30 DAYS OPEN PURCHASEAlinea is not a book you cook from. That needs to be said first, because everything else follows from it.
Grant Achatz trained at the Culinary Institute of America and then spent four years with Thomas Keller at The French Laundry before opening Alinea in Chicago in 2005. The following year, Gourmet named it the best restaurant in the United States, and since Michelin arrived in the city it has held three stars.
The book presents more than 100 dishes arranged across four complete seasonal menus, documented in 600 photographs. The dishes require rotary evaporators, liquid nitrogen and custom made serving pieces, the latter designed by Martin Kastner. The antenna that suspends food in mid air, the pillow filled with aroma that releases its scent under the weight of the plate, the dessert painted directly onto the tablecloth in front of the guest. There is no household in the world where any of this can realistically be recreated, and the book makes no pretence otherwise.
What it does instead is document exactly how one of the most influential restaurants of modern times thought, at the moment when it was at its most influential. It also helped define an entire genre of restaurant books as large, photographic and uncompromising objects.
The background makes it even harder to put down. Achatz was diagnosed with stage four tongue cancer in his thirties, right in the middle of working on the book. Doctors wanted to remove his tongue. He refused, entered an experimental treatment programme, lost his sense of taste completely for an extended period and continued cooking throughout. His sense of taste slowly returned.
Buy it to understand, to browse and to leave out on display. Not to cook from.
Number of dishes: Over 100
Number of photographs: 600
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 9781580089289
Language: English
First published: 2008
