Next, of course, being the Grant Achatz’s restaurant in the West Loop.
If you know how much seasons tickets go for (and I know it depends on what hour and what night of the week one’s ticket is for), then you probably already know the restaurant’s M.O.
To recap, one simply doesn’t make a reservation and choose things from a menu. (Perish the thought!) One instead acquires a ticket (at a substantial price and months in advance). At the appointed time, you get to go and enjoy a seventeen to thirty or so course of preselected dishes (a tasting menu). (If you knew what you wanted to eat in a restaurant, you’d be a celebrity chef, I guess.)
Every three months or so, Next changes its theme (Paris 1906, some Japanese thing, a hunting lodge) and a sequence of these over the course of the year gives rise to the season ticket concept.
So, what is the price range for a season ticket? How much would Saturday 8 pm run? What about Tuesday at 10:30 pm?
Next is perhaps less a restaurant and more like a church of foodie-ism. Just as one might be a member of synagogue and get tickets for the High Holidays, those adhering to the cult of Achatz must likewise pledge their support before being admitted to the liturgy.
I’m aware of the tickets.
I guess maybe my confusion is the term “Season”.
Do you mean it as in a seat for every event during a year as in season tickets for a sport? Or are you simple using the term because the menu changes about every three months?
People call them “season tickets,” (see even the Wiki article) by which they mean a ticket or set of tickets to each of the different themes/shows/services(?) in a given year.
I admit I don’t know if these are formal season tickets prepackaged by the restaurant, or if it is a short-hand way of saying, “I have obtained a ticket for each of the themes this year.”
If it is prepackaged (and this is my guess, but again, I don’t know for certain), I guess the question is how much does this prepackaged deal cost.
If it is a DIY I-bought-tickets-for-each kind of thing, my question is how much this might be expected to run.
In other words, whatever it is that people call “season tickets” to Next, how much does that cost?
I kind of dont want to know! I ate at Next a couple weeks back for my birthday and it was an intense experience. Food was at turns delicious and challenging and the service was impeccable.
That said, it ran $485 for two people with non alcoholic pairings. I can buy a LOT of Sun Wah’s ginger scallion lobster and Peking duck for that kinda coin. If you are going to go, I highly recommend waiting for the Bocuse D’or menu later this year.
You are a marvel, zoid!! This is exactly what I was looking for.
The reason I asked the question is that there is a fellow parishioner who noted that his season tickets were nearly, but still a little bit less, than his annual pledge to the church.
By my reckoning, season tickets appear to be in the range of $600-800, assuming no Kitchen Table reservation. (No Episcopalian would ever choose the non-alcoholic pairing.)
So, in the arms race for Jesus’ love, I wanted to make sure that this amount was comfortably below my own pledge. … Whew! No cause for embarrassment.