The server arrives with the first dish, a poached quail egg topped with a white anchovy and spiced with capers and tarragon, downed in one mouthwatering bite. Up next is a plate of hors d’oeuvres, including a dollop of foie gras in a mini-brioche, saddled with a slice of apricot and mustard seeds. We are told by our server, who appears to have the same knowledge as the food historian at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, that the next dish, potage à la tortue claire (turtle soup), “was used by the French to elongate the meal.’’
Even with the heady number of dishes, our meal at Next seemed to fly by. There was sole, flown in from Cape Cod, and a sublime lamb dish, created three ways, with loin, sweetbread, and tongue. The pièce de résistance, however, was recipe number 1476 from Escoffier’s “Le Guide Culinaire’’: caneton rouennais à la presse, or sliced duck doused in a sauce created by using an antique duck press.
Acquiring that device was no easy feat for chef Grant Achatz. “I found it on Twitter, from a guy in Vermont,’’ he says as he shoves the duck carcass into the press to collect the blood that is quickly mixed with cognac and red wine to make the sauce. Soon after, he is out the door to take the helm of his other restaurant, Alinea.
Since his arrival in Chicago a decade ago, after a five-year stint at the legendary French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley, Achatz, 37, has taken the Windy City by storm. He got his bearings first in Evanston, at the restaurant Trio, before opening Alinea in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in 2005 with his business partner, Nick Kokonas. As accolades accumulated, such as winning the best chef in the United States from the James Beard Foundation and Alinea being awarded the Michelin guide’s top rating (three stars), Achatz quickly joined the ranks of other legendary Chicago chefs such as Charlie Trotter and Rick Bayless.
