Next: Tour of South America: Chile

The summer menu at Next is more of a Next theme inside of a Next theme.  The overarching menu is South American.  The tour part comes from the fact that every 6 weeks during the four month run of this menu the restaurant is going to shift to a new country within South America hitting a total of three countries; Peru, Chile and Argentina. 

This Next within Next concept is the brainchild of Jenner Tomaska who just recently became the head chef at Next replacing Dave Beran who had been at the helm since Next opened in 2011.  While I was certainly sad to see Chef Beran leave, he's headed to Los Angeles to open his own place, it's probably a good thing.  Each menu was unique but at times, you could tell there were themes, conceptions and execution of dishes that were the same.  For a restaurant that changes so drastically every four months, fresh blood in the kitchen is probably a good thing. 

The beauty of Chicago summers is how hot it is outside, last year for the Tapas menu the restaurant got permission to serve food on the sidewalk and allowed people who didn't have tickets to come sit outside and have a limited selection of ala carte dishes that they were serving inside.  In a play off of that, the restaurant is starting your meal out on the sidewalk by shaving ice to order that is made from lemon, wheat, and honey and serving that over peach marmalade and topping it with a dusting of black cardamom. 

The first food food of the night was this progression of ceviches.  I don't remember exactly what tye of fish they used, however, the dish was eaten left to right as the different flavors were a progression of tastes.  The first one was a banana and passion fruit, second was corn and chocolate, third was aji, a type of South American chile and the final was a classic lime and orange.  The whole thing was served with the continental drink of South America, outside of Brazil,the pisco sour. 

This next dish was a branzino crudo topped with tomato ice, and the restaurants take on leche de tigre, or the juices of ceviche which is said to cure the hangover.  In this case they used cacacha,cashew and tomato.  This dish was served with a cocktail of Cachaca, grapefruit, garlic and ginger.

This was a tart of Purslane and Grapefruit, with the tart shell made with some aji chiles for a little bit of kick.  It was topped with a piece of uni, or sea urchin, which might be my favorite piece of seafood every.  However, the tartness of the grapefruit in the tart filling simply overpowered with subtle flavor of the sea urchin. They served this dish with our first wine of the evening a sparkling rose from Mendoza Argentina.

This is the point in the meal where things got a little bit ridiculous.  Above our table the whole time was a basket hanging from the ceiling.  The waiter brought down the basket, and in it was the table runner and the first part of the dish the corn nuts.  In addition to the corn nuts from the kitchen came quinoa salad, corn souffle, an chilean salsa that was tweaked slightly with the addition of chicken hearts and finally there were tuna croquettes.  There were two drinks served with this section of the meal, chica, a fermented corn beer and a 2014 sauvignon blanc from Aconcauga, Chile.

Next up was a series of swordfish escabeche.  Again, I'm not 100% sure of all the flavor profiles of each, I believe the green was avocado and the dark red on the right was beets and cherry.  This was another fun dish that I had seen and heard a lot about online leading into this meal.  The wine for this course was the 2014 Bonarda from the Zuccardi Family made in Santa Rosa Argentina.

This was by far the coolest plating of the night.  Next loves to pair up with Crucial Detail to create one of a kind serving platters for the restaurant.  This was one of their designs. Once the plate comes to your table you tear into the paper and get this wonderful wood smoke aroma.  The dish itself is poached salmon, asparagus, lentils, and mushrooms. The wine for this dish was a 2011 chilean pinot noir from Casablanca Valley.

The final savory course of the evening included, garlic rice, a platter of homemade chorizo, pork belly, and figs as well as a clam and ruhbarb salad.  It doesn't happen often at Next but I was seriously running out of room by this point.  THe chorizo was good, though a bit dry, I think it was supposed to be that wasy but I'm not sure.  the pork belly was perfect as were the figs.  There was a 2013 chardonnay from the Mendoza area ofo Argentina served with this dish. 

Desert time!.  The top photo is a summer squash donut served with dulche de leche cream.  THe bottom photo is guava and the restaurant's take on sopapillos.  The final drink of the evening was a glass of Barsol which is a South American version of madeira or sherry.

This menu was a ton of fun, and it's always good to see close friends as part of it.  I think I understand why Phil Vettel, the tribune restaurant critic gave the restaurant its first three star review.  All other reviews have been a perfect four stars.  There are some kinks to be worked out.  Not so much from a service side, but I think chef Tomaska needs some time to really find his voice in a kitchen like Next's.  Unfortunately for him he won't get to do that until the first menu of 2017.  This fall, Next is recreating a menu from The French Laundry and if any of his dishes were to be changed drastically, while having TFL's name on it, Thomas Keller might personally choke someone. 

Next: The Alps

The 2016 season at Next kicked off with an interesting way to take the cold Chicago winters and utilize that weather to pair with the food.  This meal was centered around the food of the Alps.  Naturally the Alps are a very large region in Europe that encompasses numerous different countries.  I think as a challenge to themselves as cooks and to give the diner a representative view of everything that can be offered in the Alps the Next team took you on a tour throughout the Alps hitting, France, Germany, Switzerland,

The idea of the tour was to start in France and work your way up to the most famous area, Switzerland, and then work down into Italy.  The only part of that that doesn't really work is Austria but Austria is really famous for their deserts so it makes sense.

The French part of the meal was tailored around a French Farmhouse, therefore when we sat down the table was set like one would see in the French countryside.  In the middle is what would become the first course, Stone Soup.  The container has rosemary, thyme, black pepper, vegetable broth and a number of other spices in it.  After the introduction from the wait staff they came back with a plate of hot rocks that they placed in the container and then they poured into the tea cups.

The soup was quite flavorful and a fun way to whet the appetite for what was to come the rest of the way.

The next dish that came out was the Game Pie, we weren't told what all went into the pie, but needless to say it was a lot of game, this was served with a small little salad and sweet mustard type topping.  This was served with a nice little red wine from the Rhone region of France.

The first of two parts to the lighter portion of this stop in the Alps.  This is one that has had my attention for a while because this year instead of a teaser video leading up to the start of a menu, the Next team decided to release a series of shorter videos which include the recipes for some of the dishes.  The recipe for this, Gratin of Beaufort and Trumpet Corzets, was the first of those videos.  This is a French sheep's milk cheese served with trumpet mushrooms and vegetables topped with breadcrumbs and then baked.

The second light dish in the French Farmhouse is a Tourton of Salsify and Apple.  The tourton is a small pastry sack that was filled with a puree of salsify and apple that was served with a small salad as well as roasted salsify  These two courses were served with a sparkling wine from the Jura region of France.  This was a nice little sparkling wine to drink especially since my experience with wines from the Jura hasn't been all positive.  Their wines tend to be closer to sherry than a white wine that you would think of.

Then it was time to move into the German Beer Hall and no beer hall is complete without freshly made pretzels.

The traditional accompaniment for pretzels and Next was no different spicy brown mustard and pickled vegetables.  On the left was a variety of I believe a liverwurst sausage and a quenele of fermented mustard greens and chestnuts.

Additionally, Next included a homemade dried pork sausage known as Landjager.  This basically resembled a spiced pork jerky.

This dish was a nice little palate cleanser almost for everything that was going on with this section of the menu.  This is a pork belly schnitzel served with cherries and black walnuts

Everything for the German Beer Hall to this point came out at the same time.  Then the waitstaff brought out this cart with a huge wheel of raclette cheese with a fire burning which was used to melt the cheese while you ate a few bites of what was already on the table.

Once the cheese was melted they poured it over boiled potatoes.

I have no idea why this picture is sideways but the beer hall courses were served with a pilsener from Jever brewery in Germany.  This was a classic pils that served the style well.

From the German Beer Hall we moved onto the top of the Swiss Mountain to a warming yurt for a transitional course.  This is hot chocolate with a gratuitous amount of black truffles underneath.  Paired with this course was a yellow Chartreuse which had been infused with black truffles.  The infusion process is a yearly tradition at Next and The Aviary when black truffles are in season.

Continuing on in Switzerland, the staff brought out a swedish log that was on fire and smoking and placed a piece of raw arctic char on top and then covered int with the glass.  This sat on the table while the brought out the next course.

This is a dish of preserved summer berries with cognac and honey.  I suspect this dish has something to do with alpine preservation methods to be able to eat stuff from the short growing season all year long but I don't have anything to confirm that.

Now it was time for the fish.  The first picture is what it looked like before the fish came off the log and went onto the plate and the second is the completed plate.  This dish is a testament to how much food can be and how much planning needs to go into a menu.  To design a course where your primary component is going to be fully cooked while sitting on the table while your diner eats another course is ballsy.  Either way this one was absolutely delicious.

The final dish at the top of the Swiss Mountain is a beef goulash and barolo wine with sour cournbread.  This is definitely a much refined version of what mom's everywhere made at some point or another and probably didn't make it well.  The plate came to the table looking like the top picture and then you got to fill the bowl with as much or as little of the liquid and vegetables as you liked.  All three of these dishes were served with a Swiss red wine of which very little makes it to the United States.  We had the 2013 version of Gave from Anne Garole et Gonrad Caloz out of VAlais Switzerland.  Apparently, you can grow grapes there it's just that the yields are terrible and you don't get much wine from them. 

It was now time to descend off the top of the Swiss alps and head Into Italy with the transitional course.  This is bitter green salad with pomegranate and fennel ice.  This was a good way to back off the savory and get into the deserts.  The ice was much more flavorful that I would have guessed, very similar to a bitter tart granita.   This dish was served with a proseccco cuvee from Monte Rossa.

 No trip to the Alps is complete without a trip to Austria for the deserts and so here we are.  This is pie spiced ice cream served along side and apple strudel with clove and cinnamon.  Personally, I'm not a big desert guy but overall this one made me happy.

The final desert for the night was the Salzburger Nockrel.  A sweet, egg souffle that was light an airy just as it was supposed to be, a really good way to end the night.  The desert courses were served with a Limoncello Crema that was distilled in Chicago.  Nice to support a local business but I think I would have preferred a regular limoncello to finish.

Overall, this was a good meal, there's a part of me that thinks that with the non-premium meals of the year, that Next has sort of hit a bit of a rut.  The food is always delicious they staff usually pretty attentive, however it feels like with the dishes Dave and his team seem to hit a lot of the same notes over and over with how dishes are plated and how they are eaten.  Will be interesting to see if I see some more of the same in June at the Tour of South America. 

Next: Terroir

Every year, one of the three menus at Next is their premium menu.  Well at least it's been this way for each of the last four years.  El Bulli in 2012, Bocuse d'Or in 2013 and Trio in 2014.  This year it was Terroir.  Terroir is a concept, not a cuisine and not even technically food.  Terroir is the concept in wine, where the environment in which the grapes are grown have an effect on the taste of the wine.

In theory, I believe this concept makes sense.  However, in practice I'm not sure the average diner can pick out the subtle differences the climate has on Chardonnay grapes grown in California vs Chardonnay grapes grown in California.  This however, did not deter the staff at Next from trying.

What was really different about this menu is that the chefs and beverage team decided on what whines they wanted to serve before they even considered what the food was going to be.  Challenging themselves culinaryly to pair the food with the wine.  Overall, this was extremely successful.

The initial place setting for the evening.  I love how Next always tries to tie how the tables are set with the theme of the meal.

Next always likes to challenge their diners and distort the rules of dining.  This meal that challenge started right away when they poured a red wine from burgandy as the first of the evening.  The picture is 2009 but we had the 2007 version.  The wine was paired with five bites to start our where were as follows:

This is a croquette of creme fraiche laced with char roe and dipped in a rye batter and deep fried.  A fun cheesy explosive bite.

This is a cornette with caramelized onion, chicken skin and chicken heart.  This was one of the early leaders in the clubhouse for bite of the night.

The third bite was a crostini that was topped with parmesan and a nasturtium leaf.  Overall this one didn't blow me away.

The fourth bite was a combination of brussels sprouts, beer and flax seed.  This was served on top of peanuts, which were not eaten at this point in time but were to be saved for a future dish.

The final bite was a fun playful dish of a prosciutto chip topped with a honey and lime cream dip.  The saltiness of the ham played very nicely with the sweet and sour of the honey and lemon.

                                                               

Right before we were going to start eating the waiter came with the second wine.  This time a white from Burgandy.  This is the 2009 vintage of St. Aubin 1st Cru Clos de la Cateniere from Domaine Hubert Lamy.  The waiter specifically explained to us that the red was to be consumer first completely before trying the white to avoid overpowering some of the flavors.

                                                                 






                                               



The next three wines is where the chef and beverage team really wanted you to taste the terroir.  Here they served three different white wines from three different regions but all made with the same grape, chenin blanc.  THe wines were from France, South Africa and California.  If I had to make a choice I would say that the French was my favorite due to its high acidity.

The second course was a piece of cold smoked sturgeon with charred scallions and various iterations of peanuts which included boiled and shelled peanuts on the bottom and the salted and roasted peanuts from the previous courses sprinkled on top.  This was a fun playful dish that I really enjoyed.





The sixth wine of the evening was an Italian red from the northeast region of the country near the Slovenian border.  This is a red that is really dark in color but extremely light in flavor.  Therefore to avoid your eyes playing tricks on the diner this was served in a dark glass that you were unable to see through to the wine.

The third course was barley risotto served with a barley chip and arugula that was then topped with a barley consomme.  I took a picture of the dish with the consomme in there but it was blurry.  I liked the flavors of this dish but I couldn't get over the chewiness of the barley risotto.  I love barley if its in beer but as an ingredient on its own, not so much.




The first of two rieslings on the evening.  This one is a sweet riesling that presented the second opportunity for the beverage team to play with what you previously thought you knew about wine.  That's because they served a sweet riesling with.....

Squab!.  That's right, Next served essentially a desert whine with a red meat game dish that was included the pigeon, beets, fennel and huckleberries.  Personally, I thought the squab got lost a bit wit the fairly assertive flavor of the huckleberry.

The riesling was also the only wine of the night designed to go across two courses.  The second of the two was the absolute home run of the evening.  The palate cleanser of pear juice in a blue cheese shell served over fresh moss (which you didn't eat) and a little dry ice and water for effect.  Just obscenely good.

At this point we had reached the approximate halfway point of dinner, and the third chance that the restaurant took to play with what you knew about wine.  Though this one ties into the first course.  The wait staff takes the granite slabs away and rolls out a fancy white table cloth for the rest of the meal and let's you know that the wine dinner is about to begin as you just finished the snacks.



This is where Next decided to bring out the champagne, rather than the traditional spot as part of the first course.  The team at Next loves this brand of champagne, it was good but after looking at prices online I'm not sure I could taste the nearly Dom Perignon type price for a bottle.

This portion of the meal started out with a trio of dishes plated within the same serving vessel.  The top is a play on chips and dip, which is something I've seen the French Laundry do, this is a combination of apple chips and potato chips with a creme fraiche dip.

The second portion of this dish I don't remember what all was is in, but I do know that it involved caviar.

The third dish was a popcorn soup.  I loved the chips and dip but the other two were sort of unmemorable dishes.  Good, but not anything that stuck out in my head.




This was the second riesling of the night, this one a dry riesling and again the team at Next decided to screw with your head a little bit because this white wine, while dry was served with a red meat.

So this dish is called, lion's mane, Bison and truffled soil, the big black thing on top is a bread meringue where the restaurant took sourdough bread dough and charred it.  Anyway, the bison was cooked perfectly, overall a fun and interesting dish.

                                 

This was by far the most unique wine of the night.  This is a gual from the Canary Islands in Spain.  This isn't a region you typically think of when you think about wine, but it was fun and tasted good, so it worked.

The gual was paired with a hamachi tartare, ginger and fermented gooseberries that was also topped with a few slices of thai chiles.  This dish was an absolute hit, the subtle fruitiness of the gooseberries played very well with the light citus notes of the wine.


                                                  

                                                        

This wine was the favorite of the night for both my brother and I.  While I typically prefer whites, especially a good sauvignon blanc, my brother and I both love really big and bold reds.  When talking about it at the table, I thought back to the red we had with the steak during the Chicago Steak Menu which was a huge open fermented red from Tennores in Spain.  That wine is easily one of the best reds I've ever had, this one comes pretty close.

Given the wine you'd expect that it would be served with another red meat, but they servied this one with snails, artichokes and pine aroma.  The food is the little cup in the middle that is surrounded by pine needles, very hot rocks to aereify the aroma of the pine needles and snail shells.  This dish was delicious, though I'm thinking the only actual snails in ti were the snail caviar.  Maybe that was the point.

                
The bottle says 1998, but the version we had was from 2009.  Overall, not a very memorable wine.

The course for this wine was a roasted lamb loan with olives, which was drizzled with a little bit of lamb jous.  A really nice way to end the savory courses for the evening.
                             
                            

 

A madeira is a classic way to introduce the desert courses for the evening, and Next outdid themselves this time serving this one from 1971, yes 1971.  Honestly, I'm not sure I could taste anything different in this one than a younger madeira, but it's still pretty cool to drink something 12 years older than yourself. 

 The first of two deserts was a molasses cake, cottage cheese and bayleaf with some candied oranges.  Obviously that description doesn't make you say yummy, but you would be oh so wrong my friend.  This was delicious. 

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The final wine of the evening, is the stereotypical way to end a meal, an extremely sweet wine.  However, what wasn't stereotypical was that this is from Hungary not France.  The premise is the same though, serve a sauterne.  

This is another dish that when I saw it I wasn't sure what to think.  THis is a tea cookie, flan with a caramelized white chocolate noodle and garnished with a little bit of saffron.  However, when I bit into this dish, holy cow.  What a wait to end.

So this is the fourth year that I've been to Next, I've now attended 12 of the 15 menus they've done.  I'm going to close this post with my power rankings.

1.  El Bulli - Former best restaurant in the world now closed, I was one of only a handful of people to experience those exact dishes again.

2. The Hunt - Classic no nonsense food reimagined for high end dining.

3.  Trio - The birthplace of Alinea, so cool to see those dishes again.

4.  Terroir - The restaurant managed to take a concept that I was skeptical about and make me think a little harder about it.

5. Kaiseiki - A cuisine that I'm obsessed with done so well, still waiting for my time to travel to Japan.

6.  Chicago Steak - A very standard menu, but executed very well with top notch ingredients.

7.  Vegan - A meal without meat just simply can't be higher than middle of the pack.

8.  Tapas - Another method of eating that I adore, but I think this fell short of what I would expect the experience would be in Spain.

9.  French Bistro - I liked the concept they were going for and I know why they structured this meal the way they did, but I would have much rather paid a higher price to get some of the upgraded courses in the standard menu.

10.  Modern Chinese - Again a place I'd love to travel to sometime and taste the real thing because this meal just didn't strike that chord with me.

11.  Boscuse d'Or - More bark than bite.  As a premium menu for one of the years this one left me wanting more.

12.  Sicily - I hate ranking this one last, but I just can't shake the feeling that the staff sort of mailed this one in.

Until 2016 Next, the menus should be released soon along with season ticket renewals and I can't wait to get my hands on them.