Staging at Alinea
I spent two days this last week staging at Alinea, an avant garde restaurant in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Gourmet Magazine named Alinea the best restaurant in the Americas in 2006, one year after it opened, and the executive Chef, Grant Achatz, and other members of the creative team have won numerous awards including the James Beard Award. The staff at Alinea describes the cuisine as progressive American, but others have labeled it “molecular gastronomy” for the use of ingredients, equipment, and techniques re-appropriated from the science and food science industry. The name refers to a typographical symbol, most commonly represented as the paragraph symbol, which signifies a new train of thought. And the food at Alinea is certainly different than anything you’ve ever eaten. Alinea offers diners two menus a 12 course tasting menu and a 24 course tasting menu, which they call the Tour. The courses vary in size from half a bit to surprisingly large portions.
In my two days there I helped prep a few items for dinner service, helped organize and clean, and got to lay back and observe the chefs prepare 24 courses. I made honey fluff, a condiment that looks exactly like marshmallow fluff but tastes intensely of honey. The secret ingredient was a product called Versa-whip, which is a concentrated protein powder which acts like the protein in egg whites when added to water. Unlike egg whites, Versa-whip is shelf stable and forms a more stable, long lasting protein network. I also made whole wheat cake. Almost every pastry chef will tell you you cannot make cake from whole wheat flour but they’ve developed a way to do it at Alinea. The sweet, fluffy, whole wheat cake is a real jab at the culinary establishment. The most interesting thing I ate was a dish called “Rhubarb, ginger, basil.” It was an orb of sweet rhubarb juice encased in a ginger flavored shell, placed in a shot glass in a pool of sweetened basil juice. The diner takes the whole thing at once. First you taste the basil juice, then the heat of your mouth causes the shell of the juice orb to break and you get a burst of rhubarb flavor.
The chefs at Alinea work long hours and the Executive Chef, Chef di Cuisine, and Sous Chefs demand perfection and consistency from everyone. It’s an intense job and the restaurant at which I’m most interested in serving my upcoming three month internship.
46 comments
Lucky you! Wow.
You have to love watching perfection manifested. I wish the engineers I work with had the same work ethic you got to witness.
It was an exhilarating experience. Even if I never step foot in that kitchen again I’ll still have gained an enormous amount of food knowledge.
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