It was very, very good. Some surprising things, some expected things. I think it was especially nice to imagine the reaction to some of these dishes when they first came on the scene. The shock value isn’t quite there anymore, but nonetheless, some things I would never have imagined. One of our favorite dishes was centered around a broccoli stem, for example. There was a make your own spring roll course that turned out to use some of the table setting as part of the spring roll. And a bridge course between sweet and savory that had a delicious mushroom caramel.
One of the wine pairings, which was shockingly good, was a beet liquor flavored with Nori and some other kind of seaweed. We were kind of stunned to like it as much as we did. There are a couple of others I need to look up to see if they are in anyway affordable to have at home.
Worth the cost? Eh. It’s probably not useful to think of it that way. It’s a splurge experience and I’m glad to have done it but I’m also glad to have only been out of pocket for part of it (at least by my rationalization math). This was a fair bit cheaper than a regular dinner at Alinea, which is both mind-boggling but also makes me curious about how they’ve evolved over 20 years.
We had drinks and small bites at Aviary a couple of years ago (where you can get one of the best items we had on this menu if you order it ahead - the truffle explosion) and I think that was more surprising and and about a third of the cost.