eggplantconfit

I'm going to be in Opelousas, La. for two days. I've got a rental car and free time. I'm looking for either restaurants or just food tourism ideas. E.

Brad, sorry i missed you again. Heard you were in and hope everything was right. I'm always there in the day but am trying to cut back my nights as i'm purchasing the wine bar down the street. You can catch me at the cafe in the evenings on wednesday and friday for sure. I'm in on and off the other evenings. matt lincoln cafe. foodisimportant.com

thanks for the good word on our restaurant. please introduce yourself next time you stop by. matt steigerwald lincoln cafe foodisimportant.com

I'm just curious about something. Is the "flash photography strictly prohibited" policy new? the evening that we ate at alinea the table behind us must have used their flash 20 times or more. e.

thanks for that response. i do feel a slight sense that you might feel like we came to the table without the right attitude and this, i feel, is not true. i am a chef myself and have looked forward to alinea for as long as anyone. sure the diner brings something to the event, just as any observer of art sees things things through their own eyes. the issues we had were not originated in this. there were mistakes made in menu discription, and server attitude. i know difficult patrons and we were not them. i suppose it's possible we just had a little worse experience than other people. i just want to know how much of an exeption we were. seems like we just got unlucky. we'll be back but i will give them 6 months to even out. e

recently i posted a slightly less than perfect experience that i had at alinea and the responses that followed have moved me to ask some questions. firstly, has anyone else in the egullet community had any negative experience? they don't seem very represented. (just so i don't feel singled out). and also, it seems like some people who have posted were treated to some vip treatment in terms of kitchen tours and the like. this leads me to bring up what a slowfood representative told me, which was that some of these egullet representations of the alinea experience are told from the pont of view of someone less that anonymous to the alinea crew. like many very high end restaurants (daniel, le bernadin, etc), will the average diner not experience the attention to detail that a recognized guest will? this would be a real shame and hopefully below the alinea crew. anyone have any thoughts on this? i'm hoping to hear from some of the big hitters here. e.

I feel like most of the reports have been pretty even keel. though we did have some problems with some of the service, the over all experience was still 4 star to me. I also feel like the style of the food will not change. Rather than change the style and reach of the food and service i think the staff and chefg will just simply make it work. Like i said before, i think a few months from now alinea will be at the very top of the food chain. m.

concerning the "flying bacon wire", one of the servers saw it and said,"first time thats happened", so hopefully it's being addressed. the prosciutto was served on a napkin plank and the fried bread course was the one that we never recieved though it was on our menu. i, too, would like to know what was up with changing the prosciutto plate. the server said that two other restaurants in chicago were already using the smoking cinnamon tube so the kitchen decided to stop using it. thats a shame because we got very little cinnamon aroma from the small amount of smoke that came out from under the lifted bowl. one member of our party did take pictures and i will try to get them but the previous pics from some egullet members are, i'm sure, superior. m

We did the tour at alinea on saturday night. The meal was of course excellent. Compared to trio we thought that there was a stronger subtle emphasis on sweetness. This seemed hand in hand with a higher percentage of fortified wine pairings and slightly sweeter wines across the board. We were a little saddened to not see the "crate and barrel" serviceware used for the "smoking cinnamon and also missed the plate that the prosciutto had been shown on. We were instructed to pick up the prosciutto from a presentation napkin held by our server. Also one course on our menu could not be remembered as being served to us when we went over the meal later that night. Also some small fumbles by the waitstaff that i'm sure will be ironed out. these included naming the wrong items for more than one of the dishes. Also, when the table behind us continually used the flash on their camera we were asked if it was bothering us. When one member of our party answered yes, the server said "then you can go ahead and use yours". Strange response, we thought. Lastly, one of our party was struck in the head by the flying wire from a neighboring table's bacon course. so....we really did love it. The turbot course, crab and cashew course, chocolate course, foie and rhubarb, were our favorites. The space is flawless, (though one of the bathrooms was out of order), and the food was precise and subtle. Overall it seems that the link between the kitchen and the staff and the staffs execution of communicating the menu to us needed some work, but when you swing for the fence, especially in the first two weeks, there are bound to be some areas that need work. we look forwad to coming back in a few months. m

i feel like the last thing alinea should worry about right now is callers not getting through. par for the course, and it has only been a week. on another note, several friends who have been to alinea this week have told me that the "tour" provides a much larger amount of food than their similar experiences at trio. i've been told they were full with 4 or 5 courses left. a situation they did not experience at trio. i'm wondering if this experience has been common to other people this week, and if this info has gotten back to the kitchen? we have reservations for saturday. m

i'm curious how the meal took 7.5 hours. in the several trio tour de force meals that i had the longest was probably 5 hours at most. is there just more time between courses? e.

ate at trio saturday night. i believe it was my sixth time in a year. great as always and will see you at alinea. ms

just ate at the trio kitchen table sunday night. it was my 4th trio visit and easily the most interesting. the kitchen was hushed and extremely professional, as it would have to be to produce that kind of food. chef carrier and chef achetz were engaging and generous, as was our main server and the rest of the staff. look forward to more. thanks to all.

sorry i posted a new topic i'm still learning about egullet. i'm really looking for a tape of the TRIO show. anyone? i liked the 10 minutes i saw but wished for an even more detailed description of developing the actual food. how do you really make dried strawberry curls? also more about the technology. maybe some of that was in the part i missed. nice to see the down to earth wait people coming across so nicely though