The Reader’s Choice: Alinea and L2O (tie)
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
After dinner at Alinea with college friends, we realized our bill was half the cost of a year’s tuition, room, and board in the early 70s. Unfortunately our parents weren’t covering us this time around. But then you don’t “go out to eat” at Alinea like you do at other restaurants. Chef Grant Achatz challenges the conventions of dining out, playfully pushing limits while stimulating familiar sensations—diners are said to have teared up at the childhood memory of autumnal bonfires conjured when pheasant with cider gel is served with smoking oak leaves.
Gras goes for tasteful visual fun. Raw tuna and hamachi are cut into a how’d-he-do-that checkerboard pattern; lobster is presented three ways, as a delicate chunk of meat, as a dumpling, and awash in a bisque. Fork-perfect halibut is flanked by transparent tubes of gelled tomato water, each containing a cherry tomato. Go ahead and giggle—it’s allowed. There are the requisite foams and powders, but L2O proves itself by delivering on the fundamentals as well as the finesse: the bread service, for example, is a selection of six, all spectacular, with house-made butter. And for the price of admission you can take a postprandial stroll through the kitchen and get a sense of the hardware required for such a dining experience. A poor man’s substitute is Gras’ splendid blog (l20.typepad.com). Alinea, 1723 N. Halsted, 312-867-0110, alinea-restaurant.com. L2O, 2300 N. Lincoln Park West, 773-868-0002, l2orestaurant.com. —David Hammond
