.  Furthermore, generally the people who stick around in kitchens do so because they are creative and interesting individuals who have fallen in to the margins of an otherwise uncreative society.  I spent several months wringing my hands and feeling embarrassed before I told my coworkers what I was dealing with, and the result? Assurance and support, through and through.  One fellow employee even empathized and confided a similar struggle with me. Yes, my panic can be frustrating at times, sometimes even crippling, but I can't say assuredly that my reality would be much different if I worked in retail or some sterile office setting.  Go in to everything you do with honest expectations, prepare for the worst but always, always hope for the best.

Family Dinners

The "Family Recipe" spread.

In late November of 2013 I found myself sitting alone and disenchanted outside of the cafeteria of the Milwaukee Area Technical College's Mequon campus.  A combination of things led to that disenchantment.  First, Mequon is equal parts extreme wealth and cultural destitution.  As snobby as that sentence sounds, there are but a few decent restaurants in the entire city to cater to the surrounding elite.  The few saving graces that do exist are integrated in to the indistinguishable and sprawling network of strip malls that line Mequon's eponymous main road.  Credit is due to the actually good chefs working to make Mequon a better and more delicious place, but unless you're Todd Solondz, you're not wrenching anything inspirational out of the blank landscape that is Mequon.

Adding to that was my schedule. Class during the day and work during the night left little time for me to exist as an individual.  The few days that allowed me any free time became a balancing act of sustaining something of a social life, spending time with my wife and simply finding time to complete the general errands and tasks necessary to exist in this world.  A reality that necessitated rigid scheduling and cold pragmatism was fiercely at war with my spontaneous brain and my impractical heart. I'm impatient and spasmodically manic so the foundation of my plan to just put my head down and work for a few years may as well have been built on pudding.

With an impending meltdown afoot, I needed to supplant the static boredom that was my life with something.  It needed be something intimate and galvanizing, something special.  Food, being an obvious obsession in my life, often served as an escape for me.  I would spend hours reading food blogs, or fantasizing as I pored over reviews of the greatest restaurants in the world.  It didn't take for it to add up that this mania could be used as an avenue for something far more fulfilling.

Judah and Neenah getting ready for some comfort food.

In an attempt to hone my enthusiasm in to something solid I took an account of all of the things that make me tick.  Friends (often in a the more-the-merrier context), hosting events, sharing and consuming ridiculous amounts of food. Those ingredients combined to form the foundation of the very first family dinner. On January 6th, 2014, my wife and I hosted some of our closest friends for an enormous Middle Eastern feast.  We opted to start with Middle Eastern cuisine because it's accessible, absolutely delicious and has the feeling of food that is meant to be shared.  Since then we've hosted 25 other dinners, meaning literally hundreds of dishes have graced our rickety old dining room table. Sometimes we pick a region or city like Sicily or Bangkok, sometimes we pick something less structured, like "summer" or "family recipes".  Either way, the end product is always meaningful time spent with people who you love.

One the many victims of family dinner food coma

Marketing and consumerism have turned "tradition" in to a four letter word in our cynical generation. Everything is either shoddy in it's cheapness or gaudy in it's luxuriousness.  On top of that, we have become so connected by way of electronic device that personal face-to-face interaction has found itself in to expendability.  For me, family dinners break that mold.  Every few Sundays I have the extreme pleasure of drinking wine and sharing food with some of my close friends, in person, and that is a tradition worth cherishing. Moreover, it's one I suggest incorporating in to your own lives. Find yourself living wedged in the doldrums? Did five tons of snow fall on to your house, striking you with cabin fever? I recommend trying to cook yourself out of it.  Make something cozy, indulgent, and don't be afraid of simplicity. After you do that, tell your friends to pick up a bottle of cheap wine and invite them over. It may be a cliche, but I think you will find it true that true richness can be found anywhere, and can never be purchased.

Favorite Things: MKE-Red Light Ramen

Today is Friday.  I don't work.  I presently have more than $30.00 to my name.  This combination of things sets up the near inevitability that at 11:15, you can find me frigid and shivering, waiting in line for a bowl of pure bliss.  That bliss manifests in Chef Justin Carlisle's tonkotsu ramen, an indulgent and milky bowl of pure pork essence that just so happens to be the perfect panacea for the winter blues.

Pairing beautifully (and hilariously) with the ramen is your choice of alcoholic slushy.  The mainstay in the slushy machine is the classically sconnie brandy old fashioned, but there is also a rotating flavor to choose from.  I have consumed an unholy and irresponsible amount of frozen booze in the depths of Red Light Ramen and have never had an unsatisfactory sip, but don't go too hard because these drinks will mess you up. Cab, Lyft, Über or designated driver are highly advised.  If you're too stuffy and/or dumb, or just don't want to ruin your morning, they are also well stocked with PBR.  It should be noted though that you are allowed to be sober at Red Light Ramen, just don't expect to be in the majority.

Anyone who is a little turned off by higher end dining (why are you reading this blog?) shouldn't feel deterred by the fact that Red Light Ramen shares it's space with the also excellent Ardent. Same staff and address and exact same space aside, these are two very different places  Once the lights dim and 2Pac starts blasting you can pretty much be assured that the staff has cut loose the shackles of serenity and are ready to fill you with as much heart-stopping comfort as you can handle. Perfect for foodies and philistines alike! That being said, please for the love of God, do yourself a favor and eat at Ardent.  Both establishments are exciting and precise and worthy of our patronage.  Anyways, off to do something healthy to preemptively make up for what I'm going to do to myself tonight. See you in line!

Red Light Ramen starts at 11:30 P.M. on most Fridays and Saturdays.  Follow them for all sorts of hilarity on Twitter @RedLightRamen

Lunch With Bup: The Yen Ching Edition

This Sunday I had the pleasure of eating lunch with my grandfather at Yen Ching; a long-standing Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Milwaukee that calls it's food "fine Mandarin cuisine".  While I think the word "fine" may be a little lofty to describe the lunch I had at Yen Ching,  I did find the overall experience to be enjoyable.  Truthfully, I think a lot of the charm of Yen Ching was how definitively not fine it was. Outdated kitsch reverberated off of the walls, the five foot tall plastic buddha, the plastic flowers and the Chinese horoscope placemats.  Everything about Yen Ching's aesthetic stokes my imagination and conjures images in my brain of the kind of family depicted in "The Wonder Years" packing in a car and traveling to that fancy exotic restaurant that just opened up on Good Hope!  I can almost see the curmudgeon of a dad staring in befuddlement at words like "kung pao" and "crab rangoon" and wondering what the hell happened to this country.  These may sound like criticisms, but to me they are sacred accolades. 

Being that this is some sort of bastardization of a food blog I will of course be talking about my meal, but first a little bit about my grandfather, who will be called "Bup" from here on out.  Bup got his name as many goofily named grandfather's do, which is as a result of my oldest brother (the first grandkid of many) being unable to pronounce "grandpa".  Bup is a veteran of the Korean war as well as a veteran of more than six decades of intense labor, working for the plumbing company his father started in 1938. He traveled the world and lived richly with the love of his life until July 2nd, 2007 when my grandmother passed away from leukemia.  At 82 years old he made the concession to move in to an independent senior's facility where he plays cards and shares Korbel with his fellow compatriots in advanced age.  The reason this relates to the lunch I shared with him is because it adds immediate significance to the meal.  Egg rolls and fried rice can have substantial meaning when you are sharing them with unquestionably one of the greatest people you've ever known, as is true with any food.  On to actual lunch, which I should introduce by saying I almost decided to pass on in exchange for some lazy alone time.

I hopped in my sister's car and started our trek towards Yen Ching, a solid fifteen to twenty minute hike from our home in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood.  After ten minutes on the freeway we got off on the paradoxically named Good Hope Road exit.  The paradox is the result of Yen Ching existing in the middle of a huge stretch of homogeny and empty abandoned lots, the type of landscape I find to be exact opposite of "hopeful".  Bleakness aside, Yen Ching breaks up the monotony with it's signature old school Chinese restaurant exterior.  Walking in to Yen Ching was instantly charming for me.  The restaurant decor is about as on-the-nose as you can get, even by Chinese restaurant standards.  To my left I noticed a decades old restaurant award from the Shepard Express, to my right, an enormous plastic Buddha.  When we were seated, given our menus and ordered all within about eight minutes.

For starters my grandfather and I got the obligatory egg drop soup. My sister ordered hot and sour soup, which we are pretty certain was just egg drop soup with a healthy pour of soy sauced added in. We also ordered egg rolls which were decent and entirely unremarkable; which is to say, exactly what I want in a spot like Yen Ching.  My sister and I were ensconced in some gossip when my grandpa, with a hint of dejection on his face, exclaimed at his egg roll "So what's supposed to be so good about these!?" My initial response was a polite snicker, but after mining my brain for merit, I came up completely empty.  The typical egg roll is really nothing but a big tube of bland that has a pleasant crunch-to-slime ratio, but that's about as big of a compliment I could up with the Chinese-American classic.  Thanks for unintentionally demystifying the egg roll for me Bup, I am happier and sadder as a result.

Oh, Tso Shiny

Next came my main course, the almost impressively reflective General Tso's Chicken.  I swear to God, I took at least ten other pictures of my lunch and this was the least glossy one of the bunch.  The lunch menu was pretty limited, keeping me from my usual vegetarian go-to when it comes to eating Chinese food.  My choice to eat primarily vegetarian when I eat Chinese isn't an ethical one, I just take great pleasure in the texture of crispy bean curd.  Anyhow, not wanting to just eat green beans in sauce I opted for the classic General Tso's Chicken.  I'm not going to lie, it was pretty damn delicious.  There was nothing delicate or refined about it, and I'm pretty sure it was absolutely hammered with taste enhancers, but it was a slightly elevated version of what is often consumed by blacked out nineteen year olds at four in the morning.

Frog and vase are friends

Uncharacteristic of me and my voracity I couldn't finish my lunch, so I sat there and nursed green tea and conversed with Bup and my sister while they picked at their sweet and sour shrimp and kung pao chicken.  It was at that moment that I decided that the lunch was entry worthy.  Simply sitting, having lazy conversation and a full belly, no particular urgency.  Sometimes life just feels warm and gratitude for one's own existence emerges out of the little things.  For me, I often find that feeling when I'm sitting around a bunch of empty plates and am stricken with the implicit coziness of a food coma.  It's something I could just as easily have not absorbed at all; hearing my Bup go in to extreme detail about a plumbing job he did fifteen years prior, then shifting conversation in to what we think the Brewers are going to do this year, and most sweetly hearing him give accounts of all of the things "Grandma used to like", but much like the lunch itself, I'm so glad I chose to participate.

After twenty or so minutes of priceless and irreplaceable small talk, it was time for us to part ways. Bup grabbed his cane and slowly made his way to his truck while Cait and I packed back in her car for the trip back to the city. It felt good to remind myself that the experience of eating can be as much about the quality of your company as it is the quality of the ingredients themselves.  It also felt good to be given the position to realize that you shouldn't reflexively pass up on great lunches with your grandfather, you little ingrate. Anyhow, the whole ride back we talked about what we always talk about; what we just ate and who we were hanging out with.  Today, it was Yen Ching with Bup, and it was fantastic.  

Four Hours And Fifteen Minutes In A Different Dimension: My Dinner At Alinea

If you're reading Rough Chop it's for one of two reasons.

Reason One: You're a fellow food geek.  If that's the case, you've seen the taffy apple balloons and the majesty that is hot potato, cold potato.  You've seen the YouTube clips of Chef Achatz deftly constructing desserts for his guests on their table, moving and creating in equal parts rapidity and precision.  If you've been to Alinea then you know the emotions that separate online spectator from actual diner; if you haven't been then you probably are the walking embodiment of anticipation I was a week ago, just waiting for your chance to experience what really goes down at 1723 N. Halsted Street.  Either way you don't need anymore food porn, so I won't be delivering any.

Reason Two: You know me.  If that's the case I've probably already harangued you with details about my experience.  Some of you have lectured me on the "insanity" of investing so much time and money and energy in to a meal.  Some of you have indulged me with relative disinterest as I prattled on about all the twists and turns my epic meal took over the sixteen courses I had the pleasure of experiencing... thank you for your patience. Still others of you relished in the details and geeked out with me about the taffy apple balloons and majesty that is hot potato, cold potato; which are realistically the only two courses we've shared.

It could be a combination of the two reasons.  Either way, you don't need to see another article with a course-by-course assault of pictures laden with superlatives and whimsical praise.  Don't get me wrong, I am packed to the gills with an almost maniacal level of appreciation for everything Grant Achatz does.  The man is worth every accolade, ever Michelin star, every bit of lionization that he's received.  He is a genius who's restaurant gave me, unequivocally, the greatest meal of my life thus far. But I don't want to simply review Alinea from the perspective of a diner, because that wasn't what I was when I was eating there.  Alinea was much more than that.

I want to begin the review portion of this entry with a preface that contains one overarching sentiment that I want to be considered throughout the rest of the post: to each their own.  It feels a little funny to begin discussing a revolutionary and game changing restaurant with what could be considered a trite and played out platitude, but I think it's appropriate.  Alinea may not be for everyone, and I understand that.  It's certainly not my job, as a guy who lives in dual-income household with no kids, to outrightly oblige anyone to spend hundreds of dollars on a meal.  That being said, I do oblige absolutely everyone to consider what's at stake by categorically shunning experiences like this one out.

The solitary shared experience for all Alinea diners. The napkin.

Preface aside, the meaningful part of my review is essentially this: what I experienced at Alinea in a sensory sense was unprecedented up until the moment it happened, on almost every level.   There were so many tastes, smells, textures and ideas that I had never even approximated in my life that by the tenth course I felt literally stoned.  Try as you want to analyze the flavors as they happen, predict the next move by the kitchen or the waitstaff, guess in what capacity the next course will arrive or even come close to what it will taste like; you will run in to failure at an overwhelming capacity over and over again.  Alinea is not about analyzing, it is about experiencing the ride as it happens.  Even if words could do the meal justice (they can't), the ever-evolving nature of the establishment wouldn't allow it to be duplicated, so there is literally almost no point in reflecting my personal experience on to you, because it won't happen for either of us ever again.

Hence my urgent suggestion that you consider what you'd be missing if you never invested in an experience like this.  The willful forfeiture of non-replicable experience feels like a tragedy to me. Simply describing Alinea to another person is like describing a color they've never seen before, it's simply something that must be experienced in order to be understood. Perhaps affording yourself a meal like this seems ludicrous if you reduce the logic down to "it's just food", but that logic is dangerous.  That same train of thought would suggest that Beethoven or Miles Davis are just musicians, not giving any credence to the complexities and genius that set them apart from the pack.  It's that genius and those complexities that forge the enormous chasm between what simply consuming food and what Alinea is.  Again, it's not for me to tell you what you or anyone else should invest your money and time in; but if you are going to give yourself a fair assessment of what "worth it" is, attempt to consider everything that a restaurant like this is.

Owen and the Incredible Taffy Apple Balloon Montage

I leave you with a couple pieces of advice if you do decide to take the plunge and purchase tickets to the best meal of your life.

First: go with people you truly love, who you know will appreciate what's going on.  Of all the pictures I took that night, the one headlining this article is my favorite.  My wife smiling, a glass of chablis in one hand and chopsticks used to pluck gurnard lionfish off of a plank of a barrel that was used to age brandy, and later fish sauce.  One of the funnest parts of the night was watching her and my friends faces as they explored the uncharted frontier of flavor that I myself was enjoying for the first time ever.

Second: Don't overthink it.  Don't linger on anything too long. My specific menu took four hours and fifteen minutes to get through but that time flew by.  The menu is impeccably paced, and part of the fun of everything is letting yourself be surprised every now and then

Third: Don't consider the expense, at all.  Once you click "purchase" just let any financial tension drift away.  The ticket system is implemented to make the actual dining experience completely stress free.  As soon as you get to the door, just let the restaurant go to work.  Money comes and goes, once in a life time experiences are titled as such for a reason

Fourth: Reflecting the third thought-if you are a drinker, GET THE WINE PAIRINGS.  I can't stress enough how much an additional $150.00 investment enhanced my dinner.  Again, if you've already made the investment, I highly highly recommend going a little further.

So, that wraps up my thoughts on dining at Alinea.  I will concede that eating such an establishment may not be for anyone.  That being said, and assuming you have the means, if you've already decided that it's not for you, I implore you to take a step back, consider what you are choosing to miss out on. There are a whole lot of things happening in that unassuming building in Lincoln Park, I'm incredibly grateful to have been a part of them.

Begin Again

I'm going to preface this post by saying that you really, really don't have to read this specific entry. This is mainly me talking to myself and laying out what's taken me so long to write another post.  If you are interested in that specific process, please read ahead.

Alright, I've decided that, after some necessary reconfiguration and perspective tweaking that it would be worth it to do this again.  I realize that it might seem silly to mentally restart a blog that was only three posts in to begin with, but a lot has happened in between the now obliterated "Weekend In Wicker Park: Day One" post and the post that will follow this one.  I've decided not to lock down mentally on writing from the character I'd established myself as; which is to say a jaded and aging semi-functioning member of the service industry.  Frankly speaking I felt that that specific role was a dull caricature that undermined my ambitions and perspectives.  I currently am still making a living in the role of marginally competent kitchen worker, but that is not something I see as a fixture in my life, even for the short term.  When I locked in to that perspective to write my initial entries I burned out quickly.  Writing non-fiction from a mindset that is even remotely disingenuous burns you out really quickly.

So, here goes nothing... or maybe something... or maybe a million things.