Alinea was a bucket list experience for me and it lived up to all expectations. I would return in a heartbeat. Oceans of internet ink have been spilled over the food, the presentation, the chef and the overall experience. Who am I to rehash all of that? Of course it was all exquisite, playful, delicious and inventive. What stood out to me, and therefore what I’ll write about was the service. Our first member of the service team, Joe, greeted us by letting us know that we were there to have fun. Thanks to him and the entire team, some of whom were only present at our table for seconds, the fun kept coming with each course.
My dining companion and I were visiting Chicago on a business trip. Knowing the difficulty of obtaining a ticket for one, I recruited a member of my former team at work who I knew had a penchant for fine dining and wine. He knew nothing of Alinea, but after two sentences on an instant message, his response was “I’m in.” We booked our tickets and were stoked. However, it being a business trip, we both had obligations and work dinners to attend to. Due to my error in not recognizing that the restaurant was closed on Tuesday, we ended up with a reservation that overlapped his team dinner. This led to my first impression of the service at Alinea. I arrived 2 minutes early for our reservation, and one minute later received a text from David exclaiming that he would be at least 15 minutes late. As I stood in the small, dim entry way with the two hostesses, I nearly had a heart attack, terrified that we would lose our table given the information that I had seen on the website. A call from David in the Uber several minutes later put his arrival time at 8:20. I nervously relayed this to the hostesses who replied that everything would be fine.
We were whisked up to the second floor salon which was a bright dining area for about 20 persons when we were greeted by Joe. He pointed out the other members of the team, most notably Vinny, who he revealed was from New York and thus fit the name; and Sian, our sommelier for the evening’s wine pairings. We had not chosen wine pairings prior to our dinner, so Joe went over those options with us and once we had chosen, Sian immediately showed up with a Bollinger Brut Rosé to begin the meal. The dining room was typically cold, so I let Joe know that I was uncomfortable and he appeared three minutes later with a pashmina that matched my dress.
Joe appeared with every course to describe the dish and often how it should ideally be eaten. Sian followed with a wine pairing for each course and an explanation of why the wine would go so well with the dish. I engaged her several times about the wines to learn more and she was persistently pleasant, informative, and excited to share tidbits about lesser known wines. Vinny appeared at just the right time to clear items from the table and was willing to put up with some mild flirtation from me at the end of the meal after the 8th or so wine pairing. On at least two occasions, new team members appeared for seconds at the table to perform a specific task, such as lighting the salt and charcoal filled campfire that would warm the table and provide fragrance for one of the courses. She was there and then gone after a cheeky comment and a flick of the wrist to set fire to the metal cauldron.
Every member of the team appeared and disappeared at just the perfect time and shared a warmth and sense of humor that seemed simply effortless. I don’t know how they do it or who trained them, but the result was simply a delightful and memorable evening. The meal ended with the “balloon,” also presented to us by a new team member who provided instructions on how exactly to approach it and made sure that we knew that we could talk in helium voices after “eating” the apple flavored floating dessert. Thus, we ended our evening at Alinea with squeaky voices and roaring laughter.
