My Mouth's Most Happiness (part 3) (...Finally)

Sooooo, like, 7 months ago, I had a crazy delicious meal and started writing about it (check out the first couple courses, and then the middle couple of courses. Annnnd finally, I got my act together to finish it tonight. Enjoy the third installment of our Alinea adventures.

After all the real food - it was dessert time.

They brought out Winter. Like the seaweed log before it, this was basically some designer's wet dream, with 4 bites of food on it. In this case - another log, with pine needles, and rocks that had been cooled to -80 degrees and adorned with peppermint flavored snow. Resting on top of the snow were bites of different fruits (including persimmon) and a nutmeg marshmallow.

Then there was the deconstructed hot chocolate, that was water but of course, it was actually hot chocolate. Okay, Harry Potter, you win.

The snow was realistically cold and fantastically delicious. I scraped it off the rocks with a fork until Boyfriend said that, really, that was quiet enough.

The penultimate course was one of the ones that I wish had been a surprise for me (but was happy was a surprise for Boyfriend). It was a balloon, full of helium, made of something akin to Apple Fruit by the Foot (but, you know, a billion times more delicious and flavorful). Dangling off the end was a silver implement that we were instructed to use however we wanted - with the end result being eating the apple balloon.

I went the direct route and stabbed the balloon right through with the silver tool. This left me very, very sticky, but satisfied.

Boyfriend managed to find a way to eat it slowly enough that he could suck out minimal amounts of helium (but enough to make his voice high pitched) and keep the balloon afloat as he ate it. He's an engineer, people.

The final course was easily the most amazing thing that happened throughout the entire meal, and will continue, probably until the end of my life, to be the best show I've ever seen. I don't know how they managed to keep this course a surprise - but they did and holy.crapballs. was it worth it.

One of the chefs came out and asked about our meal. I was in such a place of pure bliss already, I could barely talk to him. He put a dark chocolate fishbowl on the table and filled it with liquid nitrogen (poured out of a dainty white china pitcher). And then as he chatted with us, he started using various sauces (butternut squash, lingonberry and stout) to draw designs on our table.

I know that I should not be impressed, as plating and presentation is a fairly basic component of culinary arts, but the designs were so beautiful and smelled so amazing. It was art more than food. Boyfriend's birthday present was not so much the meal, but me restraining myself from taking a picture of the final design.

The beauty was either heightened, or short lived, depending on your opinion - when the chef picked up the chocolate fishbowl and unceremoniously dropped it back on the table where it broke open, full of treats like the fanciest pinata this side of Mexico.

The liquid nitrogen had frozen bits of cotton candy, toffee, sweet potato and magic in the fish-bowl-pinata-of-delicious. We were handed spoons and left to enjoy as much of this amazing last course as we could.

If you know me, you know I don't leave food on my plate (or...table? as the case maybe). I think about the starving kids in Africa, the fact that I am paying for this, my Italian grandmother who was always telling me to eat more, my friends who use leaving food as a weird dieting mind game that I will have no part of, and the fact that I may never have this chance again, and I eat until its gone.

So I ate as much as I could fit inside me. There have only been one or two times where I have truly eaten to the point of near stomach explosion (our feast in the Italian countryside comes to mind). And even when it got to the point where I could literally feel my stomach stretching uncomfortably inside my beautiful Jason Wu dress, I kept eating the delicious chocolate scooped up with amazing sauce and real (real!) magnolia petals.

I don't think I would have stopped without Boyfriend telling me I was under no circumstances allowed to throw up in the cab ride home. I would have sat in that restaurant for hours letting the waves of hedonism wash over me if given the chance.

But eventually, sadly, it had to end. They brought the check and cleaned up the end of the beautiful chocolate mess. While we waited for a cab, we got to sneak a peak inside the kitchen which was surprisingly normal looking (I am not sure why I assumed that they would be like, cooking with flame throwers and wearing those crazy super magnifying glasses - I have a very active imagination).

We got in our cab, and went home - and like any vacation, there was that crushing realization that we were very much back in the real world, where you eat on plates with regular forks and all of the food is just normal and boring.

Boyfriend bought me my own Molecular Gastronomy At-Home Kit which I am waiting for a really special occasion to play with. The next time I eat crazy stuff, it'll probably be of my own making.

Do I recommend Alinea? Absolutely. If you el-oh-vee-ee LOVE food and are not going to be scared off by a price tag akin to a new computer, then absolutely. Do it. Or find some other amazing restaurant and eat there (and then tell me about it). The thing about living is that you should really enjoy it as much as possible.

My Mouth's Most Happiness (part 2)

So, where did we leave off?

Oh yes - caponata. Or as I like to call it, the eggplant game changer (go read about courses 1 - 9. It's cool, I'll wait).

After the thing most resembling an entree came and went (with all of it polished off and the consideration of stowing the fish head in my purse for Miss Hazel) we came to the physical challenge part of the meal.

We were given a wax cup full of liquid with a little metal spear holding some unidentified squares dangling above it. At the word "go" we had to pull the spear very carefully out, depositing the squares into the liquid. We had to be very careful to this in a timely, yet gentle fashion while under the very judgmental eye of one of our waiters. Naturally, all this pressure got to me, and I nearly failed, but I managed to get my squares into my liquid and shoot it back with a quickness.

It was hot and cold at the exact same time while also managing to be simple and delicious. So many adjectives. It is called "Hot Potato, Cold Potato" which is pretty much exactly what it was. According to my limited internet research this has been on the menu for a really long time, which makes sense. It really encompasses everything Alinea is about. Its totally off the wall, requires tableware you cannot find at Sur La Table, and is very delicious.

The next course comes with a pillow full of juniper air, which I am seriously considering purchasing for my own at-home use. I forget how amazing juniper smells until they are putting a pillow of it in front of me, with a plate of mushrooms on top.

If you know me, you know I do not eat mushrooms. The texture of mushrooms makes my skin crawl. Just thinking about the way they feel in my mouth gives me a fit of the shivers. But I had a funny feeling this was going to happen, and I told myself long before we even got to the restaurant that I was going to eat everything put in front of me.

So I ate the mushrooms and once I got over the mushroom-y-ness, all of the other flavors were amazing enough to keep the texture-based goosebumps at a minimum.

Pillow of juniper deflated, we got to make our own venison goulash roll-ups in cabbage leaves. I was not anticipating spending all of the dollars and then having to eat with my hands, but I went with it. I know there is a part of me that is country girl (its smaller than the part that is Italian but it exists), and this country girl loves her game meat.  Mmm, venison. I probably will never be able to have actual goulash without being severely disappointed.

Difference between Alinea and McDonalds? At Alinea you get a warm towels after you eat with your hands.

Towels removed it was time for an explosion (Fun Fact, the word explosion will always makes me think of the Madhouse Comedy Explosion and Summer 2004, good, drunken times).  The black truffle explosion was a single ravioli served on a spoon and with a warning to eat it all in one bite.

Boyfriend summed it up best with, "Wow, I think I need a cigarette." They do mess around with hyperbole at Alinea, just black truffle oil.

For most of the meal, things seemed to be how they were just because... but the next course was apparently based on Miro's Still Life with Old Shoe.

Image (via)

What does a course based on this look like?

Different sized utensils, all with bites of food on them. While most of the other courses came with strict instructions, this one was the "there are no rules" course. All bites were eaten in whichever order we preferred. Of course, I have no idea what was on most of them except deliciousness. I wish I could be more specific. There was for sure a spoonful of jam, and a spoon with a bit of vinegar and oil on it, a bite of foie gras, some crunchy business and a fork of squab.

Having had utensils to eat with for 2 courses in a row, it was time to go back to eating with our hands and/or a smouldering cinnamon stick.

Most of the things that I ate during this meal I would never dream of recreating, but at the end of the smouldering cinnamon stick was a ball of brie cheese, caramelized onions and anjou pear with a crispy outside. While I will probably leave the fire hazard out of it, the rest of this dish sounds totally doable (and we all know how I feel about brie).

After I explained to Boyfriend that that cinnamon stick was his birthday candle, they brought out another torture-looking device. This one with five long, thin metal fingers sticking out of a solid base. On the end of each finger was a bite no larger than the size of this O (okay, maybe a little bit, but not much bigger. Maybe this O). Each bite was a different type of Hawaiian ginger, garnished with completely different flavors.

This is the moment where Rachel learns the lesson that it is not the size of the food but the size of the flavor that makes all the different. Each bite packed a wallop that had me reaching for my sparkling water. One of the pieces of ginger had a single cell of grapefruit on it. A single cell! These were some of the most flavorful things we ate all night. Ginger means business, everyone.


After letting ginger blow our minds a little bit, we got geared up for dessert which I am saving for another blog because it deserves at least this much description if not more.