5/15/2023 0 Comments Alinea chicago![]() It made for a little bit of nervousness and disorientation before you stepped inside, which I thought was almost a casually cruel thing to do, but so very effective.” When you got to the proper door of the restaurant, it was a sliding door, but it didn’t open immediately, like they wanted you to think, ‘Am I doing something wrong? How do you open this thing?’ Right when you start thinking that, it opened. “I don’t know if they still do this, but for a while, Alinea would do this thing where, when you entered, you went through a long hallway with nothing in it. “There are always restaurants that want to make you feel a little bit nervous,” Tracy explains. Reiss says that move was inspired by West Loop’s Grace, which closed in late 2017, while the restaurant-wide, sauce-swooped dessert that marks the movie’s finale (no spoilers) was inspired in part by Alinea’s famous tabletop finale.ĭessert isn’t the only thing the movie pulled from Alinea, either: Tracy says The Menu’s cold, somewhat unapproachable exterior was inspired in part by Grant Achatz’s Lincoln Park eatery. In The Menu, the servers move almost in unison, presenting each new course to the entire restaurant as it’s ready. A lot of chefs are more dictatorial about how they run their kitchen, like they’re the word of God, but I think wanted to create something that felt a little bit more humane.” “The cook who created the dish was given the platform to introduce it to the room, and we do that in the movie as well. “I went to EL Ideas a few times, and it wasn’t always Phillip introducing every course,” Tracy says. Tracy took other inspiration from Foss, explaining that he always admired how the chef shared the spotlight. “Will is more of a foodie than I am, but that made me start thinking about the chef as an artist who just wanted to see how another group of people put together this artistic thing.” “Will and I went to EL Ideas, and afterwards, Phillip Foss wanted to come and hang out at The Onion to see how we put it all together,” Reiss explains. Before each course, he comes out to wax rhapsodic about what diners are about to enjoy, a move that Reiss says they first saw while dining at Phillip Foss’s EL Ideas in Chicago. The film also had three-Michelin-star chef Dominique Crenn on call, and she seemed to relish the chance to branch out from her traditionally more warm and unpretentious cuisine.Ĭrenn actually trained Ralph Fiennes for his role as the film’s antagonist, the precise and calculating Chef Slowik, a revered figure who runs and operates the restaurant as a sort of farm-to-table boot camp for his adoring staff. Many of the specifics come from Chicago other dishes-like a scallop appetizer that’s served on a stone painstakingly sprinkled with local greens and a dish of laser-printed tortillas-were pulled from other great restaurants and creators around the world, such as René Redzepi at Noma in Denmark and Nathan Myhrvold, author of Modernist Cuisine. Everything the group eats is grown or raised on the island. ![]() The Menu’s actual menu is craveworthy, to be sure. As it turns out, though, the diners have been handpicked to attend that evening-and all is not as it seems in the kitchen. In the film, directed by Mark Mylod, a group of high-end diners venture out to an exclusive island restaurant, where they think they’ll be enjoying a much-lauded tasting menu from a world-renowned chef. ![]() Though Tracy and Reiss would later depart for New York, their time in Chicago helped inspire their view of fine dining, and several experiences they had in and around Chicago are actually reflected in The Menu. ![]() The pair came up together at The Onion, living and working in Chicago as the site’s editor in chief and head writer, respectively. Those nods come courtesy of the film’s producer/writers, Succession scribe Will Tracy and Late Night With Seth Meyers writer Seth Reiss. First came The Bear, with its frenetic take on the intersection of haute cuisine and Italian beef, and now comes the dark horror-comedy The Menu, which-while it doesn’t take place in Chicago-makes several notable hat tips toward the city’s formidable dining scene. This past year has turned out to be the Chicago culinary scene’s time to shine onscreen. NEWS & INVESTIGATIONS Open dropdown menu.
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