City of Big Flavors

Chicago is the nearest city that a Twin Citian can reliably lean on to find food experiences that aren’t available here. Regular visits to the Windy City have convinced me that Chicago restaurants are often second to none in almost every category imaginable. Here’s where to go now, from gastronomic temples to sidewalk stalls. All are close to downtown, unless otherwise noted.

2005’s Hot Crop
>>Chef-owner Mindy Segal’s Hot Chocolate, a loud and übercool neighborhood scene, has a dozen savory delights to start your meal, and more than two dozen sweets to end it. The food is very good, the desserts some of the best in town. Warm brioche doughnuts with hot fudge are simple and perfect, the others are what modern-day pastry craft is all about. How about a peach napoleon plate with caramelized phyllo served with sweet custard, rosé champagne sorbet, tapioca crème anglaise, and a raspberry jumble cake square?

>>Alinea is the most important restaurant in America right now. No one is doing more to turn the American food world on its ear than young chef Grant Achatz. The French Laundry alum serves from a serious and silent kitchen among a brigade of fifteen-plus cooks who prepare six-, twelve-, and twenty-four–course tasting menus, using twenty-second–century technique. Achatz, a culinary alchemist of the first order, distills and concentrates flavors using perfect technique. My eleventh course one night was a mousse-like and intense grape-juice sphere the size of a golf ball, rolled in flakes of blue-veined cheese shaved at fifty degrees below zero. This snowball arrived perched on walnut cream, wild celery, grape gelee, and walnut dust. The taste was ephemeral, melting, and changed the way I look at fruit and cheese forever. Every serving piece is created solely for a use Achatz dreams up—five small porcelain pedestals, for example, held five variations of hearts of palm, each stuffed with a different purée. The effect is awesome, the sourcing meticulous. Service is incomprehensibly perfect, the wine list world-class.