Alinea Group Reviews

One of the most amazing culinary events in have ever experienced! Just be careful when eating the

The most inventive, imaginative cooking I have experienced...and the flavor matched the creativity. The service is sophisticated, but relaxed. I did the wine pairings. Wine isn't served with every course, but with most courses. At 23, I was begging for

Pictures don't do justice of what you witness, feel and taste from Alinea. It's truly a unique experience that you need to go and visit

Great attention to detail, fun and informative staff and an amazing experience for all the senses.

Did the kitchen table experience. Worth every penny. The food finally matched the price tag at one of these high priced restaurants. The service was impeccable and the food was both inventive and delicious. The wine pairing was just fine to me, and I probably wouldn't pay for it again, but I'm not typically a wine drinker. My wife and friends seemed impressed with it. Can't wait to return.

I don t want to get spit on. This was crude and the waitress should firef

Extraordinary. A sublime experience. A curated experience in the context of a meal.

A top place for Quality Meals. I was so full. I look forward to a return trip. The bill was appropriate for the quality.

The famous sour apple edible balloon was the highlight of my life. Roasted pork stew, cucumber and mint shooters, smokey meats, edible ash, coconut and caviar and various other delicious things that are better tasted than described in a review. Get to Alinea and find out for yourself.

Unbelievable experience. It seems they thought of everything combining the visual with smell and taste to give a food experience like no other

Fantastic. One of a kind. Completely stunning presentations. Extremely entertaining waiters with knowledge and fabulous wine pairings with the conessuirs. Ambiance is unbeatable, decor is beautiful. Kitchen and staff are just the best!

Not only was the food incredible but the staff is superb!

This was my first time at Boka and it was with the restaurant week menu. The food was all very good with some standout dishes. The wine pairings were amazing. Our server was top notch. We just loved her!

Great waitress, very nice! Good food! very good prices, and conveniently located.

Worth it. Very creative and fun dining experience. Food was amazing of course

I seen the cute little tables outside so I decided to stop in. The service was amazing. The food came out exactly as it was pictured and described in the menu (which is always satisfying). I've never been to Italy before but I'm sure this place is close! I'll definitely be back!

Not sure what to say about this place. It was more like a carnival show than a fine dinning experience. I may not have seen any chefs there but this place sure has a bunch of wizards making culinary magic. The strangest and most creative presentation of food I may have ever seen. Definitely not a restaurant you would patronize on a weekly basis, not because of the exorbitant price but because the food is just odd. With that being said Alinea is an amazing life experience and like a trip to the museum it is full of funky wonderment.

The greatest dining experience of my life! The experience is almost not to be believed. It was the most creative food I've ever eaten but it was presented almost like a performance while Chef Grant Achatz was playing a game with us. From the Oestra caviar and yogurt in a white chocolate ball to the wood ice cream, from the flaming salt bowl (later used to cook another dish that had acorn chips) to the dry ice smoke, from the 18 hours of pressure cooking squash for its jus to a field trip to the kitchen to see the man himself, each course was mindblowingly creative and beyond delicious. This includes Grade A5 Japanese Wagu and a taffy helium balloon. Better than Keller, Roubouchon, and sushi at Kasu Kabe in SF.

Amazing! I like the idea, you don't know what's next- it'll just be good! It definitely is the best restaurant in the country!!

This is a very nice hotel and this is my second time here both on business trips. Couple pieces of advice- dont use the mobile check in. I used it to avoid a long snaking line at 11:30am- I felt good about that however note, that my travel partners who waited through the line all got their rooms immediately

Good experiential dining. They couldn t adjust completely to our request of no beef that well but (mostly veg served with no other meat like lamb or pork etc) food was still good. It s the fun and games that make this worth a visit. However, to get the attitude of your servers in line I would recommend ordering a bottle or glass or two of wine as soon as you sit down. It s almost like ur in Paris with the attitude!

I just keep hearing delightful things about this shop and am so excited to keep coming back and coming back. Support small business owners!

meh the ceral is aight i thinkthe chef was high when he making the foo He bran me my chikin in leaves tf is that and it wont even freid boy! i can mak bettr foo at home my liitle boy got better ceral too! Daedass b

What a very great restaurant. Fast services and great environment.

An amazing dining experience. Very memorable. Left so full!!

Best meal/dining experience I've ever had. Out of this world

A one of a kind experience - inventive, extraordinary and above all, delicious!

Amazing experience! They fully deserve their Michelin stars.

Refined atmosphere, impeccable service, original dishes and especially unique staging. Alinea is a unique universe where discovery is part of gastronomy.

Wevl Ioved this place on our continuing tour of 3 stars....thanks Grant!!!

I always love writing a great review when restaurants deserve it. To say "Alinea" deserves it, is an understatement. I have eaten at 'Raos" in New York City and "Stellas" in New Orleans. The prices are all the same but the food is always different and I enjoy that. The experience is to die for, especially for someone who is a food fan like me. Only so many of us get the special opportunity to dine like this; but I have to say. If you can get in to one of the best restaurants in not only the state, but the United States; I encourage you to devour the delectable menu and meet the more then trusted service who has been making my dinning occasions more then wonderful every-time.

Absolutely worth it. Not only is the dining experience elevated, but your taste buds will come away more refined.

I came to dis joint hopin for a slim-jim and came out 1 grande in debt. No one spoke a lick of english and this clubby broad kept servin me scallops.

Truly mind blowing experience. Well deserved of all Michelin stars

Interesting artsy culinary experience. However, price is extremely exaggerated. You don't get your money's worth.

This year, Alinea has been on the Michelin Samsung for the tenth time in a row. The molecular cuisine from Chef Grant Achatz can be said to be the peak and the design of the dishes is exquisite and complicated.
He combines the concept of molecular cooking with whimsy and implements it in every dish. Change the state of the food tradition, even make the ingredients into a glue, if you see a balloon on the side of the meal, don't be too surprised~ just a lot of friends say that the taste of the house is true, salty
Having said that, when you come to Alinea for a meal, its delicate setting, the combination of ingredients, and the magical way of cooking, it also reveals a wealth of fun and creative drops ~ Tasting Menu price is around $210-$285.

Amazing! lovely staff great food! I took my lovely wife of 4 years here great date spot.

Juicy tender but crispy!!! The portion of fries is HUGE def consider sharing! Line is loooong and stays like that forever but def worth the wait because the service is pRetty quick! Parking can be a little tricky

Super crowded. Thought it was just a regular bar with beers but found out their hot dogs are amazing. They also create many funny names for their hot dogs. Great place to come with friends price is affordable for all and definitely will come back to visit.

We loved the Italians saints that you have hired as waiters and the fresh human flesh you serve is deliciously remarkable

I didn't expect it to be great but "holy resturant ratings Batman!!" This was terrible.

The chef is better suited for creating somthing that belongs in the museum and I don't mean the real museum. This belongs in the Museum of Contemporary Art along with the bent hangers and wheelbarrows of popcorn. Surely this food is artistic but it is first and foremost food. The duty of food is to feed as pleasantly as possible.

This was not pleasant at all. Many of the courses were a complete disappointment. Also it did not feed well. I was forced to eat again when I returned home.

This is some sort of business venture where obtained the San Pelligrino rating by some magic feat and use it to get a good percent of Chicagoland and maybe the US to come and visit just once. They still make a killing.

Also it was much too noisy and crowded for this type of resturant. I was expecting a more quiet intimate setting for this level, which I did not recieve.

If you would like presentation, flavor, and a filling meal go to Carlos in Highwood (Highland Park) and you will not be disappointed. It's about half the price and amazing. I'm going this weekend. I need to try to forget that experience I had last night at Alinea.

Where can one even begin with an experience like Alinea?! From the moment we walked in, we were greeted with friendly faces, seated right away. Upon the first room I was immediately amazed. The smells, the setup, the lights. This was a presentation, not just a dinner.

We did the wine pairing & it was so impeccable. The wine connoisseurs were so full of knowledge & the wines were all perfectly accompanied with each course.

The courses... wow. I was beyond impressed with each bite I took. There was an immense amount of flavors that you cannot ever expect, anticipate or even come close to preparing for. The food was incredible & was worth experiencing over again. I can t describe the tastes and the explosive feelings my tastebuds felt all night long with every bite of every course. The plating and the dishes and the amazing surprises kept us on our toes.

The service was above top-notch. The entire crew who took care of us, any chefs who came out, all of them, went above and beyond for us and made sure the experience was out of this world. I was so impressed with the way they coordinated placing food down and then taking lids off. Plus their knowledge. Holy cow. They knew every answer to everything I asked.

Can t wait to do this again!! Thanks to Chef Grant for the most amazing dining experience/ presentation and food ever.

An otherworldly dining experience. Fully worth the 3 Michelin stars. All the dishes delighted and surprised, and the presentation and service were terrific. You ll pay an arm and a leg for it, but hey, how often do you get to eat at Alinea?

Absolutely amazing food and service! Each course was better than the last. Dessert was a performance.

This restaurant is great. The food is lovely, and the ambiance is also very nice. Great service as well.

Amazing. My review could do nothing but diminish the quality, excellence and experience that I had here, because i could never find the right words to do it justice.

The best meal I have ever had! We dined in the salon upstairs which was a nice room with 6-8 tables in the room.

There was not a single dish that was not just wonderful. Several of the highlights for me where:

1. The first course of cream and caviar. Was a skeptic, but oh my gosh! (See my picture of the nights menu for better descriptions)

2. The wagyu beef. It was my first time experiencing it. I died and went to heaven. I have never had anything that amazing. The outside of the steak had a little crisp to it. Beautiful and perfectly prepared.

3. There was a course served in the kitchen! Awesome touch to see the whole team at work and everyone coming together to make a beautiful symphony. We also got to see Chef Grant at work with the team.

4. We had a bottle of IL Pino. Beautiful bottle! Would definitely get again. It was a "cheaper" wine at $180ish per bottle.

I would say the only two items that could have been better were the carmel corn. It was a miss and not as crisp as it ahould have been. Also the service was not as buttoned up as I would have expected. There were multiple times where they didn't serve the entire table at once. Or left used dishes on the table longer than they should. I know this is picky, but at this point and level, there is zero room for error.

Absolutely amazing. This place is an experience. The food is meant to be seen, smelled, heard, and otherwise interacted with, not just eaten. Chef Achutz and his team are creating marvels.

Chef Doug and Justin were awesome. This dining experience was the equivalent of taking a 5 hour vacation out of dreary, winter time Chicago! Word's can't describe the kitchen table experience we had at Alinea, so I"ll just say trust me and get a reservation for your next anniversary/birthday!

Definitely the best of the best of the best!!! This is top notch!!! This is the only restaurant that made me feel like I was on Cloud 9!!! Warm welcome, attentiveness of servers, their knowledge about the food, all the details of this dinner.... the taste of the food is omg!!! And creativity and smells are just wow! This all made me and my husband feel so very special!!! This is a different level; different world! Nothing is like this! Thank you for marking the celebration of my birthday the most incredible I could ever imagine! Thanks to my loving hubby who discovered you and brought me there!!! I am so impressed!!!

I often take my friends to this place with my highest recommendations. I visit this place often. I get very good feedback from my friends. The the food there is delicious and the stuff is generous and cooperative. Every time we eat in this place we have a pleasant evening. I warmly recommend this restaurant.

Good was great, service was on point and the decor was beautiful. The food is totally different

Speechless... expensive but by far one of my favorite restaurants! It's not just the food, but the overall experience is fenomenal!!! Must try at least once.
What is great about this place is that it is all about the experience and not just the food. Yes, service and food are fantastic but what makes this place unique is that fact that every flavor is so new, bold and insanely unexpected. It's like a magic show! Alinea will definitely blow anyone's mind.

Beyond definition of an amazing experience. We had the kitchen table and got to get a first hand look at the amazing work that goes into the food production

The Japanese Bento Box and Omakase take home meals were well-executed and inventive to some degree. But there's something missing-- there's no story attached. How do we know what's special about each dish? The inspiration? The theme? The sweatshop employees that were killed to make it? The travels to Greenland on a pogo stick to find that special ingredient? Behind the scenes it's astounding that this restaurant giant completely turned on a dime and do Japanese sushi-- an impossible trick in itself. That's what's secretly amazing here. But just eating these courses, how can we tell that? Share the story with us. We're dying to hear it. Even if you don't want to reveal your trials at rice perfection and sourcing blue fin tuna, give us something else to hang our narrative hat on.

The crab roll was an astoundingly original double roll, with a unique, custom marbleized soy paper and a dense outer roll of crab and rice wrapped around a whole inner crab leg piece. Dense and delicious. I wanted about 30 of them. Three accompanying nigiri were succulent, but there was nothing special about them other than their perfect texture, flavor and elegant poise on the plate.

A seaweed salad, for example, likely meant as a palate cleanser, had six different kinds of seaweed that most everyone on earth has never tasted before. Who knows, Grant Achatz may have genetically engineered a couple of them, we don't know. These are six strands of seaweed, selected probably from thousands and thousands of strands to be the very most perfect specimens-- each one was perfect. But the flavor? You would have to be some kind of perfume company "nose" or seaweed specialist to taste the difference among them. The dressing was barely perceptible. Maybe it was a sesame seed dressing? Who knows. Without guidance or some direction by a server or some pre-printed materials, we're lost. What's the story behind the seaweed? Don't know.

One of the final dishes in the Omakase offering was a simple yellowtail salad. The yellowtail was delicious... but what was unique about it? I was so tired by that time, trying to figure out the riddle to solve for each dish, and sometimes there was none, that I just gave up.

Another dish, the beef tatake was underwhelming. One razor thin two-inch slice of perfectly cooked kobe beef on a leaf of romaine. What should I be looking for?

A whimsical tempura shrimp was battered in powdered Fruit Loop breading and whimsically tube shaped. I would have preferred it to be served hot. Next time.

The compressed melons were curious in texture, the real grated wasabi was new-- never had fresh grated wasabi before. The chuwanmashi (beef custard) was almost too rich-- creamy and succulent with an intense beef essence that begged for some accompaniment.

The wine selection, a 2013 Hamacher Chardonnay was a perfect pairing for all the dishes, and a bargain, selling on Alinea's menu for half its typical retail value.

Overall, the omakase and bento box combination lacked a story arc. I guess I felt ripped off-- maybe I'm too value-conscious for this style of food. I enjoyed two-Michelin starred Smyth with its many many components and clear progression of dishes with accompanying descriptions and stories which added depth and resonance. To me, story adds value. Descriptions add depth and prepare the palate.

Could the entire Bento box offering be an encrypted answer to a CIA riddle? Is it secret code and a cry for help? We just don't know.

Alinea is one of the best restaurants in the world. The reason I gave it four stars is because the first time I went it was absolutely amazing. The second time was a miss. I heard they changed their head chef shortly after I had the miss experience (pictures below).

My first three star experience and it changed the meaning of competence.

This place is the bomb. Good prices, and amazing food. Fast service, friendly staff, and service...

I almost ate a hot coal because it looked delicious

As much of a show as a delicious meal; don't read about it, just go.

The food here was amazing! We were late but the staff was still accommodating and friendly. Alinea takes food to a new level as they play with your senses and it's like theatre with food, rather then just a dining experience.

We had the omakase takeout menu from Alinea to celebrate our anniversary, and the food was quite nice. I took a star out because my sashimi salad came without sashimi (which my husband had).

The Alinea restaurant opened in 2005 by the great chef Grant Achatz in Chicago, has risen six places in this edition to rise from 15th to 9th place with its modern, highly technical and gimmicky cuisine. Potato-based dishes at different temperatures with truffles and effects like serving food directly to the table have become iconic and known around the world. For almost a decade, chef Grant Achatz has continued to stir his avant-garde cuisine with constantly evolving menus.

Located in Lincoln Park, Alinea is a modern restaurant divided into several private rooms. Its great tasting menu is made up of 24 dishes, from different dishes and with a spectacular presentation, highlighting the hot potato suspended from a pin, which after being removed is poured over a cold Parmegiano-Reggiano soup with truffle, Ravioli filled with liquid juice of truffle, Saint-Clair pigeon, Miesaki beef tenderloin, potato croquette and dried spices ... a fantastic festival of flavors and visual effects.

What a magical and fun experience. Will have to come back

What an amazing experience. The food was everything we thought it would be and more. Staff was very welcoming and made our interactions fun. Truly memorable - Thank you!!!

I came from Portland Oregon to visit Chicago for my birthday so of course we had to go to Alinea. Service was great, but some waiters were better than others. The non alcoholic drink pairings were fantastic. The food... this is the reason I am giving this 3 stars.

Almost every dish besides 3 of the 10 were too overpowered with certain flavors, especially the savory dishes. I almost wanted the food to stop coming out it was almost too savory. I will say that this is the best tasting menu I have had, but I don't think I will want to go back again after the experience with this menu especially for 600+ dollar dinner for two.

Don't get me wrong the dinner was good, but from all the hype (netflix tv etc) I was expecting to be blown away and I wasn't. If you haven't gone yet I would still go just for the experience.

Cheers!

This was one of the best experiences I've ever had. We even got to go into the kitchen and sample a cocktail (mine was non-alcoholic). The flavors we're all so unique and strange yet mixed together so well.

The experience is incredible. I understand now why Alinea has it's 3 stars. The place and the service is all phenomenal.

My favorite dining experience in North America to date, well worth the anticipation. Absolutely phenomenal from start to finish. If you get a chance - take it!

Simply one of the best meals of our lives. Food was incredible. Service outstanding. Wine pairings superb. An expensive treat but well worth it.

Had a phenomenal meal at Alinea earlier tonight! Both the kitchen and the service staff were very kind about my girlfriends shellfish allergy, the food was fantastic and the best meal I have ever had. The Sommelier was very helpful with the wine list even though we were on a budget, she was also very kind, fun, and attentive. The service staff was also the best I have ever seen! Thank you for your hard work and accommodations!

I think this place is best described as looking for somewhere to experience something new and eat food as an art form. You will experience tastes, smells, and ideas that are suppose to different and unique, or kind of take you somewhere/have you live an experience. Everyone is extremely attentive and accommodating. So overall it is different and an experience (and this place does it very well), not really something for you if you are trying to go eat at a restaurant for a night out.

Amazing experience! A meal that I will never forget!