Alinea's Tribute to Charlie Trotter

The Alinea Group's baby tasting menu place, Next, is doing tribute menus this year. Julia Child and Bobby Flay aren't that interesting, but I wanted to check out the Charlie Trotter menu. So: here it is!

Background

If you aren't old and from Chicago, you might not be familiar. Charlie Trotter was a chef who opened Chicago's first¹ put Chicago in the fine-dining map when it opened back in 1987. You might be familiar with it from the For Grace documentary on netflix, where Charlie Trotter himself came out to scream at the Grace team when they tried to come in for dinner².

I don't need to rail on him too hard; most articles and documentaries thoroughly explore exactly how much of an asshole he was. Suffice to say, the whole "Gordon Ramsay screaming at you" television persona is inspired by Trotter.

Alinea

Chef Grant Achatz spent a few months at Charlie Trotter's, before deciding the guy was Too Much and moving on. After a few stops -- including Trio in Evanston³ -- he opened Alinea right across the street from Trotter's. When he left, it was, uh, Something:

In 1995, after trying to quit once but being persuaded to stay on, he finally told Trotter he was leaving for good. Achatz says he received the following admonition: “If you do not stay at this restaurant for a full year, you simply will not exist to me. Period. That means don’t ever call me. Don’t ever use me as a reference. Don’t put Charlie Trotter’s on your résumé. As far as I am concerned, if you haven’t worked here a year, you haven’t worked here a day.”

— Charlie Trotter Is Alive And Well, Chicago Magazine

When the Michelin guide started covering Chicago in 2010/2011, Alinea won three stars. Trotter's only won two. This was likely not endearing Alinea to Trotter. Alinea managed to turn itself into a small culinary empire; Trotter had tried this, but the 2008 recession killed all of his ventures.

Achatz has said in a few interviews that he was never sure if Trotter was his friend or his enemy. I have no idea what the truth is. But you gotta wonder: how would Trotter feel about having a tribute menu at the Alinea spin-off?

Food

Regardless of Trotter himself, Charlie Trotter's managed to stay in the restaurant business for twenty-five years. The food must have been good. It's surprisingly challenging to find records of what they were serving throughout the years.

Something they did mention at Next was that Trotter's did magic with vegetables, and frequently featured vegetarian tasting menus. That's unexpected; the whole tasting menu idea is very french, and that's a cuisine that loves its meat.

I couldn't find many historical menus, but this quote came up a lot:

Mr. Trotter is particularly virtuosic with vegetables. A plate arrives bearing what looks like a cross section of slab bacon, but it’s really a terrine of three separate beet purées — red, golden and chioggia — that have been set in a mold and then sauced with another purée, of horseradish and roasted parsnips: a root-crop tour of the five taste sensations. A porridge of amaranth is enlivened with green cardamom, toasted pistachios and a slice of raw persimmon: a dish at once vaguely South Asian and satisfyingly Moosewood-y. Charlie Trotter’s offers a more traditional grand menu, but it’s the vegetable menu — an ever-changing, never-boring meatless dégustation — that is his crowning culinary achievement.

“Alice Waters may have discovered vegetables, but Trotter was the first man I know who cooked them beautifully,” said Alan Richman, the longtime restaurant critic for GQ.

— Charlie Trotter, a Leader Left Behind, New York Times

That sounds pretty good, right?

Next

I've been to Next before, and it's ... fine. If you saw my tier list, you know that I didn't rate them highly. If it weren't for the drama, lore, and our own (tenous) personal connection, I probably wouldn't have bothered going back.

My criticism is basically: Next is set up as a mill.

It's loud, the staff do not have much time for you, and it very much feels like they want to get you through the meal as quickly as possible, so they can turn the table over. And that's fine, everyone wants to make money, but it's shocking-bordering-on-scandalous that a 1-star resturant can nakedly behave like that.

The food's pretty good, though. My first visit was Seafood in 2022. The first couple courses were absolute knock-outs, and then it trailed off. Good dishes, just not as cool as the first few.

Charlie Trotter Tribute Menu

To start out, Next had secured some of the original Trotter-branded plates, and provided a handbill with some information about Charlie Trotter's. It was all stuff that I knew, because I had done my homework the night before.

I got there as they opened, and I had hoped an early dinner would help with the noise. I was mistaken: the place filled up immediately, and it was hard to hear the staff or anyone else at the table.

A bit unusually, I had opted for the non-alcoholic pairing. This started with a very nice de-booze'd sparkling wine that paired really well with the caviar & uni dish, to the point where I'm tempted to pick up a bottle. After the first course, they switched into custom juice mixes that featured veggies and big spices just as frequently as fruit.

It was a fantastic menu start-to-finish. Even the things that should have felt archaic were fun and interesting. It's supposed to be overwhelmingly '90s and '00s french haute cuisine, and everything channeled those vibes, but nothing was actually stodgy.

If you look at the first course, the caviar & uni: they way it's presented screams 1900s. But it was hella good -- vodka creme fraiche streaked with a wasabi thing. It was cold, refreshing, and tasted great with everything else.

The meal was oddly reminiscent of my recent visit to Indienne. The chicken & truffle hit a lot of the same flavour notes as Indienne's. And there was a cold soup with a savoury sorbet. We did Indienne's veg menu because the non-veg is supposed to be aggressively french, so this poignantly illustrates the point.

It's white truffle season, so naturally they had an upsell: twice-baked potato covered in truffles. Ordering this was a wise decision because somebody stopped by to show us The White Truffle. I am capitalizing it because it was massive and came in its own velvet-lined box. It smelled divine.

Even with the mill set up, they still made an effort to offer us some special moments.