This is one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that we wanted to take advantage of. This would be our first (and maybe last) trip to Chicago, and I wanted to go all out. The night before, we had gone to The Smyth, which was amazing. Tonight we will be going to Alinea, which is Grant Achatz’s restaurant, for The Gallery multicourse meal. We found out about Grant from Netflix shows and his cameo appearances on Master Chef.

I hadn’t done a lot of research for this restaurant other than two things: look for a nice restaurant in Chicago that is Michelin starred and the menu looks good. There were many other Chicago fancy restaurants I could’ve picked from, but looking at the example set menu, this looked like something up my alley. It wasn’t too strict on a direction, and it looked like one of those “we take ourselves seriously but not so seriously” type of restaurant, such as Blanca in NYC.

There are many locations of this pizza chain in Chicago. I’ve had Chicago deep dish before but it’s been a while. I thought this was a safe bet, and it reminded me of how cool eating outside of NYC could be. The regular order of chicken buffalo boneless wings was pretty good. Nothing crazy about it except price point was cheap, and it was good. The batter was actually crispy and not soggy.

As a followup to my last Chicago post, we also went to this place. Not only do they have Chicago style dogs, but they also have a lady at the front counter talk in a rather abrasive manner. The first thing she said when my group walked in was “Hey, it’s the Jabbawockeez!” I, hadn’t known about this place before, so I was a bit surprised. But someone informed me that her remarks were perfectly normal as she was making remarks to other patrons.

I’m out in Chicago over the weekend for a special occasion. The decision was made to go to Roka Akor for dinner because it received great reviews and would be an excellent place to celebrate this occasion. So how did it fare? Note for 2022 migration: this is an old post from my other defunct blog. I remember this experience being the quintessential feeling of why I don’t like dining at fancy restaurants in large groups.