(Edit: Typed too slowly and the previous post cut this one off from the Alinea discussion.)
Yup. Alinea isn’t even your “average” high-end restaurant, it is (I have yet to go there, sadly) a goddamned experience. Last I read about it, if someone asks for salt, that is taken to mean that Something Is Very Wrong and the kitchen comes to a screaming halt while everything is double-checked. Achatz is apparently so focused on his art that he basically (per a writer seeking to profile him) has no hobbies or outside interests. It’s all about the food and what he can do with it. You either think that’s awesome or horrifying.
On another note, add Chicago to the list of places with (apparently) lots of Greek-run diners and split menus of diner food + Greek food. A former coworker of mine, of Greek descent, even joked that she could always “fall back on” opening a diner.
It’s part of a set tasting menu–it’s not a single item you can order on it. It was part of an 18-course menu for $210. I’ve never been there, but my brother has been there three times with his wife, and they are both about as non-snobby people as they get, but they like to splurge once a year on Alinea. Have a sense of humor. Food can be both good and fun. While they take their food seriously, they don’t take themselves too seriously at Alinea. It’s not a stuffy, uptight kind of place.
Exactly. It’s fun and interesting. If you’re not into that, that’s cool, too. It doesn’t mean the people who enjoy it are pretentious snobs or anything. We all have our interests that we’ll blow tons of money on. For some, it’s technology; for some, it’s cars; for some it’s art; for some it’s whiskey; for some it’s food, etc. If driving a Porsche brings you great enjoyment and you have the money to afford it, that’s fine by me. I don’t care about cars, and I don’t think people who own Porsches are snobs who look down on people like me who drive a Mazda 3. Why would I?
When we lived in Bangkok, it was interesting to see the range of dishes on various restaurant menus. You could walk into a non-Thai place (generally geared to expats) and still see a selection of Thai dishes on the menu, which I guess is no different than any ethnic restaurant in the USA having burgers and fries just in case.
The Old German Beerhouse on Sukhumvit (right around the corner from where we lived) is a prime example: awesome German food, but quite a few Thai dishes as well, along with pasta and pizza. I seem to remember them having some random Indian food on the menu too, but maybe that’s a mistake as I’m not seeing it now.
I think “boring options” are a staple of “ethnic restaurants” the world over (“ethnic” relative to the local culture of course). I was looking at the menu of a sort of faux-50’s American diner in Japan. It had standard American food – hamburgers, hot dogs, steak, and… curry rice? I think they had a simple miso ramen as well. Obviously in the cultural context these are the “boring options” comparable to going to a Japanese place and being able to order a hamburger here.
Well, as much as I love food, that sort of deal is not for me. With a seriously nasty allergy to mushrooms and a lesser though still bad reaction to shellfish and coconut/tropical products I really prefer not to deal with exotic stuff like a tasting menu from a jackass hashslinger who takes himself so serious that even the thought of adding a single grain of salt to something horrifies them. The horrors of asking them to not use mushrooms, shellfish or coconut/tropical stuff in my food would cause them an immediate stroke. [I would prefer to have food I can actually eat …]
Actually, speaking as someone who used to sling hash what causes the odd menu items is the owner/head hash slinger/manager of the place has either a favorite dish, or their girlfriend/wife/mom has one [like salmon with hollandaise sauce at the wing joint] and it gets thrown onto the menu so the ingredients can be purchased and kept around. Single portion control pack salmon fillets and a packet of knorr instant hollandaise and a single serve package of nuke and serve asparagus and a single portion of nuke rice can be kept in the freezer until it gets ordered or the person wants to cook it for themselves.
Place I slung hash at [OK so it was a classic french place, so sue me. I slung the occasional dish of hacis ] the odd dish out was oatmeal. Reason? Restaurant manager had an ulcer and oatmeal was more or less comforting. [and if you want to order it in french, flocons d’avoine ]
Right, then it’s not for you. I’m a vegetarian. I haven’t gone, but managed to make a praise-filled post over the restaurant, instead of a ton of bile because they don’t cater to me. (And the salt horror was about perhaps fucking up their food, not the customer’s action.)
Back on topic: Meat prepared Milanesa style at a Mexican restaurant sounds like a misplaced Italian dish, but really it’s a common name in Central America for a breaded cutlet. (My husband had a divine one at Frontera Grill, and a really overcooked one at a wannabe-upscale Mexican place.)
Greek food at diners is very common. A lot of Greek immigrants to the U.S. decided to open diners and put some Greek food on the menu. That was the point of the “Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger” sketch on Saturday Night Live.
It’s probably not for you, then, but I don’t know that the last statement is factual. As far as I know, they are very accommodating at Alinea, and if you have any allergies or whatever, they’ll work around them. Like I said, they love what they do, but they obviously have fun doing it.
And I really don’t understand why having a restaurant where the chef has a strong creative vision brings such harsh criticism. Why do you care? They obviously have a market, they’re one of the top restaurant on the planet, they obviously are doing something right. I’m a photographer, and, while I don’t take myself too seriously as an “artiste,” there’s stuff I simply won’t do even though I can, because that’s not my vision, and if you’re paying for me and my vision, you have to trust me. Otherwise, I’m not the photographer for you. And that’s okay. I’m not for everyone. And not every restaurant is for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with that. I respect people who do what they want to do, how they want to do it, and make a successful living from it. When you go to a place like Alinea, you know why you’re going there: because you want to taste Grant Achatz’s vision, it’s not because you want spaghetti and meatballs. If you want that, that’s fine, but that’s not the right place for you.
There is a recently-opened restaurant near here called Thaitaliano’s, which has an Italian menu and a Thai menu, cooked by different chefs. They collaborate in daily specials, such as red chicken curry risotto.
Not a big deal to me, I won’t go there because I am not going to deal with $200 for food that I probably can’t eat, but if you want to, knock yourself out. Or don’t, concussions suck =)
Well, not actually unusual - the family of a guy that grew up with mrAru was originally Russian, that bailed out of Moscow with whatever they could load in steamer trunks and left for Peking. They lived there until the communists made it uncomfortable, then they bailed out to [wait for it…] Saigon. Talk about sucky luck - but they had eastern connections instead of Paris and London connections. They finally ended up near Fresno, where apparently there is quite a Russian colony going on. [though they ended up there because a fair number of their Vietnamese friends ended up there after the fall of Saigon.]
Apparently a fair number of Russians ended up in China - and besides, borscht is tasty
The solution of Chinese restaurants in Italy to the question “Chinese or pizza?” is to serve both. It surprised us foreigners at first but hey, it makes choosing a restaurant a lot easier.
] the odd dish out was oatmeal. Reason? Restaurant manager had an ulcer and oatmeal was more or less comforting. [and if you want to order it in french, flocons d’avoine 
]
