Yeah. Thought of her today reading a FB post about the Gilmore reboot.(Not interesting enough to share, but nice as a passing, thought.)

20th anniversary throwback Alinea dinner

I saw the price on that when they announced it. I hope it was amazeballs!

It was very, very good. Some surprising things, some expected things. I think it was especially nice to imagine the reaction to some of these dishes when they first came on the scene. The shock value isn’t quite there anymore, but nonetheless, some things I would never have imagined. One of our favorite dishes was centered around a broccoli stem, for example. There was a make your own spring roll course that turned out to use some of the table setting as part of the spring roll. And a bridge course between sweet and savory that had a delicious mushroom caramel.

One of the wine pairings, which was shockingly good, was a beet liquor flavored with Nori and some other kind of seaweed. We were kind of stunned to like it as much as we did. There are a couple of others I need to look up to see if they are in anyway affordable to have at home.

Worth the cost? Eh. It’s probably not useful to think of it that way. It’s a splurge experience and I’m glad to have done it but I’m also glad to have only been out of pocket for part of it (at least by my rationalization math). This was a fair bit cheaper than a regular dinner at Alinea, which is both mind-boggling but also makes me curious about how they’ve evolved over 20 years.

We had drinks and small bites at Aviary a couple of years ago (where you can get one of the best items we had on this menu if you order it ahead - the truffle explosion) and I think that was more surprising and and about a third of the cost.

half of me wants to flee screaming and the other half is a trash goblin that lives for drama and absolutely wants to go. I'm still not sure which half is going to win.

Inside you there are two trash goblins...

Lisa, that sounds scary as hell. I hope the rest of her recovery is smooth and uneventful!

Yikes lisah! May things go quietly and well for her for the rest of her hospital stay.

I always vote to do it for the plot. Trash goblins FTW!

Brenda that sounds fascinating, especially if you had something to compare it to (had been there back then or been there recently)

Bob’s mom continues to make a good recovery. She’s remarkably coherent for an 85-year old on major painkillers recovering from 8+ hour emergency surgery

Good to hear Lisa. Keeping you all in my thoughts.

Glad to hear it, Lisa!