FIRE

Fire is Alinea’s first new restaurant in eight years | Eater Chicago

"Replacing the outgoing concept, the new concept will open as an exclusive tasting-menu restaurant (seven or eight courses) focused on open-fire cooking that expands beyond the hearth techniques of its predecessor. "I’ve been wanting to create something new," Achatz writes. He explains the intention: they’ll use open fire "to transform the tastes, textures, and aromas of ingredients," and calls cooking with an open flame a "constraint" that breeds imagination: "I’m excited to share that creativity with Chicago and the world." The project will treat fire and fuel — like wood — as seasonings and will repurpose plant scraps from the group's other restaurants, "think banana peels, corn cobs, popcorn kernels, fennel branches, coconut shells, dried flowers, and more. Leather and burlap will also be used." Menu development will be a collaboration between the star chef and the current executive chef: "Even dessert will be open flame," says Weingarten. Methods to be used are extensive and specific, including ember cooking, ash-salt crusting, Patagonia-style asado crosses, spit roasting, coal searing, Flambadou fat rendering, different intensity levels of hearth dehydration, branding with different medieval-style hearth tools, burnishing, singeing, alternative fuel sources, and iron presses. Achatz also emphasizes that the project will show customers that cooking with an open fire extends beyond searing flames and heavy smoke: "While those will be present in some courses, we are utilizing many existing methods while creating new ones to compose a menu with layers of complexity derived from fire." The venue will accept some walk-ins, retain a patio (providing a rare outdoor tasting-menu space in Fulton Market), and will take reservations via Tock." - Ashok Selvam