Gastrotripping: Next restaurant in Chicago is worth the trip

A long display of eggs is borne through the dining room by staffers at Next's Bocuse d'Or dinner. A long display of eggs is borne through the dining room by staffers at Next's Bocuse d'Or dinner. Photo: Alison Cook Photo: Alison Cook Image 1 of / 26 Caption Close Gastrotripping: Next restaurant in Chicago is worth the trip 1 / 26 Back to Gallery

When a friend in Chicago called recently to offer me a dinner seat at Next restaurant, I didn't have to think twice.

Next, the brainchild of Alinea's Grant Achatz, one of the best-known chefs in the world, is famously hard to book. The theme changes every four months, and spots are reserved by a complex ticketing process. They sell out well in advance. Some diners even opt for season tickets for the year's three separate productions, just as they would for football, or the opera.

It wasn't until I had found a cheap round-trip flight and a boutique hotel within striking distance of Next's Fulton Market neighborhood that I began to have misgivings.

The current theme - the ninth in Next's three-year history - is Bocuse d'Or, a tribute to the high-level culinary competition held in Lyon, France, every two years. Teams from various nations vie, under tight time limits, to create a fish dish and elaborate meat platters that are very ancien régime, like something out of Escoffier, or the Hall of the Mountain King. It's a formal, structural, ornamental approach to cuisine that only appeals to me as a historical curiosity.

Or so I thought, until Next persuaded me otherwise.

My $250 ticket secured (a price which covered wine pairings and service in addition to the 15-course meal), I presented myself at 6:30 p.m. to find the long, narrow dining room dark and burnished, its narrow eye-level mirrors and pewtery wall coverings sheened with blue light from big flatscreen TVs at either end, looping tapes of the latest Bocuse d'Or competition and the Coupe du Monde, its associated pastry contest. Overhead swung the colorful banners of the various national teams, bright spots in the sepia murk.

With each white-clad table spotlit, the room looked like a stage set. And it was. If restaurant dining is a form of theater, Next pushes that analogy to its limits, not only by selling tickets but by staging each new production from scratch, as if it were a repertory company. Achatz functions as the producer, with chef Dave Beran in the director's role. The serving staff are the actors, and - their heads packed with information about ingredients and techniques - they know their parts cold.

I tend to lose focus (and heart) during very long tasting menus; anything over a dozen courses almost invariably makes my brain fry. Yet I never once lost interest as the Bocuse d'Or courses moved on in stately procession, from old-school hors d'oeuvres in the manner of Paul Bocuse, the legendary French chef for whom the Bocuse d'Or competion is named, to new-school deconstructions that might cause him to exclaim in wonder and delight.

That's what they did to me, anyway, whether it was a dish of brook trout with coddled eggs, celeriac and green blueberries, its skeleton arced and gleaming above the plate; or a cheese course of keenly nutty tete de moine, the little Alpine round shaved at the table into translucent blossoms, each one deposited in a glass fishbowl layered with pear gelée, crushed cashew and milk skin.

I worried a bit at first, concerned that the strong saltiness of some early hors d'oeuvres courses might persist throughout the meal. I couldn't finish my mousse of Darden country ham sheathed in shiny madeira aspic (recipe from Bocuse himself); or my picture-perfect little prawn soufflé that vibrated with ocean brine and funk.

But the old-school salt content of classic French cuisine turned out to be deliberate -thought-provokingly so. It ceased abruptly, never to return, with a cauliflower custard that may have been my favorite dish of the night. I can still see it in my mind's eye, the saucer-size disk of custard sealed with a rose-flushed gelée of verjus rouge (the juice of red wine grapes), a thicket of lacy dehydrated cauliflower, white chocolate curls and foie gras squiggles sprouting from one side.

Then came a vivid bit of theater. Our server removed the long-stemmed rose from its vase on our table and plunged it into a carafe of liquid nitrogen, where it fumed like a wizard's trick. Once the petals had frozen, he muddled the flower in a low bowl, breaking off fragments of fuchsia and cream petal that he then applied to the custard as a garnish. The total effect was tart and earthy, floral and faintly sweet at once. I'll never forget it.

Neither will I forget the tiny, unexpected explosions of lime that animated a dish of charred lettuce with bottarga, bonito and crushed peanut, throwing the sea flavors into fine relief; or the sudden sharp fragrance of herbs and charred allium bulbs that sneaked out from a dish of Neah Bay salmon with brown butter, beets and parsley.

The ingredients were arranged like elegant shoreline wrack across a hollowed, glass-topped log. Under the glass lay hot stones that released the aromas of parsley, lemon and onions, the charry notes echoing the flavors of the singed lemon and greenery on top. I laughed in sheer joy.

That magic trick of presentation is just one of the ways chef Beran and company gave formal importance to each dish. Toward the beginning of the meal, dishes arrived on a tiered succession of plates, large to small, with folded napkins or doilies heightening the pedestal effect. Very French, very Bocuse d'Or. Toward the end, when the dishes loosened into a more American and Midwestern mode, they appeared on ceramics in the autumnal hues of the season.

Whenever the ceremony of it all threatened to grow oppressive, comic relief in the form of a parade ensued. The house lights came up, the sound track of the Bocuse d'Or spectators was turned louder - braying vuvuzelas and all - as staffers marched forth from the kitchen bearing canoe-sized platters of food arranged competition style, in tiered compositions. Diners craned and stood, applauded and shot innumerable photos, stretched and took a little manic intermission. The interludes were as brilliant in their way as Shakespeare's rude mechanicals.

Credit Achatz's participation in the Bocuse d'Or as a coach to the American teams over the past few competitions, along with Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud. This year, Achatz took Next chef Dave Beran along to soak up the atmosphere. They came back with plenty of material that they have managed to translate into a dinner that captures the spirit, ambition and weirdness of the event.

Those long platter processionals? They're spoilers of sorts, previewing dishes to come, from a crop of otherworldly eggshells that hint at the trout with coddled eggs, to a bronzed, fat pheasant ensconced on a smoldering heap of hay. A roulade of ribeye, deep-rose banded with green boudin vert, sailed forth on its bier escorted by strict yellow cylinders of Bearnaise sauce made solid.

The Bearnaise tubes, one of the night's small marvels, appeared later on chef Beran's ode to Chicago steakhouse flavors and textures, arranged like a tumped-over flowerpot - the pot itself a bone filled with potato puréed with bone marrow in a 1:1 ratio, like Robuchon potatoes gone paleo.

That steakhouse ode, the trout with soft eggs right out of Beran's childhood, and the beautifully composed desserts all spoke to a sense of Midwestern place that intensified as the meal progressed.

Finally, an orange squash cube appeared on a ceramic plate mottled like stone, surprising tart leaves of dark red sorrel poised against pecan ice cream and a litter of huckleberries and pecan oatmeal cookie crumbles. It looked like something the October wind might sweep up on an idealized Chicago sidewalk. It tasted like autumn honed and reimagined.

That's precisely what Achatz and Beran have done with their Bocuse d'Or theme, which runs through New Year's Eve. It was worth a trip - and left me intensely curious to see what they'll come up with next.