Having tangled with the novel “beef omakase” form, you return to the comforting embrace of a traditional tasting menu. You also find your way back to a genre—Mexican (and, in this case, more broadly “Latin”) cuisine—that you haven’t engaged with since 2019.
Fine Dining
After some time spent plumbing the depths of more casual fare, it feels good to get back to the meat of the matter: a fine dining concept looking to offer something Chicagoans have never yet experienced with all the trappings of luxury you so love (to pick apart).
After a brief interlude, you now take aim at another concept that has comfortably reached maturity…
In North Pond, you find a restaurant that stands totally apart from time yet, just the same, has stood firmly ahead of its time for most of its existence…
Valhalla confirms Gillanders’s status as one of Chicago’s most talented chefs, yet the restaurant still only represents a half step in his journey…
By offering diners the freedom to define their own evening, by welcoming and caring for them expertly across all levels of indulgence, the Poseys construct that sense of hygge. Elske should serve as a model of what a boundary-pushing, community-oriented restaurant should be.
Why does service sometimes feel magical and, on other occasions, seem positively animatronic? At what point does mechanical precision serve to sap the expression of genuine emotion? And how do bastions of hospitality ensure that their employees can truly connect with guests and make them feel unique?
At what point does fine dining begin to lose its luster? When do totemic luxury ingredients begin to taste the same? And why—up until a certain point—do tasting menus pale in comparison to fast food?
You dub Andrés “the Alinea killer,” and you attest that one sprawling meal at Bazaar Meat—enjoyed at total leisure, with total warmth, and built, plate by plate, in accordance with one’s personal taste—negates any need to go to any of Achatz’s concepts ever again.
Kyōten “2.0” is a restaurant of the very highest caliber that, as an ever-evolving human drama rooted in the rhythm of nature, can rightfully be labelled “art.”