Alinea Restaurant Llc

Alinea has been called the best restaurant in the United States. I went last fall as a very special, once-in-a-lifetime treat and felt that it more than earned the recognition it's received. Service is elegant and flawless, and the experimental food is unlike anything you've ever tried. Its ingenious mixing of unpredictable flavors, textures and temperatures will make your tastebuds feel like they've been born again. (Each course comes with careful instructions on how to eat it--you're not in knife and fork country anymore.) The wine pairings taught me--basically a wine idiot--how the right course and the right wine can complement and deepen each other. That said, I'd go for the tasting menu over the tour we had. I assumed that the 24-course tour would be a pleasant, doable dining experience--nope. It turns out everyone in the know knows the tour is for other chefs prepared to go all out, and total gluttons. It took about four hours to get through it, and by the end we were all in intense distress, full to bursting and sloshed on our wine. We could barely taste the final few courses. The 12-course tasting menu seems like it would be a much more balanced experience, and if I ever get a chance to go back I'll go for that instead.