The best examples of sci-fi cooking use their cutting-edge techniques and unusual products to wow knowing that wow is a type of pleasure, but cannot stand in for pleasure. No place better exemplifies this than Grant Achatz’s Alinea, so I was excited to see what its former Chef de Cuisine Curtis Duffy would do now in his own kitchen, at Avenues in the Peninsula Hotel.
Sitting down, I wondered a little if Duffy would be tired of people talking about him in relation to Achatz. But there was our server, explaining in detail where their chef used to work and then explaining in even greater detail how tasting menus work, promising repeatedly that we would not leave hungry.
I thought that was funny, until I looked around at the room, elegant but slightly stodgy, and thought about the elegant but slightly stodgy hotel we were in. It’s easy to imagine a table of business travelers wondering what happened to the porterhouse.
So it’s a setting that’s a little at odds with Duffy’s food, which is serious but witty and might threaten to challenge conventional tastes. I imagine he’ll win those people over, though, because there’s no way to not smile when you have his caviar with lemon gel, brioche bread pudding, and egg yolk drops. It looks and feels space age, but the balanced flavors make sense in the most classic way.
Like Alinea, Avenues believes in innovation in the service of pleasure, reinvigorating recognizable dishes and flavors, and so a surfboard of frozen bacon consommé hovering above potato cream reveals itself to be the best chowder you’ve ever had. A Japanese barley with manchego milk and red wine purée may make you ask what it means to purée wine, but that doesn’t have to matter when you realize that this is really just a phenomenal risotto. At some point, we were so delirious with pleasure that my friend Chuck said, “I want to shower with this beef,” as if that were a normal thing to say. I nodded, thinking I might like to wash my face with it, or take it with me to bed.
For all the technical fireworks, Avenues just wants to wow you with really, really tasty food. And so, after a frozen malt capsule of Chambord with chocolate shards, we left with our parting gift: a single, perfect nectarine.
Avenues 108 E. Superior St., Chicago (312-573-6754)
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