Alinea is overrated and you know this, but I'm writing text about it anyway
One of the final things to return in my life is tech conferences. I keynoted one a few weeks ago. It went well. I missed the people, the conversations, the hallway track. Zoom never, ever sufficed. There is absolutely no substitute for conscious in-person gathering. You are aware of this.
The conversation eventually turns to food, as it always does with me, and since Chicago is the greatest food city in America, and the other person talking to me is in tech, they ask me the question that is the subject of this text. It is this:
Is Alinea worth it?
Alinea is a three-Michelin-starred, James Beard award-winning restaurant in Armitage-Halsted, widely considered to be at the vanguard of fine dining in America. I have dined there twice, both before & after a gut rehab & reconcepting that shut the restaurant for almost a year.
My answer is always instantly, reflexively “no.” Alinea is not worth it. There are a half-dozen better values for fine dining in Chicago, with more interesting food, and just as good service, in spaces that all look quite a bit similar to Alinea, often by alums of Alinea or people who trained at the same restaurants as the big players in Alinea. If you open the problem space from fine dining to just dining, you have north of 50 excellent options available to you.
There is always a smirk, a scoff, in response to the “no,” even though my response is correct in both an economic & a spiritual sense. Alinea is a $300 meal that you pay $950 for. Years later, you will barely remember the meal, only the fact that you have dined at Alinea.
Is the bucket list checkmark worth $650 to you? To some, the bragging rights are absolutely worth $650. The easiest way to stay a rich person is to flag as a rich person. The easiest way to flag as a rich person is to status-signal with rich person things. Alinea is pretty indisputably a rich person thing.
It’s a good meal, yes, and a safe bet, but also a hollow representation of what fine dining can be. You aren’t really going to Alinea for a meal. You’re going to Alinea to go to Alinea, to say you have gone to Alinea, and to be the kind of person who has at some point been to Alinea.
Back when I did fine dining in the Before Times®, I didn’t check boxes. I ate meals. I put on the bare minimum that would let me clear the dress code, and I followed all of the rules of etiquette. But I also showed that I was relaxed, charitable, and grateful. This allowed everybody serving me to settle back a bit, to provide service that’s a little more loose, and to even relate to one another as real humans.
And then I don’t really talk about it. I have always given more space to street food, to casual spots, to smaller places that don’t exist to puff up your ego. The only reason I mentioned earlier that I’ve been to Alinea is because there’s nothing more insufferable than an inexperienced hater. The only person in the whole world who cares where I’ve dined is me. That matters, but you don’t need to hear about it.
So if you’re asking me about food recommendations, then no, you don’t need to go to Alinea. But if you’re looking to status-signal, then probably you have to go to Alinea, and you’re not going to care about anything I have to say about it. But I will say one more thing, a mostly nice thing, and I think it will tell you everything you need to know.
The best single dish I ever had at Alinea was a piece of rabbit. The rabbit looked like rabbit. It was not foamed, atomized, anti-griddled, or dehydrated. It still clearly looked like a hunk of meat. It was not hung from a swing or handed to you in balloon form. It was served on a normal porcelain dish, with a normal metal fork and knife, in a small amount of stock. It was not built for Instagram or YouTube. It appeared in the middle of a 26-course meal with zero fanfare. It looked like nothing you have ever come to expect from Alinea, and it tasted like the warm center of a home in the dead of winter, surrounded by everyone you love.
I looked up and found myself in a sparsely furnished, windowless gray room, with art signifying nothing, and no other diners were smiling.