About one year ago we decided to embark on a series of adventures. It was our hope to learn through emulation and execution of what would be some of the most exquisite food in the world, cooked by two of our generation’s greatest chefs.
It was last September 17th when Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller announced to the world that in celebration of their new cookbooks and their admiration toward each other they would host a meal at per se in NY, Alinea in Chicago and The French Laundry in Napa. They would serve a 25 course meal showing a career retrospective and some of the most current and advanced dishes their kitchens have developed, paired with the most amazing wines, at a price of $1500 a person. Three of the best restaurants in the world, hosting a meal that would come to define this generation of American cuisine.
It was at this point, while trapped in a crushing rain storm somewhere on interstate 84, driving to Boston for a series of events Daniel and I decided that best way to learn and advance with our own cooking was to try and recreate these meals. To elevate our own cooking by learning from the incredibly high bar these masters have set with this series of events. We decided the only way to do it properly was to recreate the meals to as exacting a measure as possible, following the chefs across the country, and preparing our interpretations of the meals in NYC, Chicago and San Francisco.
We gave ourselves roughly one month from the dates that they had set to host our first event in NYC. Without any knowledge of the actual events and not being able to sample and taste the food we embarked on the recreation from a purely educational point of view.
