The Foodie Thread

Batman · Sep 6, 2012

YankeeFan said:

Pretty cool, if way too expensive:

Two of the country's most-acclaimed fine-dining restaurants will trade cities and spaces for one week this fall.

New York's Eleven Madison Park and Chicago's Alinea — three Michelin-starred restaurants both — will swap chefs, kitchens and dining rooms, opening in essence pop-up restaurants in each other’s space. Alinea will occupy Eleven Madison Park in New York beginning Sept. 26 for five consecutive nights. Eleven Madison Park will do the same in Chicago starting Oct. 10. Tickets go on sale in coming weeks via its Facebook page.

A collaboration was first hinted at through a YouTube video released Friday. In it, both restaurants dismantle their kitchen and dining rooms, packing everything up in boxes (including chef Grant Achatz).

In layman's terms, at least to non-foodies who don't recognize Thomas, Heston and Ferran by a first-name-only basis (respectively chefs Keller, Blumenthal, Adria), it's the culinary equivalent of the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra trading concert halls for one-week residences.

Experiencing this will come at a premium. For Chicagoans hoping to score one of several hundred tickets for Eleven Madison Park, the exclusiveness of a five-night stand and hefty price tag means casual diners might sit this one out ($495 in both cities, not including tax and service). But for devotees of high gastronomy, the band of Michelin guide-clutching food tourists, it's a chance to sample one of the most-lauded New York restaurants in recent memory.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/stew/chi-alinea-eleven-madison-park-to-trade-cities-and-spaces-for-a-week-20120828,0,747674.story
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I'd think that if you could afford to spend $500 per person on dinner, wouldn't it be easier just to take a trip to New York or Chicago and eat at the actual Eleven Madison Park and Alinea?

The Big Ragu · Sep 6, 2012

Batman said:

YankeeFan said:

Pretty cool, if way too expensive:

Two of the country's most-acclaimed fine-dining restaurants will trade cities and spaces for one week this fall.

New York's Eleven Madison Park and Chicago's Alinea — three Michelin-starred restaurants both — will swap chefs, kitchens and dining rooms, opening in essence pop-up restaurants in each other’s space. Alinea will occupy Eleven Madison Park in New York beginning Sept. 26 for five consecutive nights. Eleven Madison Park will do the same in Chicago starting Oct. 10. Tickets go on sale in coming weeks via its Facebook page.

A collaboration was first hinted at through a YouTube video released Friday. In it, both restaurants dismantle their kitchen and dining rooms, packing everything up in boxes (including chef Grant Achatz).

In layman's terms, at least to non-foodies who don't recognize Thomas, Heston and Ferran by a first-name-only basis (respectively chefs Keller, Blumenthal, Adria), it's the culinary equivalent of the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra trading concert halls for one-week residences.

Experiencing this will come at a premium. For Chicagoans hoping to score one of several hundred tickets for Eleven Madison Park, the exclusiveness of a five-night stand and hefty price tag means casual diners might sit this one out ($495 in both cities, not including tax and service). But for devotees of high gastronomy, the band of Michelin guide-clutching food tourists, it's a chance to sample one of the most-lauded New York restaurants in recent memory.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/stew/chi-alinea-eleven-madison-park-to-trade-cities-and-spaces-for-a-week-20120828,0,747674.story
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I'd think that if you could afford to spend $500 per person on dinner, wouldn't it be easier just to take a trip to New York or Chicago and eat at the actual Eleven Madison Park and Alinea?
Click to expand...

For what it is worth, I have a client over Eleven Madison Park in one of the 10 million old Met Life buildings in New York (impressive building.

My relatively unsophisticated review: Overrated.

But I am not really good on restaurants because I don't eat meat.

Webster · Sep 8, 2012

Interesting article on Eleven Madison Park in the latest New Yorker behind the paywall. Sounds like the chef/owners have had to jack the prices up even more after they bought out Danny Meyer.

YankeeFan · Nov 13, 2012

Pete Wells just crushes Guy Fieri's new restaurant in Times Square:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant-review-guys-american-kitchen-bar-in-times-square.html?pagewanted=all

One of the most brutal reviews I've ever read.

The Big Ragu · Nov 13, 2012

YankeeFan said:

Pete Wells just crushes Guy Fieri's new restaurant in Times Square:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant-review-guys-american-kitchen-bar-in-times-square.html?pagewanted=all

One of the most brutal reviews I've ever read.
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Actually, this has become sport. The Times was tame compared to the New York Observer.

http://observer.com/2012/10/the-crispy-crimes-of-guy-fieri/

In January of 1968, the beginning of a year when the world caught on fire, Guy Ferry was born in a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. And in that moment, though America would not realize it for years to come, she had welcomed into her heartland perhaps her greatest homegrown besmircher, the seed of her undoing. A baby then, now a middle-aged man, Ferry would go on to gain weight, change his name to the more ethnic-sounding Fieri, frost the tips of his hair blond, wear his sunglasses on the back of his head, become a Food Network star and open, at the beginning of September, Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar in Times Square, a restaurant that would be indicted for crimes against humanity, if only that crime fell within the Department of Health’s purview.

It would be disingenuous to claim that Times Square represents anything but a regurgitation of the American dream, monetized, metastasized, made blindingly bright by light-emitting diodes and shoved back down the gullets of those souls unlucky enough to have mistakenly stumbled into the red zone, or worse, like moths to the incinerating flame, have actively sought it out. To deride Mr. Fieri for opening his restaurant there as if he’d taken a dump in the Louvre is silly. He pooped on a pile of bright shiny poop, Jeff Koonsian poop, Guy Debordian poop. But public defecation is still a crime in New York City (Health Code Section 153.09), and his offenses rest not in their location but in their very nature.

Mr. Fieri not only serves truly horrible-tasting food, an awkward origami of clashing aleatory flavors, but he serves this punishing food emulsified with a bombastic recasting of deep-fried American myth. Mr. Fieri’s most egregious transgression isn’t what he puts into his fellow citizens’ stomachs, it’s how the cynical slop interfaces with what he puts into their minds.
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YGBFKM · Nov 13, 2012

Is the shapeless, structureless baked alaska that droops and slumps and collapses while you eat it, or don’t eat it, supposed to be a representation in sugar and eggs of the experience of going insane?
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Beautiful.

JR · Nov 13, 2012

The Big Ragu said:

YankeeFan said:

Pete Wells just crushes Guy Fieri's new restaurant in Times Square:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant-review-guys-american-kitchen-bar-in-times-square.html?pagewanted=all

One of the most brutal reviews I've ever read.
Click to expand...

Actually, this has become sport. The Times was tame compared to the New York Observer.

http://observer.com/2012/10/the-crispy-crimes-of-guy-fieri/

In January of 1968, the beginning of a year when the world caught on fire, Guy Ferry was born in a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. And in that moment, though America would not realize it for years to come, she had welcomed into her heartland perhaps her greatest homegrown besmircher, the seed of her undoing. A baby then, now a middle-aged man, Ferry would go on to gain weight, change his name to the more ethnic-sounding Fieri, frost the tips of his hair blond, wear his sunglasses on the back of his head, become a Food Network star and open, at the beginning of September, Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar in Times Square, a restaurant that would be indicted for crimes against humanity, if only that crime fell within the Department of Health’s purview.

It would be disingenuous to claim that Times Square represents anything but a regurgitation of the American dream, monetized, metastasized, made blindingly bright by light-emitting diodes and shoved back down the gullets of those souls unlucky enough to have mistakenly stumbled into the red zone, or worse, like moths to the incinerating flame, have actively sought it out. To deride Mr. Fieri for opening his restaurant there as if he’d taken a dump in the Louvre is silly. He pooped on a pile of bright shiny poop, Jeff Koonsian poop, Guy Debordian poop. But public defecation is still a crime in New York City (Health Code Section 153.09), and his offenses rest not in their location but in their very nature.

Mr. Fieri not only serves truly horrible-tasting food, an awkward origami of clashing aleatory flavors, but he serves this punishing food emulsified with a bombastic recasting of deep-fried American myth. Mr. Fieri’s most egregious transgression isn’t what he puts into his fellow citizens’ stomachs, it’s how the cynical slop interfaces with what he puts into their minds.
Click to expand...

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The comments are pretty hilarious. Some of them had an "SJ" ring

YankeeFan · Nov 13, 2012

The Times review is "going viral". Seeing it everywhere.

LongTimeListener · Nov 13, 2012

I just read that off a friend's FB feed ... spectacular.

Does Fieri have a trademark way of talking in questions? I figured there was a reason every sentence was written as such, but I'm not familiar with him.

Armchair_QB · Nov 13, 2012

Read it on Facebook as well. That was epic.

heyabbott · Nov 13, 2012

You are led by a cheery hostess—everyone who works at Guy’s American is very nice—past giant television screens showing an endless loop of Mr. Fieri opening his goatee-framed sphincter-mouth to welcome a panoply of fried matter
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Care Bear · Nov 13, 2012

That's one of the best things I've ever read. Utterly embarrassing if you're associated in any way with that particular establisment. Wow.

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