In 2011, I was fortunate to have dined in Chicago, New York City, Hong Kong, Manila, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Toronto, Washington DC, St. Louis, Boston, Phoenix, and Milwaukee.  In every part of the world I was at this year, the culinary scene was thriving, generous, and diverse, with chefs not just innovating and extending boundaries, but more importantly honoring the history and traditions of sourcing, cooking, and serving food in their respective cultures- preserving techniques, reinterpreting them for the 21st century palate, using them as a compass for the future of dining.  Here then are my top ten dining experiences of 2011, not just in Chicago, but around the world (and at right, the bountiful too-beautiful-to-eat appetizer plate at Yin Yang, #1 on my list):

1. Yin Yang (Hong Kong) – In the middle of Hong Kong, the most determinedly futuristic city in the world, amidst the intimidating jumble of Wanchai, one of it’s busiest districts, is a thoughtful testament to the genius of Cantonese cuisine.  In an antique-filled room that could easily have been used as the set for a Wong Kar-Wai period film, Chef Margaret Xu Yuan, in her “private kitchen” Yin Yang, produces beautiful, exacting, delicious food that is both of the here and now (organically-sourced, cross-cultural) yet evocative of Hong Kong’s fast-fading past (she roasts chicken and pork in a traditional terra cotta urn giving the meats a hearty, indelible flavor).  In May, I joined ex-Chicagoans Lauren in the Lion City and her significant other Louis in a lovely, painstakingly-prepared dinner full of reverbations of the past (the roast chicken and roast pork dishes were two of the best versions I’ve had anywhere) yet unassumingly and confidently 2011 (the sensuous, effeminate egg custard with truffle and sea urchin would easily be in my top ten best dishes list of the past several years).  I wasn’t alone in my rave since the New York Times was beside itself with wonder as well after dining at Yin Yang. 

2. Restaurante Pujol (Mexico City) – Mexico City is touted by the global food culturati as one of the up-and-coming culinary cities.  And I wholeheartedly agree.  The week I spent in Mexico City earlier this year for business found me leapfrogging from one bold, exciting restaurant to another after client work for the day was done.  First among equals is Restaurante Pujol, a recent addition (at #49) to the prestigious 50 Best Restaurants in the World list.  Chef Enrique Olvera (who trained for six months under Jean Joho at our very own Everest after he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in the early 2000s) is widely-acclaimed as the leader of nouveau Mexican cuisine, and his food at Pujol is deliriously good: at times brazenly theatrical (an astounding amuse bouche of corn roasted in a pre-Hispanic Yucatan flower pot and drizzled with flying ant powder, yep, you heard that right), sometimes delicately minimalist (a delightful, diaphanous avocado flauta stuffed with shrimp and served with a cilantro emulsion), always a mesmerizing, thoughtful, sophisticated translation of Mexican culinary tradition to today. 

3.  Next Restaurant (Chicago) – I think there was no new restaurant more talked about this year in the United States than Next, Chef Grant Achatz’s follow-up to Alinea.  Before it opened, the eco-system of critics, food writers, bloggers, and Twitterers were all about its innovative business model: a menu that changed every three months to portray a specific period in food history; and a pre-purchased ticketing system more similar to those used in theaters, concerts, and sporting events.  When it opened in April, frustrated would-be diners were all about the website crashes, ticket scalping, and the general scarcity of opportunities to dine at the restaurant.  But for those who were able to go to the inaugural menu, a homage to August Escoffier called Paris 1906 (and yes, after much hand-wringing and belly-aching, I was able to secure a spot in a table purchased by someone else), we were all about the stunning dishes that Achatz and Chef de Cuisine Dave Beran created in the Escoffier tradition:  an insanely decadent Hors d’Oeuvre of foie gras with marmalade on toast; a beautifully poached sole filet floating on top of an outrageously luxurious sauce normande, served with an over-the-top crawfish head stuffed with mousseline; and a perfect, transporting whole duck with duck jus and cognac gravy made from an antique duck press (below).

4.  Maude’s Liquor Bar (Chicago) – Yes Virginia, there were a lot of other restaurants that opened in Chicago in 2011 other than Next. And although I liked many of them, I didn’t really love any of them except for Maude’s Liquor Bar, which Chicago magazine initially reported as specializing in “dirty French barbecue”.  Well, I didn’t find anything dirty or any barbecue, but I did find a whole lot of French, with a whole lot of innovative surprises, thanks to Chef Jeff Pikus (whose mind-blowing collaboration dinner with X-Marx I wrote about a couple of years ago).  In a bitterly cold winter night in early 2011 with power couple Henry and Joe and the lovely Happy, I had a brilliantly enveloping cassoulet, and an in-your-face Salad Lyonnais with generous portions of pork belly instead of lardons; during a rainy fall night with BFF Chef Mako and her husband Kevin, a perfectly calibrated house-made blood sausage.  These were the perfect dishes to be savored in the company of great friends.

5. Fook Lam Moon (Hong Kong) – In my book, if you want to call yourself a “foodie”, then you probably should have eaten your way through Hong Kong, truly one of the world’s great food capitals.  The city has 63 Michelin stars; flagship restaurants from Joel Robuchon, Alain Ducasse, and Nobu Matsuhisa; the leading Asian molecular gastronomy restaurant, Bo Innovation; and a dizzying diversity of dining options from street stalls called dai pai dong to teahouses with the best dimsum you can have in the world.  And thanks to the suggestion of my favorite Hong Kong food blogger, Diary of a Growing Boy, I did have some of the best dimsum I’ve ever had in my life at 1 Michelin star Fook Lam Moon, where everything was fresh and fabulous (and directly out of the kitchen and not on carts). I’ve eaten a lot of dimsum in my life, but I’ve never had siumai as ethereal as the ones I had at Fook Lam Moon topped with subtly salty crab roe, or earthy taro puffs as incongrously transcendent, or steamed buns with lotus paste and egg yolk as perfectly balanced in its salty-sweetness, or roast pork as unapologetically burnt-crispy and fatty-meaty (below).  It was dimsum that could not be had anywhere in North America (or in the world, for that matter).

6. Niche (St. Louis) – I’ve been on a project straight out of Dante’s fevered imagination the past several months in the city of the Gateway Arch, but a saving grace of this experience is the opportunity to go to to James Beard-nominated Niche whenever I want to.  Chef Gerard Craft’s unassuming restaurant in the Soulard district serves some of the best food on any side of the Mississippi River: it’s imaginative, but not precious, contemporary but not trend-conscious, beautiful but not self-involved. On one visit, I had the single best dish I’ve had all year: a delightfully deconstructed “corned beef” salad made of the freshest, sweetest beets, “corned” like beef, mixed with vigorous fennel cooked like pastrami, pumpernickel dust, and a sour cream dip (see below). On another visit, I had a dessert special that night of pastry chef Elise Menning – marvelous acorn squash bread pudding with maple butternut squash ice cream, which provided an indelible autumnal solace.

7. Aroy Thai (Chicago) – When I first moved to Ravenswood in the late 2000s, I wandered into Aroy Thai a block away from my house and became instantly smitten.  It has been my neighborhood Thai joint ever since, and this year, it seemed like much of Chicago’s dining community made it their neighborhood Thai joint as well.  From mentions in TimeOut Chicago to selection as one of “foodie” forum LTHforum.com’s “Great Neighborhood Restaurant” awardees, the tiny Thai storefront I ate at regularly was golden.  But all that attention didn’t diminish the quality and authenticity of the food- dishes like my favorite off-menu item kai-gieuw mu sap, a deliciously messy minced pork omelette; or a wonderfully creamy and briny special of stir fried squid with salted egg yolk; or a refreshingly elegant pandan noodle dessert with coconut cream, continued to transport me to Bangkok, one of my favorite cities in the world.

8. Brasileirinho (Rio de Janeiro) – I was initially disappointed when Chicago lost to Rio de Janeiro as host of the 2016 Olympics, but when I visited this year with all-time BFF Andrew, I instantly realized that, despite my great love for Chicago, the International Olympic Committee made the right decision.  Rio de Janeiro is a city like no other I have been to in the world, with it’s co-mingling of colonial history, beaches, mountains, forests, and cosmopolitan sprawl in one singular urban mix. And it’s culinary scene is as proud, as colorful, and as informed by its history as the city itself.  One mild Brazilian summer night, BFF Andrew and I wandered into Brasileirinho, along the most famous beach in the world, Copacabana beach, and enjoyed traditional Brazilian cuisine:  a surprisingly airy pasteis, fried polenta stuffed with ground beef; a luscious, spirited moqueca, Bahian bass and shrimp stew, served with its traditional accompaniments, farofa (toasted manioc flour), rice, and the uniquely Brazilian pirao (fish head gravy); an excellent goiabada (also known as guava “sweet” which is more like a hybrid paste and jelly) with cheese ice cream, the most traditional of all Brazilian deserts. Below is the moqueca prior to serving.

9. Jaso (Mexico City) – Pujol wasn’t the only highlight of my Mexico City eating adventures.  I was also very much impressed by Jaso, where married Chefs Jared Reardon and Sonia Arias cook fantastic food that meld their global backgrounds and interests (he is American, she is Mexican, and they travel all over the world).  The dinner was spectacular, but two things were gravity-stopping: a delirious,magnificent squid dumpling stuffed with crab and shrimp and ensconced in an intricately layered parmigiano and squid ink sauce, and a flawless moist chocolate cake topped with a gallette and served with semifreddos and Ecuadorian coffee bits (below), both dishes truly continents-spanning in sensibility and execution.

10. Food on the Dole Salons (Chicago) – One may be blessed to have had many memorable meals in different parts of the world as I did this year, but sometimes the most fulfilling dining experiences can be the ones you share with old friends and interesting new ones in the city you call home.  Chef Hugh Amano runs intermittent supper clubs that are truly different from other supper clubs (or underground dinners or speakeasies or whatever you want to call them) in this food-mad town: six people prepare a four course dinner with him in a combo dinner party-cooking class. Sometimes the salons have a theme (brunch or seafood or pasta), sometimes they don’t.  But they are always about learning and sharing and thoughtful conversation, whether over juicy, freshly-shucked oysters and a marvelous herb-stuffed oven-roasted sea bass that BFF Debra and Dash of Stash helped prepare, or over blazing duck confit and chili flatbreads which BFF Camela helped roll.  And Chef Hugh is always the perfect host – patient, informative, and inspiring in his love of food and cooking.

But I wanted to keep an open mind, hey this is a Grant Achatz restaurant after all, and my avid blog readers know that I have waxed delirious about my dinners at Alinea, and despite ticketing glitches, Next’s Paris 1906, some of the most indelible meals of my culinary life.  So when I luckily, and ironically, got tickets on my first try off the Next website, I went with my buddy Joey and hoped that all my skepticism and cynicism about this restaurant’s and this chef’s ability to deliver on one of the world’s most complex and most sublime cuisines would be waved away by the flourish of a magical gastronomic wand when I got there.  Well, unfortunately, there was no magic wand, and disappointingly, no magic, in Next’s Tour of Thailand, a perplexing, undistinguished effort from one of the world’s most iconic chefs. I hate to say this, but yes, this menu is Thai Food 101 for those who have passing or limited knowledge and exposure to Thai cuisine, a seriously lost opportunity to truly honor a great cuisine by creating something unique.

I know what I like about Thai dishes, shaped by growing up and living in Southeast Asia for 25 years and travelling several times, for work and play, to Bangkok (some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had was from some unnamed food stall on Sukhumvit Road, where I had to bring my own utensils in a plastic bag), so I was perplexed by the lack of flavor assertiveness in many of the dishes.  The fermented sausage in the street food course was strangely lackluster, lacking the pungency, the meatiness, the knock-out near-rancid sourness of the Isaan sausage at TAC Quick or Aroy Thai (and hey, it’s supposed to be rancid-sour, it’s fermented!).  The tom yum soup was made more decadent by the use of luxurious pork belly instead of seafood, which I appreciated, but the broth, despite the mix of kaffir lime, tomato, galangal, and chilis tasted very one-note, as if there wasn’t enough body to it (as Southeast Asian cooks know, the addition of fish sauce would greatly enhance the savoryness of soups- I could barely discern any in this tom yum).  Next gave you a selection of condiments (including a searing green chili and an aromatic nam prik) to eat with your main dishes, which I loved, since in Southeast Asia that was what you did, calibrating and conducting an orchestra of flavors, an interactive element that wasn’t present in most of Western cuisine.  But an Asian chef wouldn’t depend on the condiments alone to add the heat, the layers, and the fragrance to catfish (perfectly executed, delicately succulent, but surprisingly bland) or to Panang curry (again, decadent with the use of tender beef cheek, sweetish with the welcome addition of sweet corn, but also surprisingly timid).  Condiments in Southeast Asian cuisine heightened and complemented flavor notes.  Adding a chili paste to a fish dish wasn’t like adding ketchup to a (non-Chicago) hotdog- the condiment brought out nuances in the flavors of the original dish, not provided the flavors.

I was perplexed by other decisions as well:  dragon fruit was served, confusingly, with rosewater, making this delicate fruit taste like the inhaled smell of Manila churches during Easter Sunday when gazillions of flowers filled the building, a flavor note that was definitely not Thai or Southeast Asian and was quite unpleasant; and “Thai iced tea” was served as a final course in plastic bags – I liked the concept, since I grew up drinking a variety of liquids from plastic bags in Manila, but I thought it was quite pedestrian to end an elevated meal with literally the cheapest of courses.  In developing countries like Thailand and the Philippines, store owners used plastic bags to sell multiple servings of beverages like soda, juices, etc. from one container, so they could sell more and also so they could keep the money that distributors paid for used bottles/cans.  It was an economic thing folks, not a hipster thing.

I liked the roasted banana with chilis served as part of the “street food” course (sweet, spicy, tart, charred), the richly-sauced Panang curry despite the flavor timidity, and the coconut dessert course, a highly theatrical, eye-catching, and fantastically delicious meld of egg noodles, coconut, peppercorns, sweet corn, mango, tapioca balls, and saffron – messy yet creative, risky yet complexly flavored, a dish I expected the rest of the dishes to have been.  The coconut dessert dish felt like the one dish where the chefs actually took to heart and mind the flavors, layers, textures, aromatics, and evocations of the cuisine and made it their own, instead of technically executing a recipe, or adapting a national cuisine to American tastes (something our server admitted when I questioned him on the lack of heat).  It was a dish that was both Asian, and of Asia.

I know the expectations on the Next team are pretty high, and I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.  I appreciate their aspirations.  But the expectations are also pretty high on the next Stephen Sondheim musical, or the next Steven Spielberg film, or the next Damien Hirst artwork, or the next Haruki Murakami novel.  There are always going to be those expectations if you are on top of your field.  And the expectations become greater for food at this price point.  On a Sunday night, at the last seating in the evening, with non-alcoholic beverage pairings, tax, and service charge, I paid $141.46, a check that could cover a week of satisfying, astounding meals at TAC Quick, Aroy, Spoon, etc.  And I know that non-Thai chefs and non-Thai restaurant storefronts could deliver on soulful, creative Thai food with lots of finesse and thoughtfulness- the X-Marx chefs had successfully held Southeast Asian-themed dinners, and just the night before my Next dinner, I was at Avenues, where Achatz’s opening Chef de Cuisine at Alinea, now two-starred Michelin chef, Curtis Duffy, put forth a beautifully composed tom kha gai, with flavor profiles of the original dish intact, and the addition of tart finger limes and crispy chicken skin clearly making it his own.  And that’s why I was perplexed, underwhelmed, and disappointed with Next’s Tour of Thailand- it could have been so much more satisfying to a diner that truly loves and seeks out Thai cuisine.

Photo:  The “street food” course served over Thai newspapers.

Next is at 953 W. Fulton Market.

Sure, underground dining has sort of been de rigueur in most of the major dining cities in the world right now (I’ve written about two in Chicago) but Hong Kong, in its arguable, but indisputable, role of arbiter of our stylish cultural future, had private kitchens in place and thriving long before anyone in the US thought of stringing together the words “underground supper club”.  In the late 1990s, as a response to high commercial rents, restaurateurs and chefs began operating these dining “speakeasies” under the radar of the city government, but the city’s sophisticated diners immediately embraced them as an alternative yet crucial element of the dining scene.  Private kitchens have been embedded so deeply in the city’s dining-out fabric that some of them are not as underground or as secretive as they used to be anymore.  Additionally, there has been a noticeable change in the type of cuisine that the chef/owners of the newer private kitchens have been putting out:  the first private kitchens like Yellow Door specialized in regional Chinese cuisine such as Sichuanese or Shanghainese, but the city’s newer private kitchens are creating superb food that is contemporary, cross-cultural, and experimental.  I had already decided to schedule a dinner in one of these, Yin Yang, with the friends I was meeting in Hong Kong, former Chicagoan Lauren in the Lion City and her boyfriend Louis, when the week before our reservation, the New York Times published an article profiling the “new incarnations” of private kitchens, and ecstatically raved that “The best way to describe the Yin Yang experience is simply this: Your meal will blow your mind.”  Well, I must say the New York Times demonstrated once again that it knew its stuff because our meal at Yin Yang was the best meal I’ve had so far this year (surpassing the already unforgettable evenings I’ve had at Chicago’s Next and Mexico City’s Restaurante Pujol).

Yin Yang’s chef-owner, Margaret Xu Yuan, is a former advertising executive who is a self-taught cook.  She also owns an organic vegetable farm in the New Territories area of Hong Kong, whose produce she showcases in delightful ways at Yin Yang.  The private kitchen was in an unmarked three-story circa 1930s townhouse in a small side street off the busy Wanchai district of Hong Kong island.  We were frenzied and sweaty when we arrived (Hong Kong in May is as bad as Chicago in July) but once we stepped into the small, quiet, soothing, memorabilia-filled space of Yin Yang, we felt transported to a Wong Kar-Wai film set in the 1960s in which Cantonese songs were on the soundtrack and the kitchen and dining rooms were authentically period.  This stylish ambience and the relaxed service complemented the food beautifully.

And what food it was!  In addition to using organic products (a practice that was not as prevalent in East and Southeast Asia as it was in the US), Margaret and her team prepared most of the dishes and its components by hand and utilized traditional Cantonese cooking implements such as a terra cotta urn for roasting chicken and pork, iron pots to cook rice, and a stone-ground mill to create flour for the desserts.  We had to pick our menu several days in advance because as their website mentioned, it took a day to put together our seven course meal.  Yin Yang was a place where food was lovingly, respectfully prepared, setting it apart in a culinary world where even the best restaurants gadgetized, blowtorched, and pressure-cooked anything and everything.

We started off with a bounty of appetizers which were stunningly presented, and which I thought was going to crush our fragile table (which I wouldn’t have minded, since with this kind of food, I would have licked the floor clean!).  A plate containing a bevy of the produce from their organic farm was simple but satisfying:  it contained the sweetest, most ethereal roasted beets I’ve had in years; juicy, freshly-plucked tomatoes with an unobtrusively light creamy sauce; crunchy, sweetish-glazed stringbeans.  Then there was the “bizarre pork belly” – breaded, deep fried pork belly which was rich and muscular but surprisingly greaseless topped with sweet-sourish Hakka preserves.  But the star of the first course was the egg custard with a surprisingly substantial piece of raw truffle and raw sea urchin – luxurious, sensuous, the flavors constructed complexly, the soft textures of the custard marvelously mingling with the earthiness of the truffle and the pristine saltiness of the sea urchin.  It was definitely one of my most memorable dishes of not just the trip, but of the entire year.   The photo at left shows the Starter “buffet”  (front to back)- the vegetables (Spring Sensations), Bizarre Pork Belly, Tofu Blues (tofu with spring onions), the unforgettable Sampan Custard, and Stone n’Satin (scallop in jelly).

The main courses were a dazzling highlight after another.  Yin Yang’s justly famous roast chicken which came whole from the terra cotta urn was juicy, tender, succulent, with skin crispy yet almost diaphanous (photo at right).  And the server hand-shredded the chicken tableside which again demonstrated the restaurant’s impressively painstaking approach to dining.  A roast pork leg also came from that terra cotta urn and it was, like the poultry, magnificently delicious in its seeming simplicity but meticulous technique – the skin deliriously crunchy, the flavorful meat a headily perfect ratio of firm flesh and sweetish fat.  A spring duet of vegetables from the farm, spinach and eggplant drizzled with a light garlic sauce, was refreshingly pure, tasting of nature’s generosity.

Then there was the “interlude” between the main courses, the brilliant, astounding “Soup without Water”, a surprisingly flavorful broth resulting from the liquids that formed when a pot of vegetables were “sweated” for hours.  Bracing, nurturing, enchanting, the New York Times article justly heralded it as the one dish you would be thinking of for months.

I thought the lobster dish was highly theatrical but too subtly flavored for my taste (barely alive lobsters were brought to the table and doused with chrysanthemum tea to cook them), and the desserts (which included a love-it or hate-it spinach ice cream) were fine, but not unforgettable.  But Yin Yang, more than any restaurant I’ve been to this year, created deliciousness out of graceful simplicity, treated what the diner ate with so much care, tenderness, and virtuous patience, and masterfully paid homage to fast-disappearing Chinese culinary traditions while incorporating and embellishing them with contemporary notes and undulations.  It was the one dinner I’ve had this year that I wouldn’t mind going back to again and again.  What’s even more startling for me was that these were a chef and a restaurant thriving in a frenetic, forward-hurtling, always-about-the-cutting-edge and the-day-after-tomorrow city – Margaret and Yin Yang unmistakably proved that the best meals didn’t come from devices and flashy culinary techniques, but from soulful touch, high-quality ingredients, and forging connections with the diners.

Yin Yang is at 18 Ship Street, Wanchai, Hong Kong.  www.yinyang.hk

The frenzy around Next tickets has been chronicled elsewhere (with the Village Voice caustically comparing Chicago diners to the stampeding Black Friday shoppers who trampled a Wal-Mart worker to death due to the insane demand for tickets during the restaurant’s opening week), so I won’t rehash it here.  Despite being in one of the first groups able to purchase tickets on the first day they were available (April 6), I wasn’t able to secure one under my name.  Every time I logged on to the website during the first week of the restaurant being open, the tickets were either sold out, or if tickets were available, my computer settings were doing wacky things (Next’s website isn’t compatible, incredibly, with Internet Explorer, so I had to use Mozilla Firefox which always does otherworldly things to my laptop) or I’m not able to confirm a timeslot showing as available because 20 other people have clicked on it simultaneously (a website quirk that has been discussed ad nauseum on Next’s Facebook page). So I dined at Next as part of my friend Gabby’s fourtop (again, in what seems to be luck of the draw, some folks like Gabby were able to purchase tickets quickly, while others like me and several other friends, had a most vexing, ultimately futile experience).  I don’t really see any benefit to the diner of this ticketing system (there may be benefits to restaurant owners and chefs, but this blog is not about restaurant owners nor chefs).  First, the prices haven’t really been that low or variable between timeslots, a system feature that the restaurant had touted (I paid $185.76 for the eight course menu with standard wine pairings on a Saturday night;  I’ve heard, anecdotally, that’s around the ballpark for some other folks who’ve gone on different days/times).  Second, because of overwhelming demand for seats and software that doesn’t really effectively account for it, ticket purchases have been as much a function of patience, time on one’s hands to keep logging on to the site, and F5-refreshing dexterity, as it is of willingness to dine.  And in my view, dining out shouldn’t be this hard.  I’m all for the return of good, old-fashioned reservations, either taken over the phone, or via a website like OpenTable.com.  At least everyone is on a level playing field.  “Cutting-edge” doesn’t necessarily translate to “exceptional dining experience”.

On to the food, then.  Some of the best dishes I’ve had this year, I had at Next.  The Hors d’Oeuvres plate is stunningly organized and presented, transporting you back to when dining was civilized ritual.  Two of its selections blew me away. The buttery, silky foie gras on toasty brioche with a dab of marmalade is both decadence and necessity.  The quail egg with a runny center encased by a tart-salty anchovy is a perfect one-bite palette of many flavors – earthy, seaworthy, luxurious.  The widely-raved roast duck with its rich sauce created from an antique duck press is an unqualified masterpiece:  the breast perfectly juicy, tender, and medium-rare; the thigh and leg crispy, crackly, addictive; the sauce heady, bracing, enveloping; the presentation, extravagant, theatrical.  My favorite dish of the night is the sole filet, unbelievably moist and flaky, lying on a pool of richly textured, unapologetically outrageous sauce normande, all buttery, creamy, salty-savory, a dish so indulgent yet so complicated, a trenchant reminder of how culinary greatness is more than molecular gastronomy, farm-to-table cooking, snout-to-tail rusticism, or any of the current trends and innovations that the culinary eco-system (chefs, writers, diners) obsess about.  The Escoffier menu is impressive in its ambition and conception, in its forceful education of its diners, in its execution.  And that’s why I’m a little disappointed about my initial Next dining experience (the upcoming menu, some form of futuristic Thai street food, is unveiled in July and hopefully, the system to get seats will have improved by then) – the restaurant doesn’t need a ticketing system to help secure its uniqueness.  No one cooks, thinks, and engages diners like Grant Achatz, and ultimately, that should have been enough.

The Hors d’Ouevres plate – in addition to the foie gras on brioche and the quail egg wrapped in achovy, there is also an egg custard with hollandaise and truffles, pork rillette on cracker, and mushroom encased in leek.

Filet de Sole Daumont – my favorite dish of the night. 

Caneton Rouennais a la Presse – the duck served with Gratin de Pommes de Terre, the terrifyingly addictive potato gratin.

Next is at 953 W. Fulton Market.

I did my restaurant research before coming, and everyone, from Bayless in an interview to social networking food maven Ellen Malloy (whose palette I hold in high regard), indicated that if you had one night for a great dinner in Mexico City, you should go to Restaurante Pujol, number 72 in Restaurant magazine’s Top 100 Restaurants in the World for 2010. Chef Enrique Olvera, who actually trained at our very own Everest right after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America and before coming back to his hometown, is widely-acknowledged as the leader of New Mexican cuisine, selected by Food and Wine magazine in 2008 as one of the 10 “Next Chef Superstars” who will rock the restaurant world.  And man, did he rock my world (yes, he was cute and charming and very fond of Chicago, but it was all about his food, gutter-dwellers!) with a dinner that was transcendent, startling, idiosyncratic. 

Our dinner at Pujol started with the theatrical: an amuse bouche with three components that included a raw zucchini flower stuffed with bean paste, fresh asparagus stalks in a tart lime dressing, and roasted corn sprinkled with flying ant powder (you read that right dear readers) roasted in some pre-Hispanic era Yucatan flower-pot-looking contraption.  It also ended with the theatrical- a second dessert of a strawberry sorbet doused with flaming Mezcal at tableside. But the more restrained courses that came in between were just fantastic, genius, and highly memorable.

My favorite dish of the meal was the starter course of avocado flautas stuffed with shrimp and served with a pepper mayonnaise and a cilantro emulsion (left).  The flautas were diaphanous, melt-in-your-mouth sexy, yet soulful and dreamy as well, with the mayonnaise and the emulsion strong, but not overpowering, complements.  It was a dish that recalled and honored traditional Mexican cuisine but gave it a truly contemporary spin.

My entrée was a guajillo pepper and garlic rubbed sea bass served with a pineapple puree, cooked pineapple slices and a steamed leek.  I marveled at how the fish maintained its delicacy despite the potentially assertive rub, and I loved the surprise flavors and textures (sourish-sweet, down-cushiony) that the pineapple puree contributed to the dish.

 My first dessert (the one I had before my eyebrows and bangs were singed by that flaming Mezcal) was a lovely chocolate tamales (left), light yet confident, un-dense, served with a refreshing white chocolate ice cream, and luxurious circles of atole de chocolate, which tasted like a cross between syrup and puree). 

I also had a spectacular dinner at Jaso, where chefs Jared Reardon and Sonia Arias, who met and fell in love at the Culinary Institute of America, play with highly-contemporary, confidently global flavors (he with savory, she with desserts).  I loved, loved, truly loved, my starter of a squid dumpling (the squid skin soaked in water using some technique that rendered it very firm like a dumpling wrapper) stuffed with a rich crab and shrimp filling, enveloped by a softly-delirious, seemingly-never ending “foam” (more like a thick sauce to me) of layers of parmigiano and squid ink (the bottom layer of the squid ink was allegedly frozen than thawed, or something like that…however it was done, it was delicious!).  It was a stunning dish (left), a truly continents-hopping, multiple-passports-carrying one, with Italian, Asian, and Mexican flavors in it, integrated yet indefinable. 

I was just ok with my entrée of a red snapper in a white truffle and lobster broth (the white truffle flavor seemed to have vaporized into the ether), but Arias’ desserts knocked me out.  Her chocolate cake was firm where it should be and gooey where it mattered (just like some of the guys I’ve dated…ooops!) crowned with a sweet-bitter gallette crust, on top of which lay some really amazingly-constructed semi-freddos.  The cold-hot, sweet-bitter-salty, creamy-toasty flavor combinations were wonderfully accented by Ecuadorian coffee bits.  I wasn’t too thrilled with the apple confit in the other dessert I had, but I loved the apple tart it was resting on, sweet yet masculine, as well as the luxurious pistachio ice cream that came with it.

The complimentary, fresh from the oven home-made madeleines (left) that Arias sent out to every table felt airy and genteel, yet pretty substantive and headstrong, like a Jane Austen heroine.

In addition to Pujol and Jaso, I also visited Naos, where Monica Patino, one of Mexico City’s acclaimed female chefs, riff on Mexican food with a very modern perspective and a hipster flair.  I especially liked her versions of pork tostados (right in the photo at left), made with suckling pig meat, and crème brulee, using vanilla from Papatla in Veracruz, where they actually have a Vanilla Festival during Lent (huh?), served with a welcoming densely-flavored guayaba compote.

I don’t think I’ve scratched the surface of Mexico City dining (I didn’t even sample the street food!) so I’m coming back soon.  And hopefully I’ll get a Gael Garcia Bernal sighting the next time (yumm-o)!

As in previous years, I’ve tried to keep this list of my most memorable dining experiences to ones in Chicago, but I had to include several from other parts of the world, including my top choice for my best meal of the year, at the East Coast Lagoon Food Village in Singapore, site of Top Chef DC’s Finale Quickfire Challenge.  Happy reading!

1.  East Coast Lagoon Food Village (Singapore) – As old Asia hands would tell you, the best food in the region could be found among its street vendors and cooks.  Singapore’s version of street food is found in its hawker centers, open-air culinary marketplaces where a variety of cooks prepare local specialties from memory and inheritance.  I joined ex-Chicagoans Des, Renaissance Person and my gym boxing class chum, and the lovely Lauren, my Chicago theater buddy, and their friends from around the world, for a singular meal at the East Coast Lagoon Food Village, a popular spot for locals since the late 1970s.  It recently captured the fooderati’s imagination, though, when Padma had the final four of Top Chef DC sweat it out amongst its abundance of surprises and wonders.  And Des, who grew up eating at Lagoon, made sure we ate better than the Top Chefs – amidst joyous travelers’ tales, we feasted on, among others, a refreshing rojak, the Singaporean salad of tofu and crispy vegetables made more distinct by the bold addition of Chinese preserved “century eggs”; flavorful, surprisingly un-greasy fried baby squids; and Singapore’s national dishes, the chaotic, unsurpassable chili crab, and the assertively tasty, unapologetically redolent black pepper crab, the best dish I ate this year.

2.  Alinea – Every time you go to Alinea, the 7^th best restaurant in the world, and one of only 81 three-star Michelin restaurants, Grant Achatz makes you realize that the best cuisine, like the best performing and visual arts, is boundary-less, in content, form, and aspiration.  I re-visited Alinea in April, when one of my oldest friends, Dr. M, and his partner G, were in Chicago for a culinary weekend, and we were dazzled, mesmerized, and provoked by dishes such as Achatz’s ambitious homage to Escoffier’s filet de boeuf, complete with Marie Antoinette-like antique goblets for the wine pairing, contemporary and classic at the same time; a sexy, messy, interactive, visually picturesque pork belly wrap which defied origins and analysis; and a beautifully radiant sous vide of sturgeon, served with a stream of meticulously constructed “smoke”.

3.  Avenues – I had some of the most complex, most flavorful, and most beautifully-plated dishes this year during my three visits to Avenues, where Curtis Duffy brilliantly and thoughtfully created food which, to this self-professed theater geek anyway, was the equivalent of a top-notch Stephen Sondheim musical (and received two Michelin stars in the process). I’ve gone to dinner here with some of my most exacting and globally-intrepid friends and we’ve been wowed by dishes such as perfectly-prepared salmon belly, served in the spring with vivacious apple milk, and in the winter with a masculine cod brandade; an original, memorable grains and nuts soup with sunflower broth which upended any preconceptions about what a grains and nuts dish would be (also selected by Food and Wine as one of the best dishes of the year); and a delicately grilled wagyu fillet confidently topped by Australian black truffle shavings.

4.  X-Marx Chicago – In my opinion, X-Marx has transcended its roots as an “underground restaurant” and outpaced and outgrown all the other groups that are playing in that increasingly-crowded sandbox (and not only because it’s gotten unparalleled media attention this year for a non-restaurant, with coverage from Saveur.com to the Cooking Channel to the Chicago Tribune).  In both its private dinners in its undisclosed location and its pop-up restaurants in Bucktown and the West Loop, Chefs Abe and Adrienne provided a true dining experience, with brazenly creative theme dinners which mixed, matched, and re-invented cuisines (FrenChinese or JapItaliano anyone?), which unapologetically demonstrated the culinary cutting-edge, and which treated its diners as educated, adventurous, and sophisticated.  No home-cooking hoo-hah here, unlike some of the other Chicago supper clubs, with such stellar, creative dishes as the knockout deep fried porkchop sandwich with sambal and fried egg which I first had at the Macau dinner, and then was served in a modified version at the Best of X-Marx dinner (a dish selected by friend of From the Ledge Dash of Stash for his top ten dishes of the year); a surprising, enchanting Foie Gras ravioli with maple broth; and a glorious, perfectly seared skate wing stuffed with pork belly and served with an original purple yam puree.  Additionally, X-Marx held two superb Filipino-themed dinners this year which made me want to grant them honorary Filipino citizenships (if only I could)!

5.  Animal (Los Angeles) – Even Grant Achatz was tweeting about his dinner at Animal, and I couldn’t blame him since I had one of my best meals of the year in Jon Shook and Vinny Detolo’s rough-and-tumble, no-pretensions, balls-out shrine to meat-eating.  My very dear LA-based friend, Chef Mako, and her husband Kevin, one of my favorite couples in the world, took me to the restaurant.  Over stories only long-time friends could share, we had a superb meal with two stand-out dishes:  a brawling poutine with very tender ox-tail gravy, and Shook’s and Detolo’s certifiably insane version of the Hawaiian loco-moco- foie gras, fried quail egg, spam fried in duck fat, and hamburger patty piled, messily, seductively, on top of one another, maddeningly, incomparably delicious.

6.  Girl and the Goat – I’ve had the pleasure of Top Chef Stephanie Izard’s wonderful, brilliant cuisine before at the now-shuttered Scylla and her Wandering Goat supper club, but I had to go three times, and dragged unabashed Steph fan BFF Debra with me to two of those times, to make sure that her superb cooking could withstand the crazy media-generated hype for the hottest restaurant opening in this food-obsessed town.  And it could and it did- the cuisine at Girl and the Goat was powerful, confident, ingenious, and wildly delicious, topped by an out-of-this-world beef tongue, so tender and un-gamy, with crunchy masa strips, spiked with cilantro sauce, a globalized, absolutely original take on Mexican chilaquiles.

7.  Chizakaya – The other notable opening of the second half of 2010 for me, aside from Girl and the Goat, was Chizakaya, a not-your-purist’s take on the izakaya, or Japanese after-hours, small-plates serving pub. My pet peeve, the self-proclaimed Chicago food experts who encase themselves in seatbelt extenders on airplanes, scoffed at Chizakaya’s “inauthentic” menu on food forums and blogs, which was great for me. I didn’t have to fight it out with their pompous guts to sample Chef Harold Jurado’s inventive dishes: a lovely, fragrant blue crab congee which was more evocative of a terrific risotto; addictive fried chicken thighs with dashi mayonnaise; and stop-in-your-tracks togarashi-flavored crispy pig ears.

8.  Uncle Mike’s Place – Filipino breakfast, comprised of sweet sausage (longanisa) or marinated pork (tocino) with fried egg and mounds of garlic rice, is unapologetically hearty, the product of a country built on sweaty, backbreaking work on farmlands.  For me, this breakfast always conjured up fond memories of family trips and lazy adolescent summer days home from school, when life was so much simpler and clearer.  And to have shared the kind of breakfast I grew up with,  in an incongruous, long-standing diner in the middle of Chicago’s industrial zone, presided over by the charm and warmth of Uncle Mike and his Filipina wife, with either dear Filipino friends who possessed the same evocations and remembrances, or equally dear non-Filipino friends who were astounded and elated, comprised some of the highlights of my dining year.

9.  The Purple Pig – If Animal was the dirty-talking, snarling, daredevil sexy older brother, than The Purple Pig was the more refined, more thoughtful, equally-sexy younger brother with a flaming streak of naughty.  Chef Jimmy Bannos Jr.’s food, showcasing all parts of pig wonderful, showed a little more restraint, but no less daring, than Shook’s and Dotolo’s.  Over the course of several meals in the year, I was amazed by the hearty, vibrant pig’s ear with kale and fried egg; the tart-bitter-sweet shaved brussel sprouts with pecorino cheese; and the robust pork neck gravy with ricotta.  And in an early spring dinner, I was astounded by a bold stewed pig’s tail, an acquired taste for the culinary adventurer.

10. The Peninsula Manila Lobby Halo-Halo (Manila) – Halo-Halo is the quintessential Filipino dessert- a tall tumbler packed with shaved ice, cooked fruit, preserved fruit, beans, purple yam, leche flan, and ice cream, doused with condensed milk, it is an integral part of the Filipino experience, whether as a treat during languid summer days, or as part of a celebration or a special occasion.  With its layers and incongruities, poets and sociologists alike have said the dish could function as a metaphor for Filipino identity.  The one served at the Lobby of the Peninsula Manila was arguably one of the best in the rambunctious city I grew up in- creamy, sweet, crunchy, pasty, icy, and full of unidentified delights.  Sharing it with my brother and my dad, after 13 years away from the Philippines, was irreplaceable.

(Photo:  The mega-delish Chili Crab at the East Coast Lagoon Food Village in Singapore)

At both dinners, I had variations of Duffy’s signature King Crab dish (which I heard was the most buzzed-about dish among the ones served at the recent James Beard Awards dinner, no mean feat in a room full of demanding palettes) as the first course:  unapologetically salty steelhead roe, kalamansi bits, mint, etc. lay on top of a “lace” or “glass” sugar crust which you broke to mix these ingredients in with the succulent king crab pieces and a cooling cucumber broth waiting below.  There was the surprisingly interactive element of the dish but there was also the even more astounding combination of flavors in your bite:  all gradations of sweetness (from sugar to plump seafood) and tartness (from the kalamansi fruit to the salty roe); all kinds of textures (fleshy, crusty, soft bubbly, liquidy).  It was a dish that was confident and meticulously thought out.  In the spring dinner, a beautiful piece of luxurious salmon belly was paired with a sweet-tart apple milk and whipped chlorophyll (I wasn’t really sure what exactly comprised it, but I remembered a sweetish-mintish flavor): the fish, fresh and flavorful, was the undisputed star of the plate, with the liquid elements adding, calibrating, expanding various flavor notes on the seafood.  In the summer dinner, the highlight for me was a perfectly grilled wagyu beef, pleasurably decadent, served with a complementary short-rib topping, fresh Australian black truffles, and a savory pistachio flan.  The ingredients were stellar in their own right, but together evoked pastoral visions of wide-open fields and meadowlands.  Speaking of ingredients, I was really impressed by Duffy’s thoughtful, sometimes provocative, always successful combinations of ingredients:  for example, amaranth and sunflower seeds with a grainy broth; strawberries, Thai black pepper, and mascarpone cheese in a dessert, both during the summer dinner. And Duffy’s plating of his dishes was consistently exquisite in composition, almost painterly, masterful but not show-offy.

Service at Avenues was always impeccable and flawless (and started off with a highly civilized champagne service, which I adored), but my only nitpick was probably more of a marketing nature:  at both times, my table lowered the age range of the dining room.  Sure, it’s not cheap to dine at Avenues, but it isn’t at Alinea as well, and tons of young professionals with disposable income to spend on fine food flock there.  Hopefully, this segment of the dining population would stop thinking of Avenues as a hotel restaurant, but rather embrace it as magnificent dining destination that just happens to be located in a hotel (and hey, the Peninsula isn’t something to sneeze at, people!)

Avenues is at The Peninsula Chicago, 108 E. Superior Street.

In agrarian-based cultures such as the Philippines, breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day:  it is hearty, comforting, heavily-laden with protein and carbs to support, in the olden days, sweaty, backbreaking physical labor in the rice fields or coconut groves, often eaten at daybreak.  Traditional Filipino breakfast, then, doesn’t have room for namby-pamby buttered toasts or wimpy egg white scrambles.  So, in this humble Filipino immigrant’s opinion, it’s quite pleasantly incongruous to find the best Filipino-style breakfast in Chicago at a West Town diner, of all places.  Uncle Mike’s Place has been around since 1991, and it does give off that attractive world-weary rumpledness of someone who’s been around the block and some, a cozy neighborhood hangout way before the hipster invasion of the neighborhood, but only recently has it gotten the attention of Chicago’s food media and pundits with its Filipino breakfasts (its owner, Mike “Uncle Mike” Grajewski, is married to a Filipina).  Yes, amidst the Santa Fe omelettes and corned beef hashes, Uncle Mike’s Place serves up the crown jewels of Filipino breakfasts –tocino (marinated pork) and longanisa (Filipino sausage)- and serves them up well, evoking memories in its Filipino diners of languorous childhood mornings, of breezy picnics by the sea, or of loud, joyous, toddler-filled family reunions after Sunday mass (and in my case, of unhurried weekend trips with my family growing up to Pampanga in the central Philippines, where arguably the best tocino and longanisa come from, using recipes handed down through generations). 

When I eat at Uncle Mike’s Place, I usually get the breakfast combo – served on a humungous plate that could fit a Sumo wrestler’s mug, it’s an enveloping feast of crisply charred pieces of tocino, with a deliriously random ratio of pork meat to fat; plump, garlicky, toasty-skinned longanisa; two defiantly-packed mounds of assertively garlic rice; two eggs made to specifications (I usually get mine over and medium, with the egg yolk semi-firm and barely liquid); and a bowl of kamatis at sibuyas, a mini-salad of tomatoes (kamatis) and onions (sibuyas) with vinegar, eaten as a condiment.  It’s the Filipino flavor profile on a plate – sweet, sour, garlicky bitter, generously pork-fatty; a comforting shroud that fills you up and gives you strength.  On the weekends, a complimentary bowl of lugaw, or Filipino congee, comes with the order of the Filipino breakfasts (a spicy Spam, a pork chop, and a skirt steak marinated in the traditional Filipino barbecue marinade are also available), and it is robustly flavored with ginger, fish sauce and long-simmering chicken stock, and full of generous slices of white chicken meat, a terrific palate-opener.  It’s food intended to build resiliency, a trait that Filipinos, given our long, tumultuous history of colonizations and political volatility, have in spades.

Uncle Mike’s Place is at 1700 West Grand Ave.

I’m not going to attempt to do a detailed play-by-play of the dinner.  It doesn’t make sense since one has to experience it to truly appreciate it.  Plus, there were so many components and cooking techniques in those dishes that, despite copious notes, I wouldn’t be able to say exactly and comprehensively what each of the 14 dishes were comprised of *(we went for the Tasting menu, the Tour had approximately 24 dishes).  Instead, I’d like to tell you the reasons why I went home that night convinced that I couldn’t get Achatz’s food anywhere else in this city, or in this country.

The first course of steelhead roe, plantains, and papaya encased in a nutmeg “glass” set the pace for the evening. We had to break the “glass” and then mix up all the ingredients inside together with some plantain puree, carbonated ginger beer foam, and other elements on the plate.  It was playful and interactive, reassuring us that despite all the hallowed-temple-of-dining acclaim, this wasn’t going to be a stuffy, self-important, hush-tones meal. It was quite delicious as well, a very interesting mix of sweet, sour/citrusy, and spicy flavor tones, and delicacy (the roe) and density (the plantain and papaya).

Steelhead Roe – plantain, ginger, papaya

Then the “palate primer” came out.  In a small, sexy wine glass was a course called “distillation of thai flavors.”  It was liquid, with the consistency of water, but the surprising flavors of lemongrass, Thai chilis, and fish sauce balanced in a minimalist but definitive way.  There were no mistaking those flavors and where they came from; but one had to wonder how they got there.  It also evoked memories of Bangkok, where I had spent a lot of time in years ago; not those of the jostling, frenzied, people-and-motorcycle-mad streets that were conjured up by the many authentic Thai storefronts I frequent in Chicago, but those of the languid, gracious lawns of its famous temples, such as the Grand Palace.  Brilliant.

The third course was jaw-dropping, the first of several.  When we were first seated, we noticed that there were small flags set in the middle of the table, which we were told to ignore.  For this course, our servers came out with large blocks of beautifully finished wood with glass plates on top of them containing a variety of elegantly plated ingredients such as banana slices partially dusted with curry powder, a couple of cashews, toasted marigold leaves, diced red onion, diced cucumber, a small bowl of lime and basil seeds in coconut cream, a single drop of sriracha on a spoon, among others.  We were told to carefully remove the glass plate, then to unfurl our wood blocks, revealing black metal “girders” (for lack of a better term), which we then used to attach the flags on the table, actually hand-painted rice paper, to form hammocks with.  Wow!  Our servers then scooped slow-braised pork belly on to the rice paper pouches and told us to mix and match whatever ingredient we wanted on the glass plate to come up with a DIY spring roll that we should eat with our hands. 

My brain just exploded at this point so I wasn’t paying any attention to what Ageless Dr. M and G were doing; I dumped everything on my glass plate into the pork belly mixture and was rewarded with an exhilarating combination of assertive ingredients working beautifully, harmoniously well together.  The pork belly was deliriously and luxuriously milky-soft and it was ineffably seasoned by the other ingredients – the three bites of the spring roll combined garlicky, spicy, sweet, creamy, sour, oniony, fruity in a dish that confidently transcended one’s preconceptions on what it was or what it should be.  It was Asian in concept, but not defined by a sense of roots or place.  I also loved the fact that this was a dish that not only marvelously captured our 21^st century ethos of choice and self-reliance, but paid homage to the fact that meals were originally (and continues to be in many parts of the world) eaten with one’s hands.

Pork Belly – curry, cucumber, lime (the initial glass tray very darkly photographed)

I needed a second jaw since the first one was already scattered all over Alinea’s sleek dining room floor when the fourth course came out.  It started with a lobster “parfait” which was made up of chilled lobster gelee, lobster croutons, parsnip ice cream, and white poppyseed nage, which looked and tasted like more solid foam (I think there were some ginger candy in there as well).  It was a heady dish since every bite was different:  sometimes rich, sometimes tart, sometimes sweet-savory, at times cold, at other times warm or room temperature.   

Once we were done, the first container was removed to reveal a second bowl nesting inside containing lobster meat, eggplant confit, mungbean sprouts, and coriander, among others.  In order to make it into a “warm lobster salad”, a chai tea liquid was poured over these ingredients and then allowed to filter through slats on the plate and into what could only be a third bowl underneath.  These were big, brazen flavors in the dish- the firm-fleshed, sweetish lobster absorbed a tinge of the smokiness of the chai tea while complemented by the fullness of the confited eggplant.

Once we finished the “salad”, the bowl was removed to reveal the third container with the poured liquid steeping underneath with lobster stock and a variety of herbs and spices.  This lobster bisque “essence” was then poured onto a shot glass to finish the course:  I thought it was less of a lobster bisque, which, for me, connoted comfort, warmth, unapologetic brassiness, and more of a strong, thick tea, with savory, mostly seafood, elements.  It was probably my least favorite of the three parts of the course. Overall though the lobster course was exhilarating, thoughtfully, imaginatively, and playfully conveying the various ways we could use this important food product

Lobster – parfait, salad, soup (the top photo was the salad before the liquid was poured, bottom photo was the parfait)

The most breathtaking, and to me, the best, course of the night came next.  Sturgeon, that Bette Davis of white fish, haughty, aggressive, larger-than-life, so difficult to cook well, was prepared sous-vide and paired with an apple cider and potato “smoke”, which was like a hybrid sauce and gel, and garnished with a potato crisp, leek puree, potato puree, fresh radish, and parsley and celery croutons.  The dish was plated beautifully with the fish and the smoke moving diagonally from lower left to upper right, with peaks and valleys, the garnishes dotting the landscape, visually evoking a great symphonic piece.  But the taste, man, it was more spectacular than the view!  The robust oiliness of the fish was tempered by the sous vide, and its succulent meat was complemented by the pungent masculinity of the smoke, the enveloping creaminess of the purees, and the insolent sharpness of the croutons.  It was a dish that I could have eaten on and on, to continuously uncover surprising layers and associations, akin to seeing a great Michael Haneke film or Edward Albee play.

Sturgeon – potato, leek, smoke

The next course was interesting, but quite precious – a one-bite tempura of shad roe stuck on one of Alinea’s signature metal contraptions with a bay twig whose aroma one was supposed to inhale while eating.  The seventh course though was another stunner, and my second best dish of the night.  It was Achatz’s homage to the greatness of culinary tradition, a humble recognition that molecular gastronomy could only have been possible through the evolution of visionary cooking techniques throughout the centuries.  The beef course was a contemporary rendition of August Escoffier’s filet de bouef, godard.  Served on an antique plate with antique silverware, it was a beautifully composed dish of a piece of sous-vide wagyu tenderloin, seared perfectly rare, surrounded by delicate quenelles of truffle and beef, lightly breaded sweetbreads, a buttery mushroom cap, braised cockscomb (yes, you read that right), and veal stock and champagne sauce dots.  The dish was seriously awe-inspiring to this diner, demonstrating perfect techniques but also an impressive thoughtfulness on how to view culinary legacy through our contemporary eyes.  I was just breathless (and was mercifully revived by the excellent Burgundy wine pairing that was also served in antique wine goblets).

Filet De Boeuf – godard

The duck course, which came ninth in the tasting menu, was bookended by two Alinea classic one-biters- the “hot potato, cold potato” dish which stuck potato and truffle on another metal contraption and which one then pulled to drop them into a potato soup waiting below, and the butterscotch-apple flavored bacon hanging on what looked like post-modern clotheswire, a dish I’ve had at my previous meal.  The duck course was effervescent, markedly capturing the essence of early spring-soft, comforting, fleeting-in its combination of perfectly medium-rare duck breasts, cushiony duck gizzards, sweet morels and English peas, refreshing mint, dewy lettuce leaves, and earthy foie gras, all gently ensconced in billowy chamomile tea foam. 

Duck – morels, english peas, chamomile

Then the three dessert courses arrived.  Frankly, I could have done without the final dessert course, a gimmicky combination of bubble gum tapioca, crème fraiche, hibiscus, and long pepper that you sucked out of a test tube-like device.  The other two, though, were superb.  Course number eleven was showstopping:  on a plate were two piles of “rocks/gravel” that were formed out of pine nuts among other things (some of the stuff I couldn’t even tell what they were; they were all delicious though and the whole thing tasted cookie-like), crowned with lemon custard spheres, and then joined together by a mischievously shaped white chocolate “noodle”; this plate was on top of a pillow which released an Earl Grey tea aroma as you ate through the plate. A take off on “tea and cookies”, Alinea imaginatively expanded on the original’s refined sensibility.  Mindblowing.

Earl Grey – lemon, caremelized white chocolate

The other dessert was an abbreviated version of the “mat” dessert which in the Tour version was pretty elaborate and prepared tableside, sometimes by Chef Achatz himself.  The Tasting version was a plate of chocolate custard, coconut mousse, coconut pudding, things that looked chocolate and menthol “rocks”, chocolate “dirt”, and hyssop garnish.  Combining all these elements together produced a haunting, almost ethereal taste sensation – the warm, earthy sweet-bitterness of the chocolate was layered by the creaminess of the coconut, the cooling assertiveness of the menthol, and the subtle spiciness of the hyssop.  It was a different dish, somewhat of an acquired tasted, but definitely memorable.

Chocolate – coconut, pine nut, menthol, hyssop

This was definitely the best meal I’ve had so far in 2010.  I’ve now resolved to come to Alinea more frequently than every three years, because as a food-oriented person, it’s my responsibility to continue to be challenged by a strong, inspirational 21st century culinary point of view.  Dining at Alinea isn’t simply eating to sustain, but it’s eating to transform – definitely in the way one looks at food, where it’s sourced, how it’s prepared, what it connotes and associates; but also in the way one looks at, and thinks of, the role of cross-cultural influences, the innovative use of technology, mindful risk-taking, and the power of legacy, the defining characteristics of our 21^st century world, as translated in culinary terms by the genius of Chef Achatz and his team.

*I had to look up some of the ingredients and preparations at the invaluable Alinea Mosaic blog.

Alinea is at 1723 N. Halsted in the great city of Chicago.