Bon Appetit Magazine – September, 2005

America’s Top 5 Restaurant Cities

by Raphael Kadushin

Chicago shed its meat-and-potatoes image a long time ago, but not until this year has the city staked its greatest claim to being a true culinary pioneer – and one of the country’s most exciting places to eat. At Moto, chef Homaro Cantu has created a kitchen that is bubbling with the inspiration of an inventor’s laboratory. He is cooking up futuristic food like sea bass that is brought to the table steaming in Cantu’s own patented pressurized thermal box. At Grant Achatz’s new Alinea, the former Trio chef serves a 28-course tasting menu that includes roasted lamb neck and ravioli filled with -get ready- black truffle air. While the freewheeling creativity of Achatz and Cantu takes haute cuisine to stratospheric heights, the same spirit of experimentation has set the city’s best chefs on separate paths to culinary glory. All of a sudden, this is a restaurant chef’s restaurant town.