The same night Dave Beran wins the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes, Next restaurant reveals the trailer for the restaurant’s newest menu.

Dig that the size of that fortune cookie!

Next: Modern Chinese from next restaurant on Vimeo.

Ticket for Modern Chinese are now on sale.

I’ve been to five other Next iterations so far, and have enjoyed them all—yes, even Vegan—so I hope I can make it to Chicago before the restaurant morphs again in September.

I’ve eaten at both of Grant Achatz’s Chicago restaurants, Alinea and Next, so when the Chef tweeted about a crying baby that was making other diners mad, I definitely had an opinion.

And as I just learned from my daily perusal of the foodie site Eater, that opinion appeared, albeit edited, on this morning’s edition of Good Morning America. (My truncated tweet and my Twitter icon appear at the 1:26 mark.)

What appeared on the screen wasn’t my actual tweet, but rather (as you’ll see below) the final few words of my third tweet on the subject. (more…)

As I told you earlier, I probably won’t get a chance to experience the new incarnation of Next due to a major life change … which means I’m counting on you to go and then let me know all about it.

Next released its latest video today, this one promoting “Chicago Steakhouse,” hoping to persuade us to check out its latest blink-or-you’ll miss-it menu. As you’ll see below, this time around it’s more about the mood than the food.

Next: Chicago Steak from next restaurant on Vimeo.

Sure wish I could be at that card table, though I don’t know that my bluffs would work on those guys.

Now where’d I put my double-breasted suit and that fedora?

Though I visited Chicago for all three Next restaurant meals last year—The Hunt, Vegan, and Bocuse d’Or—I sadly have no plans to return in 2014. That has nothing to do with a lack of desire, but rather, a recognition that with my recent change in employment, some things had to go, and travel to Next, while resulting in lifetime peak meals, was one of those somethings—especially since we won’t be canceling our trips later this year to either Easter Island or the London Worldcon.

But that doesn’t mean I’m still not intensely interested in what Grant Achatz, Dave Beran, and Nick Kokonas have in store. The next Next menu—Chicago Steak—is currently being served to friends and family in advance of its debut to the public, and yesterday Achatz teased us by tweeting a pic of the menu.

First time serving actual food. FOH training night. @dcberan @mknorth @JTomaska pic.twitter.com/eyDJqZAg2R

— Grant Achatz (@Gachatz) January 4, 2014

He followed that today with a pic of the steaks as they’ll be presented to diners. (more…)

Moments ago, Grant Achatz teased one of Next’s 2014 menus by tweeting a pic.

This pic.

Whoa!

I can take a hint. Can you?

I flew to Chicago last weekend for, of all things, a Vegan meal. Those who know me, and have either accompanied me or been repulsed by me eating spicy horse tartare, will wonder … why? After all, I’m the kind of guy who’s never eaten even a vegetarian meal (which I’ve surrendered to from time to time in order to go with the flow of a group) without needing to chomp into a bloody burger on the way home.

Scott eating Vegan? Has Hell frozen over?

Not quite. But Next restaurant, the chameleon-like brainchild of Grant Achatz, Nick Kokonas, and Dave Beran, where I’ve previously eaten cuisines built around Sicily, Kyoto, and The Hunt, had this time reinvented itself as a Vegan restaurant … and so I had to be there.

What could chefs operating at the level of Achatz and Beran do with only Vegan ingredients? Would the menu rise above the unsatisfying level of vegetarian food I’d experienced up until then, meals which always left me hungering for more?

This note awaiting us at the Kitchen Table made a promise …

… and that promise was fulfilled. (more…)

Next restaurant, which reinvents itself three times a year, releases a video to promote each new menu. Sometimes, as with its video for The Hunt, you get a good idea what you’ll be eating while there. But the just-released video for the new Vegan menu, which launches tonight, is a bit more … enigmatic.

Enigmatic … but hilarious.

After having watched that, I have absolutely no idea what Next will have in store for me when I sit down at my Kitchen Table at the end of the month.

One thing I do know, however—it makes me want to go on a heist with those guys!

As those of you who’ve read about my visits to Chicago for Next’s Sicily and Kyoto menus know, the restaurant is not only unique—completely reinventing its cuisine three times each year—but also extremely difficult to get into. Thousands more people want to dine there than can. As Eater quoted co-owner Nick Kokonas back in February:

” … the queue reached 1,500 within 10 seconds of turning the sales page on … so in reality you had to be there within 8-10 seconds to have a shot at season tix.”

I very much wanted to be part of Next’s Brigadoon-like magic again next year, and through careful (and sometimes exhausting) attention to the restaurant’s updates on its Facebook page, I managed to become a season ticket holder for 2013.

So here’s what I’m in for: (more…)

So three weekends back (yeah, it’s taken me awhile to find the time to get to this), I did one of the craziest, most extravagant things I’ve ever done. I flew to Chicago. For a meal.

Oh, I’ve gone to extremes for high-end dining before, such as my meals at Astrid y Gaston in Lima, Momofuku Shoto in Toronto, and Alinea in Chicago, among others. But all of those meals were a side dish to a pre-existing trip—our visit to Machu Picchu, and my attendance at the World Fantasy and World Science Fiction conventions, respectively.

But this was a trip with the meal as its primary focus. My Sicilian dinner at the ever-changing Next restaurant impressed me so that I wanted to take part in its follow-up offering, Kyoto, and so booked tickets back in September the moment they became available.

Even as I did it, it felt wrong somehow. Fly to another city … for a meal? How decadent!

And yet …

If I had a chance to see Nijinsky dance one more time, or Olivier act again, I’d fly across a continent and feel no shame, but when it comes to food, there’s somehow a twinge of guilt, of … should I really be doing this?

The answer is, when it comes to chefs operating at this level of art on a menu which will be offered for a limited period only to vanish and never return …

Yes. Yes, I should. (more…)

The Chicago Tribune broke some news today that’s of intense interest to foodies everywhere—the three Next restaurant menus for 2013. I’ve already told you about Next, and how its chefs will serve a particular cuisine for just a few months, then shut down briefly before changing over to a completely different menu, so that if you miss one, you’ve missed it forever.

Think of it as the Brigadoon of restaurants, there, but not there.

It was announced earlier this month that 2013 would start off with The Hunt (that is, wild game), with a Vegan menu rumored to follow … but now we know for sure what next year has in store for us.

First up, The Hunt, for which we are told, “expect to see bear jerky and venison heart tartare.”

(more…)