Two days ago, we marked the one year anniversary of the foie gras ban by noting, among other things, that Alinea had taken their Foie Gras with spicy cinnamon and apple pâte de fruit off their menu. Recently, we mean - only two weeks earlier, that item was listed on their online Tour menu. We were alerted to this by friend-of-the-blog Diana, who was paying extra close attention as she had an upcoming reservation to dine at the restaurant.
Yesterday, we were inundated by two pieces of great news:
1) Grant Achatz is “feeling great” and cooking up a storm after his recent round of drug therapy!
2) Grant Achatz is still serving foie gras!
And today, we will prove all this to you, reader, after the jump (the above photo is a clue)
The photo is, of course, of Foie Gras with spicy cinnamon and apple pâte de fruit, as served to Diana herself on Wednesday night. Alinea has nothing to worry about - who would ever guess that was foie gras! Looks like a meringue of some sort to us. Be that as it may, what was off the menu is clearly back on, albeit not on the website. Right now, Alinea is posting their Tour menu from August 3rd:
Diana sent us her menu from August 22nd, which not only has the foie (enboxed), but also a host of wine pairings:
Since the menus aren’t from the same day, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of this. We continue to believe that it is possible (and in Alinea’s case, condonable) to offer foie gras on a tasting menu without technically selling it, a position that the City of Chicago has seemingly more or less signed on to. Nevertheless, the machinations are fascinating.
Special thanks to Diana, without whom this report would have been entirely impossible.
Alinea’s Achatz is in the kitchen and ‘feeling great’ after first round of chemotherapy [The Stew]
Finding foie gras [Tribune]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]
[Photos: the foie gras and 8/22 menu are from Diana, and the 8/3 menu is from Alinea]
