Previewing Grant Achatz's Next: 3 Months Of Escoffier, Then...

The New York Times:

Next month, Grant Achatz will open a restaurant here that, if all goes according to plan, could be the most difficult, ephemeral and stressful in culinary history. "My idea of fun seems to be more work," he said; he will remain in charge of Alinea, his acclaimed restaurant nearby.

When this new restaurant, Next, serves its first customers on April 1, its menu will be painstakingly reproduced from the classical French repertoire: whole lobes of foie gras baked in brioche, clear turtle soup with Madeira, duck pressed and sauced with its own blood and marrow, as served at the Tour d'Argent in Paris for more than 200 years.

These dishes, which Mr. Achatz has been refining for a year, will be served for all of three months. Next will then morph into an entirely different restaurant, and again three months after that.

Read the whole story

Comments

[M4dwoman]

09:38 PM on 02/16/2011

What...is...that?

[CulinaryFare]

04:31 PM on 02/16/2011

Look like a New Bromance is Brewing on Top Chef All Stars! Are we witnessing True Brotherly Love? http://foodiegossip.blogspot.com/2011/02/top-chef-all-stars-episode-10-sneak.html

[DandaPanda]

02:35 PM on 02/16/2011

..elitist food is a testament to how wretched some have become..get a hobby, learn to play an instrument, buy a horse...I am not opposed to spending copious sums on dinner, but to make it so hard to get, so impossibly over the head of 99.99999% of the people on the planet well it just sort of says something about those who MUST eat here or MUST eat there...people die of hunger every single second of every single day and oh i don't know but this gastronomic display of excess just screams let them eat brioche!...off with their heads!

[EveryCliche]

03:26 PM on 02/16/2011

I've eaten at Alinea and I am far from being an elitist. I read about it for years and read Grant's amazing story and HAD to go there. My Birthday is a week after my best friend's, so she made the reservation and we went. I'm an administrative assistant and don't make that great of money and my rent is through the roof, but I saved and found a way to pay for the meal and I'll never forget it. I feel sorry for people that are starving but I do donate my time at a "soup kitchen". Also, when I was there I noticed a lot of the other diners were like us.

Alinea was amazing and I can't wait to try Next. I'm sure it will be just as memorable.

[DandaPanda]

03:43 PM on 02/16/2011

not to be snarky but saving for something as disposable as a meal seems well out of touch with reality
.I work in Chicago..the upper peninsula of Michigan and out on the Navajo reservation..What do all these places have in common? Mineral commodities..anyway can you imagine telling someone on Navajo or in the UP ( both have unemployment in the 20's) that oh yes i just spent 800 bucks on dinner for two and it was divine...I eat out I have a big expense account i wine em and dine em..but at a certain point one has to ask WHY ? Why are you compelled to delve into this ridiculous obsession with celebrity chefs with over priced un green inhumane ingredients? Foie Gras to start...I mean we all live in the same world.. i am not advocating you forgo a fancy meal at a nice place, by no means.. I am however tired of seeing these sorts of justifications for the $1000.00 dinner.

[cookerman45]

10:55 AM on 02/16/2011

can ya get it to-go?