Courtesy of the Chicago blog Gaper’s Block, here are two photo tours detailing excursions into what can only be described as Food Pornography, dining experiences in which all five senses are used in a nontraditional approach to dining.
An evening at Alinea (and an overview of past menus)
Dinner at Moto
These are two of the hottest restaurants in Chicago right now, and with that hotness comes the attendant sticker shock: $160 at Moto and $175 at Alinea. But…damn. Were we a bit more financially flush, I would seriously consider it.
Whoah, that stuff is intense. I like the presentations though. I must agree though, the price tag is a bit hefty.
Well, I won’t disparage such places, but…
I’ll take home-cooked ANY time. We had guests on Sunday for my mate’s superb spaghetti and meatballs, with his home baked sourdough bread, an ordinary California red wine, and a tossed salad made from the garden greens that survived Saturday night’s hard frost. Of course, the company improves any meal, but you just can’t beat that…
Except that friend Doug brought dessert, an Italian-style thing made of some kind of anise cakes soaked in liqueur and topped with chocolate mousse and whipped cream. Whoa.
Well, I think it’s apples and oranges, really. I love to cook (as might be assumed by careful readers 🙂 and at the same time, I’m what is known in the vernacular as a “cheap bastard”. I know what it costs to make a plate of fettucine alfredo and if some place tries to charge me $14.95 for it, I’ve got a problem with that. A hearty meal at home trumps a frou frou presentation of chicken piccata with a sprig of parsley every time.
Places like Alinea and Moto, though, I don’t think you can compare to an ordinary restaurant. In a lot of ways it’s more like performance art or culinary theater. For me, it would be a once-in-a-lifetime meal because I sure as hell am never going to spend that much for a meal twice in my life! 🙂
Heh. Well, I’ve survived a meal or two at places that were the equivalent in their time, and I guess the performance art doesn’t impress me. It’s that bread and circuses rating that James Ward uses in his reviews, you know? I take food seriously, and prefer not to mix it with circus entertainment. 🙂
My tastes in food may be rather plebean, too. I’d certainly take the Machine Shed in Rockford over any number of snooty, frou-frou places. Even if someone else is picking up the tab.