Alinea - Chocolate

Dish 28: Chocolate with coconut, menthol, hyssop

Served with Dashe 'Late Harvest' Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley 2007.

Lord this was a fun dish. The bouncing in the seat definitely resumed for this dish. Plus some clapping of the hands and cackles of pure greedy glee.

Grant Achatz and Chef de Cuisine, Dave Beran came out to serve us, but I didn't realize who they were, so I proceeded to act like a 7 year-old high on happiness.


After the pale green, super smooth silicon sheets were rolled out, the chefs placed the various ingredients on the edge of the table.

They poured chocolate into cylinders.

Everything was done with such precision.

Beran was making these beautiful little curlicues, and not knowing that Achatz was Achatz, I ribbed him and asked why he wasn't being as fancy as his partner.

He genially mumbled something about following Beran's lead and made one line of smaller circles. I liked Beran's more.

It was wonderful watching the two of them work and seeing our dessert take shape.

At this point the chefs took out two loaf pans of chocolate chocolate mousse frozen in liquid nitrogen, which they cracked open to create a craggy landscape.

As the mist from the liquid nitrogen rolled out, our "dessert" really started to look like a landscape from outer space. I could imagine the lunar rover navigating over the bumpy terrain.

The chefs placed the final elements on with tweezers.

Who says men can't be careful and precise?

Then the chefs removed the glass cylinders to reveal little pucks of chocolate that remained warm and liquid when we spooned it away later.

We came for my friend's birthday, but we all felt extremely extremely lucky and blessed.

Then the chefs walked away and we dove in with our spoons, scooping a little bit of this with a little bit of that, trying different flavor combinations. A brilliant dish, a delightful experience.