Battle of the Alinea Video Reviews

Young gun Jyo visited Alinea and made a video review which got Grant Achatz’s attention. It’s a little rambly, a little jaded (“I had to wear a jacket!”), and by the end of the nearly-ten-minute video Jyo’s wondering whether it was entirely worth the nearly $700 he and his girlfriend spent for their meal — “it took me twelve years to afford this dinner.”

Mike Gebert, who lets no media go un-commented-upon, made a parody response that at first we found to be perhaps ungenerously unforgiving of the post-Alinea food coma in which Jyo presumably filmed his review. But the more we watched it, the more it became a brilliantly surreal expression of the crazypants Alinea experience. In Gebert’s version, Achatz is six-foot-nine and completely covered in Polynesian women’s prison tattoos, and as for the food — “it didn’t have flavor, none of it did. I hear this is like Achatz’s thing, he thinks flavor is for pussies. In fact it’s painted on the wall at Alinea, like Hot Doug’s thing about encased meats: ’Flavor is for pussies, and if you ask for it, I will crush you.’

Alinea [Average Jyo]
My Visit to Alinea [SFoB]
[Photo: xmatt/Flickr]

Battle of the Alinea Video Reviews