Last night was the revealing of a new restaurant concept from the creators of Alinea in Chicago.  The restaurant NEXT will be opening this fall, and form the advertising video I want a ticket.  Yes I want a ticket, not a reservation.  The concept is to take you to a time and place in important culinary history such as Paris 1912, Hong Kong 2036, Edo period Japan, Sicily 1949, to name a few time periods being advertised.  Every period will be open for a season, and I'm guessing once that period is done it will not be repeated for a long time.  The projected plan is to serve 4 star food at 3 star prices, as a prix-fixe price between $40-75, with alcohol supplements starting at $25, for a 5-6 course meal.  The pricing plan is based on the idea of airfare tickets, since their goal is to take you in history or the future through food.  Buying tickets at peak times like holidays, weekend evenings will be more expensive then now peak times like a Wednesday evening.  If you make a unplanned visit to Chicago and want to get a ticket, there will be two walk-in tables available.  And if your a Chicago regular you can get discounted tickets if you purchase tickets for all four seasons at once. 

Also, set to open from the Alinea crew is a concept "bar" without bartenders, called Aviary.  No you do not get to pour your own alcohol or have alcohol vending machines.  The drinks will be prepared by the kitchen staff, along with a bite to eat paired with the drink.  I LOVE THIS CONCEPT.  The bar will not take reservations, and will have a mixture of classic drinks, NEXT themed drinks, and innovative cocktails.

While in Chicago for the St. Patrick weekend celebrations I noticed many restaurants doing FLIGHTS of food or wine. A flight is three or four tastings of a similar product.

One restaurant, oENOlogy, offered wine, cheese, and chocolate flights. Unfortunately, we passed by this restaurant since it was going to be open until 11PM and didn't feel like going after dinner from a day full of seeing everything we could in Chicago. The menu was consisted entirely of flights. You could order wines, cheeses, and chocolate in flights. Each wine flight consisted of three wines themed around an idea such as location, style, pairing similarities, etc., a fancy name was chosen on the concept of the flight. Cheese and chocolates were served in the same way. By doing this you could learn how the flavors of the wine change with different cheeses and chocolates.

Before we left we went to a brunch restaurant called Orange, one of their specialties is the pancake flight which changes every week. Ordering this you get four stacks of three silver dollar pancakes, each with different toppings. This week included pancakes with lucky charms and cream, Guinness yogurt with cantaloupe, bacon and orange marmalade, and Irish cream pancakes. While not all of these pancakes tasted as great as other options available, I enjoyed the concept.

As a chef you must constantly create 4 unique recipes based on one common recipe, but the possibilities are endless for a restaurant that wants to try this. I believe this would be a great way to promote holiday and seasonal foods on a menu, and provides the stability and change of a menu that customers love. Still haven't seen this in Baltimore yet, if you do, please send me a message about who is doing this style of dining on their menu.