"Grant Achatz" news and stories

Need proof that Chicago diners have bought into the hype surrounding Grant Achatz' new Chicago restaurant, Next? Check Craigslist. Fans of Achatz' brand of avant-garde cooking are literally paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of eating at his newest outpost. The restaurant operates on a ticket system -- secure a ticket and you're in for a meal. But demand drives up prices, and since the seats are limited, scalpers are having a field day. Recent Craigslist postings have the coveted tickets listed for as much as $3,000. Achatz proved his cooking chops at Alinea, but he's going to have to put out some pretty impressive food to satisfy diners who ponied up that much dough.

Read the full story at The Huffington Post.

• It's Restaurant Week in the Windy City: Fancy meals at bargain prices.
• What's the next cupcake? (Some say it's...the cupcake.)
• Most Chicagoans have heard of top chef Grant Achatz -- but few really know him.
• Time for porridge! (Can you contain your excitement?)

When you travel, don't you wish you could just casually call up the best chefs in town and ask, "So where do you eat?"

If Chicago is on your itinerary, you're in luck. In its September issue, Departures magazine asked the city's top culinary talent not only what their favorite haute spots are, but about where they eat well on the cheap, and who's the next cook to watch in the Windy City. From L2O's Laurent Gras and his love for inexpensive Hawaiian barbecued short ribs to Alinea's Grant Achatz's "secret indulgence" of sweetbread veal nuggets, this advice will make Chicago your kind of town.

Head over to Departures for the full list.

If one thing defines Chicago's tastes, it's meat. "Our food is hearty and fatty and greasy and doesn't leave you hungry after eating it," says local food blogger Marcee Manglardi. Steve Dolinsky, the ABC 7 reporter dubbed the Hungry Hound, agrees. "This is not a vegetarian town at all – they're the sad step sister here." It's all thanks to the city's history: the south side of Chicago hummed with meat processing and packaging plants, the Union Stock Yard known as the Yards, from the 1860s until the 1970s. For much of that time, it processed more meat than any other place in the world; the only perk for the immigrant workers in those often-grueling conditions was the cheap offcuts they could take home – leading to the city's obsession with hot dogs and beef sandwiches.

The reason Chicago became such a meatpacking mecca was simple: it was the nexus of the country's railway system during the industrial boom years of the 19th century. Hogs and cattle could be brought in cheaply and easily for processing – and that wasn't the only thing. "People joke about flyover country, but Chicago was never that – it was fly-through country. Because we were a hub, every good product came through here: you can read menus from the 1940s, and there were oysters on there," notes Dolinsky, "Chicago was always a must-stop if you were going across the country – every celebrity on their way between New York and LA dined at the Pump Room."

That historic openness and access to ingredients is the reason, he believes, that Chicago today is synonymous in America with Rube Goldberg-like molecular gastronomy. The love children of Einstein and Julia Child, Grant Achatz at Alinea and Homaro Cantu at Moto break rules by turning shrimp cocktail into an atomizer that's squirted into your mouth, or goat cheese turned into 'snow' using a paint sprayer. Of course, since it's Chicago, they don't skimp on meat in their menus either: only here, it's welded together with a 'meat glue' or flash-frozen on a contraption Achatz himself invented known as the Anti-Griddle.

Read on about Chicago's meaty offerings and more, after the jump...

Contrary to reports this week in Eater National and here on Slashfood, molecular gastronomist Grant Achatz, chef of Chicago's Alinea restaurant, will not be opening a bar called Boom (or Bam, or Bang, or Pow or any other Batman sound effect) as his next project.

"I can assure you we are not opening a place called Boom," the chef posted to his followers on Twitter. "You think some fact checking would be in order?"

Despite a February 1 report in the Wall Street Journal that Achatz has plans to open a bar, Grub Street Chicago said it was a misunderstanding.

". . . Alinea already plays around plenty with edible cocktails and other manipulations -- in particular he noted an entry on the Alinea Mosaic forum outlining the restaurant's six-cocktail 'VIP Cocktail Block,' which he identified as an inspiration for the Journal's story. So for the time being, Alinea: The Bar, is purely a hypothetical," Grub Street reported.

Slashfood does believe in fact-checking. We attempted to contact Achatz and Alinea by phone and email on February 2 before running the story, and we tried again today . . . with no response.