Alinea, Chicago (Revisited) - Restaurant Review

They say that time flies as you get older. Walking down Alinea's famous doorway, bathed in an eerie fuchsia glow, I had an overwhelming sense of being here only yesterday. In actual fact, it has been almost a year since I last ate at Alinea. That the experience should still be so fresh in my mind is unsurprising given that on that sweltering summer night in Chicago last year I enjoyed one of the most incredible meals of my life.

Norway 22/7

A boom of thunder woke me with a jolt from a broken slumber this morning. It was exactly the same sort of noise I heard yesterday afternoon, the kind that shook the house. Except what I had initially assumed to be thunder yesterday would turn out to be the result of something truly horrific.

Next (Tour of Thailand), Chicago – Restaurant Review

In case anyone was still wondering, Next is the latest venture from chef Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas, the team behind Alinea, one of the great restaurants of this world (stay tuned for a review of my latest visit). In the last few months there have probably been more column inches written about Next than perhaps any other restaurant on the planet. On my final night in Chicago I was lucky enough to bag one of Next's "golden tickets" and see for myself what all the fervent hype was about.

A New Dawn for Norwegian Food: Interview with Maaemo's Esben Holmboe Bang and Pontus Dahlström

Maaemo's Esben Holmboe Bang (l) and Pontus Dahlström (r) 

When fellow food blogger Greg Henry, who writes the SippitySup blog, announced he'd be visiting Norway at the request of the Norwegian Tourist Board, and asked if I'd be interested in writing a guest post for his blog I jumped at the chance. I had mentioned a new Oslo gourmet restaurant to him that I had been to a couple of times. The restaurant had opened a few months previously and serves only organic produce that originates almost exclusively from Norway, something that has never been attempted before. I had been utterly wowed by the food I tasted there, so we struck upon the idea of me interviewing some of the people behind it to hear their story of how this restaurant came to be and a bit about their philosophy on food. This article also appears on Greg's SippitySup blog here.