Doing Battle Over Dinner: Keller vs. Achatz

I was alerted to this carnival of food excess by Michael Ruhlman's blog. Apparently Thomas Keller, he of French Laundry and Per Se fame teamed up with Chicago chef Grant Achatz of Alinea to put on a 20-course, Mentor-vs.-Protegé culinary throwdown that I was shockingly not invited to. Not that I would have coughed up the $1,500 to be front row center at what must have been the dining event of the year, but geez, I would have at least liked the opportunity to turn them down! In any event, my petty and Fantasy Island-like grievances aside, Ruhlman linked to the NYT's Pete Wells comments about the dinner are a fantastic and riveting blow-by-blow description of high end, ultra-high pressure restaurant service. Very well written...you can feel the tension and urgency. And all the special needs diners! Why do they leave the house??

I've listed the links here to his series of posts. I would click through them top to bottom (also have a link to the menu....gee, that food wouldn't suck, now would it?!).

Part 1
Part 2 (with menu)
Part 3
Part 4

Picture from the New York Times
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One year ago today @ E.D.T.: A mashed potato primer!

Food for thought.....

Thanks to a link from Portland Food and Drink, I got caught up on chef Grant Achatz (his last name rhymes with "rackets"), who is the leader of the American chef pack who practice molecular gastronomy, the manipulating of the things we eat...chocolate that doesn't melt when subjected to heat, for example....at his Chicago restaurant Alinea. I remember reading over a year ago how Achatz, now only 34, had been diagnosed with tongue cancer, what can only be a cruel irony for any chef. I hadn't heard much beyond that, but have been thinking about him recently after picking up Michael Ruhlman's excellent book "The Reach of a Chef", where Achatz is among those profiled. In this story from The New Yorker, Achatz tells of how his doctors were advising him to have 3/4 of his tongue cut out of his mouth or be dead within months. To Achatz that was unthinkable. The New Yorker tells the story of his remarkable journey through treatment, where he lost all sense of taste, to his uncertain "recovery". Portland F&D links to this New York Times "Diner's Journal" article about Achatz which is also worth a read. Food for thought, indeed.

picture from The New Yorker