Afterthoughts: Tickets Anyone?

Not much has changed since I wrote this essay. Well, not much, until recently. As regards that “sell tickets” suggestion (see above, “The consumer: fickle, demanding, unhappy, chronically complaining, no-showing, boisterous, rude.”), I bring you this from the Sept. 2010, Departures (a publication of the American Express Publishing Co.), “A molecular gastronomy master, whose Alinea [Chicago] has won every award out there, [Chef Grant] Achatz debuts his new project, ‘Next,’ this fall. The novel spot will change its culinary concept every three months and will sell tickets instead of taking traditional reservations.” I’m led to understand that trying to figure out what’s next at Next is a game gastronomes play.

                                                                                                        lassedesignen

By the way, given that both Alinea and Next are paradigmatic of new-wave cookery, often referred to as molecular gastronomy, until someone whose intelligence we can all respect defines molecular gastronomy for the satisfaction of lexicographers and the rest of us still bamboozled by the bamboozlers who invented this term, let’s all vow not to use it again.  Ever. Promise?