Ladies who lunch

Over in Ballard, Archie McPhee sells a cheerful Lunch Lady action figure for $9.95. Tell the disgruntled lunch ladies in Chicago, who are demanding respect from a school system that pays them peanuts (well, $10.46 an hour) and expects them to serve slop to thousands of kids.

 

“We’re looking at each other like, ‘I wouldn’t eat that.’ We wouldn’t give our kid that at home,” one lunch lady told the Chicago Sun-Times. No wonder that kids revolt. Just outside Chicago, a vast, unsavory food fight made headlines around the world.

 

Meantime, there’s Vincent Jarousseau, an up-and-coming Paris politician, deputy mayor of the bohemian 14th arrondissement, in charge of schools. Among other things, school lunches, whose menus he posts on his blog. Three-course lunches</a>, mind you, with a classic appetizer like hard-boiled eggs, or a fresh vegetable salad; a main course of beef, turkey or pork; cheese or fruit for dessert. French schools teach kids how to eat right; or, rather, they serve decent food because it’s what the kids, their families, the school administrators and the country’s elected officials expect.

 

The most emailed story over at the New York Times last week lamented the crummy choices offered by restaurants on their so-called Kids’ Menus: mostly chicken strips and fries. Deep-fried crap, in other words. No wonder we’re raising a nation of gastronomic illiterates. If you don’t learn to eat at school, at home, or in restaurants, you end up with a range of flavor preferences that runs the gamut from Coke to Pepsi, from Mickey D to Burger K.

Alinea

The following review is from correspondent Jack Fisher, who lives in Los Angeles. (You might also want to read Jess Thompson’s hilarious review on her blog over at Hogwash along with images from her Flickr stream.)

During our recent trip to Chicago Myra and I had dinner at Alinea, a new restaurant in the city. It has been given 5 stars by AAA, selected as the best restaurant in the country by Gourmet magazine and received many excellent reviews from restaurant critics. Most notably, on the restaurant’s opening night in 2005, the New York Times restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, showed up unannounced. The NYT does not review out-of-town restaurants, but the following week featured an article that stated the opening of Alinea “marks a milestone and invites an examination of how meaningfully this kind of cooking, born in Europe and pioneered in large part by the chef Ferran Adria in Spain, has taken root in the United States.”

The owner/chef, Grant Achatz, previously worked in the kitchens of both the French Laundry and Charlie Trotter’s. After that, he was the executive chef at Trio in Evanston, just north of Chicago, where he became well-known for pioneering many innovative dishes. Myra and I dined at Trio several years ago. With his departure from Trio he, with a partner, found a property on North Halsted Street in the Lincoln Park area of the city and designed his new restaurant from top to bottom.

The restaurant is in a rather nondescript area although it’s only about 3-4 blocks from Charlie Trotter’s. It’s a converted residence with the eating areas on the first and second floors and the kitchen in the basement. The restaurant’s name does not appear on the front of the building, just the address. Walking through the front door you enter a hallway to which there is no obvious exit. As you walk towards the back the hallway narrows, then suddenly a door mystically opens on your left. At this point you are greeted by the staff who takes your coats and escorts you to a table. When you make a reservation you select either the 12-course or 24-course tasting menu and are asked about food allergies, preferences, etc. We had selected the 12-course dinner and I, of course, selected the accompanying wine pairing.

No menu was offered as we sat down. The menu that we received later as a keepsake is shown below. Note that although 12 courses are advertised 14 are actually provided. The wine pairings are also shown. A total of 8 wines are offered in about 2-oz pours. For several of the wines a second pour was provided. All of the wines were quite good, interesting and well matched with the food. The bubbles on each line of the menu provide information about that course. The size of the bubble represents the size of the course–a small bubble is a one-bite course. The location of the bubble from left to right represents the flavor intensity. As each course was served the server would provide a description of the course and if necessary provide eating instructions. In several cases this was essential.

I will describe of several of the courses. The duck, course #6, was served on a pillow of lavender air. Prior to arrival of the plate. an inflated pillow the size of a large napkin was placed before each of us. The plate bearing the duck was next placed on the pillow. The weight of the plate forced the lavender air out of the pillow so that we could enjoy the aroma while eating the duck.

When we were seated the black table was completely bare. Shortly after we sat down two branches of rosemary were placed on the far corner of the table. We wondered at the time whether this was a decoration or even perhaps the first course. With the arrival course #9 the rosemary was put to use. The lamb was served on a cast iron plate about 1 by 6 inches that had been heated to a temperature sufficient to cook the meat. As this was placed on our table the server took the rosemary branch and placed in a small opening at the far end of the plate. The heat released the aroma of rosemary to enjoy with our lamb.

This is cutting-edge cuisine and you must employ all five senses to enjoy what is offered. Sight to appreciate not only the food as offered but also the manner of serving; taste and smell obviously; touch to appreciate the texture and feel of the food; and that leaves hearing which must be utilized to understand and appreciate your server’s description of the course.

Oh yes, our dinner took something like 2-1/2 hours to complete. We left the restaurant comfortably full and dazzled by our dining experience.