What if…is a question a fiction novel writer asks repeatedly throughout writing a book. It’s also something Grant Achatz has asked throughout his career as a restaurateur. His blank screen is the kitchen of Alinea and Next restaurants in Chicago.
Ruth Reichl, former editor in chief at the former Gourmet magazine asked him all the questions any of us would have liked to have asked at the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) conference on April 2 in New York. At first he seemed bored, but she managed to bring out the kid-in-a-candy-store side of him, and he highlighted how what if has worked for him…and what’s next.
What if… a restaurant didn’t just serve one type of cuisine, but it changed every quarter? That became the theme of Next Restaurant, the exploration of world cuisine, which has been open less than a year. He has done a Paris 1906 menu for awhile, then closed down for five days to redo everything and trained the staff before opening again with cuisine from Thailand. From there was Childhood. Next is elBulli, because his true hero and inspiration is Ferran Adrià. Later he will do Kyoto, Japan and then Sicily, Italy. He’s toying with later doing “Singapore future.”
What if… a restaurant could be more efficient and cost effective if it sold dinner tickets in advance over the internet rather than have people make phone reservations and pay after the meal? He’s doing it at Next, and it’s part of the theater of dining. Plus, he doesn’t have to pay $150,000 annually in reservationists’ salaries, and he knows how much money he will make every night. Reservations sell out months in advance. (There are even season ticket holders who visit each time the menu changes.) So many people try to get reservations that they are sold on a lottery basis.
What if… there was a cookbook available for all his Next menus? He decided to self publish via Apple ibooks, so anyone can download to their ipad for $4.99 or $5.99 and enjoy. Achatz is thinking that at the end of 2012, why not publish a print version cookbook of the four cuisines for the year?
What if… there were no tables? He’s thought this through at Alinea, and at times, has shaken up the dining experience a bit. To create a winter scene and experience, he cleared the tables out of the basement, set candles and dim lights around, set up real pine trees, made peppermint snow, and gave guests scoops to go around and scoop the snow off the trees and eat it. He’s also randomly picked tables of guests to uproot and move to a communal table where they sat with strangers—and loved it, he said.
What if… the theater of serving the food on the table (yes, a silicone-covered table, not plates) was choreographed with matching music? He had a video recording made of food preparation at the table, showed it to some cellists who wrote a musical score to choreograph with the movements of the chef. Practiced, but not yet fully implemented, the plan is for the chef to come out and serve and for cellists to come out and play the score live. “It’s powerful,” Achatz said. “It changed the flavor of the food. It’s like a palate cleanser. Your mind can’t focus on flavor and noise at the same time.” He actually tested the concept of music overpowering taste, using blue cheese. He and several other chefs popped blue cheese in their mouths and had the cellist play loudly. The taste vanished. “Some sounds enhance food, and some sound like sunshine. Does it make a tomato taste riper?” He left that unanswered.
What if… food could float? Recently his sous chef figured it out. Using green apple taffy and a helium tank, he stuck a hose in the taffy and it ballooned up. He snipped off the end and the taffy floated to the ceiling (where it stuck). Revise. Achatz cut an apple into thin strips and dehydrated them so they looked like string and attached them to the “balloons” to hold them down. The green apple Jolly Rancher-like balloons hover over the center of the table. He has caught guests putting their mouths up to the balloon for a hit of helium and start talking in high voices. (Well, for a $225 dinner, why not have a little fun?)
What if… his food could be more accessible to those without deep pockets? The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is working with Achatz to create an installation involving food. In a vast expanse of space, guests will walk on an eating journey with different sights, sounds, textures and tastes. It takes two years to see a museum idea come to fruition, and Achatz began discussions with curators eight months ago.
So, what’s the future of food? Achatz can’t wait to see what will be out there in 10 or 15 years, and assures all that he won’t be the one making it. But the upcoming generation of chefs will undoubtedly continue the theater of food.
Tell me what you think.
Jody
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