It takes me three times around the block to find the place. We jump from the 1600s to the 1800s, from the BP gas station at the corner of Halsted and West North to the Black Duck Tavern on Halsted and Willow. I know we are looking for 1723 North Halsted, the address embedded in my memory the way the chef’s resume—French Laundry, Trio, here—is. We turn around, turn into the parking lot of the Steppenwolf Theatre, curve back around, again, and this time we’re slow enough at 1721—a children’s dentist, an unlikely neighbor—to catch the Valet Parking sign. Right next door, we find it: a two-story black brick bay-fronted building, the place I’ve been waiting for the last two years to visit: Alinea.

We are early, of course. (Late? To this place?) Someone has already told me about the door, how it slides open like a Star Trek bulkhead, so I’m expecting something a little different, a lot unusual. I’m not expecting the forced-perspective rabbit hole of an entryway, all scalloped walls and glowing red light, which slopes down and angles in, ending on a sculpture of horizontally suspended steel pins, pieces that will make at least one more encore. I feel like I’m in a combination of Alice in Wonderland and Battlestar Galactica and, once through the faux-elevator doors, like I’m in an otherworldly townhouse that bends to one man’s rules. I am. It does. “Chef would like to meet you.” I panic. I am Alice, and I am falling. I’m just not so sure I’m ready.

The kitchen isn’t like any restaurant kitchen you’ve ever seen, or like any restaurant kitchen you’ve ever imagined. Three aisles, four countertops. I can’t even find the stove; oh, yes, there it is—way over in the corner, hidden behind bowls I think are ostrich eggs, strips of green gel, a container of cinnamon sticks. I’ve heard about the freezer griddle, a reverse flattop, and I see a concord grape gelée about to get flashed. “I’m so happy to be here,” is all I can say as I shake Grant Achatz’ hand. I fumble, half-recover, leave, but not before I look at every single surface of the kitchen. It’s my way of relating.

We’re led upstairs, up glass-walled stone steps, carpeted with a single seamless how-did-they-do-that? strip of woven nylon, the width of the double-height staircase giving me space for pause from my nerves. We stop on a brushed-metal landing, turn right into the front room. I see two round tables and five square ones; we’re led to the corner, me to the banquette and Sidekick to the over-stuffed, over-designed armchair. I sit down and the table hits me, square in the chest. I feel like a little kid at a big kid’s table, and I’m giddy. It’s on course eighteen that I realize it’s on purpose.

The table is four feet by four feet. “You’ve probably noticed that we don’t have tablecloths,” our waiter, who ends up earning the nickname Mr. Spankypants, because he’s just so spanky, points out. I haven’t, actually; I’ve been too busy trying to figure out the mechanics of the center-of-the-room waiter station and recover from my gloriously flubbed chef-meeting incident. But Sidekick has noticed, and given that I can taste and notice more and better when he’s around, I relax enough to take it all in. The tablecloth situation is explained. A square, six inches by six inches, padded in white, will operate as its replacement, silverware (for the courses that require it) delivered and placed on the pad about three minutes ahead of the dish, which gives us just enough of a teaser that we start placing bets on what’ll come next.

And it starts. We’ve signed up for the 23-course Tour, with wine pairing. The first dish comes, and it’s the one Gourmet made (even more) famous when the magazine put it on the cover of the issue that declared Alinea the number one restaurant in the country. It’s like an oyster, but—amazingly—better. It’s called hot potato. A glass shell filled with cold potato soup, under a hot potato ball on a pin with a cube of parmesan and a cube of butter and a shaving of truffle on the top. You pull the pin, the cubes drop, you slurp it up. Brilliant.

The rest is dizzying, a sequence punctuated by marks of a fiendish intelligence I later realize has dominated every milliliter and millimeter of the experience. King crab, in a bowl. Trout roe, in a smaller bowl. A fork, topped with butterfish and laid over one of those bowls I thought were ostrich eggs, a single bite chased by poppyseed milk that waits on the bottom. Rabbit, again in a bowl, covered with an overturned glass, the space filled with smoke. The glass is whisked off and filled with consommé so that you smell and drink the smoke and meat. “This is rabbit?” It’s transcendent.

And then Achatz gets funny. Deeply, seriously, no-jokes-here funny. A shot glass with a red-orange ball sprinkled with something green arrives. We down a thin layer of cocoa butter and smoked paprika wrapped around peach juice, topped with bee balm and chased (he does love his chasers) with a single squeeze of carrot juice. A tear escapes Sidekick. Silence is mandatory. It tastes like a tomato. And it makes sense now; the shape of the dish, the shot glass, the sprinkling of green. Grant deconstructed, then reconstructed, a tomato. 
It’s hysterical.

I feel intimate with Grant, knowing his history, his résumé, but until now it’s been one-sided, all me. Tonight, it’s like he’s getting me back. The dishes coming up the dumbwaiter and out of the service corridor are, to me, his way of talking to me. And, I have to say, he is a most excellent conversationalist.

The talk goes on. It’s not a chat, not a pow-wow. It’s a kobe short rib; a white truffle explosion whose presentation tells you how to eat it: lift the spoon from the trompe l’oeil bottomless holder, one bite, then slot it back in; a squab that makes me cry; a frozen concord grape square from the reverse flattop I saw what feels like another lifetime ago, served from a flat metal spoon on a square pyrex holder; a chestnut purée picked off a stick held by still another waiter; a crabapple purée. It’s all been so easy, it’s all made so much sense that I feel entirely confident about the next dish. Grant calls it the squid: a foot-long pin impaling a roll of quince and prosciutto. “This,” the waiter says, “is a hands-free dish.” Never-have-I-ever gone down on my dinner? I’d have to drink.

I trust the chef, I realize then. I trust him the way I trust good artists; the way I trusted Anish Kapoor earlier that day, when we walked to the Millennium Park and I stood under the Cloud Gate and felt the world shift around my feet. I trust Grant the way I didn’t trust Marina Abramovic when I saw her at the Guggenheim, and I trust him the way I trust Pollock: I will be moved.

Shellfish, hamachi, a pineapple-wrapped bacon powder package, and then, once I’ve lost count of the courses I start worrying the end is nigh. The rosemary sprig, until now just standing through everything, has been moved to the center of the table. It’s a small move, but it speaks. It must be over, I think. We’ve come full circle, I worry. We’re done, I fear. A brick arrives, hot, holding three Elysian Fields lamb tenderloin cuts. I like the sizzle. It sounds nice. I play with the dish, picking the pieces of lamb up and slamming them down onto the brick—pshhhhhhhhhhhhh!—over and over and over again.

And it hits me. The high tables, the low banquettes, the beige, the dark wood, everything grown up and adult about the place that reduces me, you, to a childlike state of infinite curiosity. It starts with the hallway, keeps up with the door—steel! moving! so cool!—and finishes when you sit down. You’re supposed to feel like a kid. You’re supposed to want to play, to feel discombobulated, like you’ve suddenly stumbled into a bigger and better world where you’re going to learn something, and learn it good.

I can’t wait for a second lesson.

Photography Lara Kastner