Next 2015 Dinners!

Announcing our 2015 Menus !

Season Ticket Holders will receive renewal schedule emails soon. Tickets will go on sale Thursday for Season Ticket renewals, Saturday for the public.

New this year:
Choose any three dates you wish, one for each menu. Same party size, please. We heard from many patrons who wished to reserve specific dates to celebrate and completely rewrote our Season Ticket purchasing process.
January - May
Next: Bistro
4 Years after opening with our Paris 1906 menu we embrace the more casual side of Parisian dining culture. With the great flood of 1910 behind them, Parisians embraced the Bistro. In 2015, Next will as well.
Every week we will introduce new items on our evolving 5-7 course chalkboard menu -- we will also have specials and supplements on a daily basis.
Casual, delicious, and filling for the cold Chicago winter. And the kind of menu you'll want to revisit every few weeks.
$80-$120 per person.
Please note: optional supplements of $ 15 - $ 75 will be available to order in the dining room.
------
May - Sept
Next: Tapas
A simple and raucous flow of a few dozen bites descends on your table satisfying the savory, salty, bitter and sweet. The order of the courses matters less than the enjoyment. Weather permitting we will utilize the sidewalk space to start your experience. Make new friends, visit the kitchen, maybe even dance (?!).
Small bites in Spain of Tapas or Pintxos are in many ways the predecessor of the long, modernist tasting menus of today. We present both traditional and modern takes on Spanish cuisine from North to South.
$70-$110 per person.
------
September - December
Next: Terroir
This wine focused menu pairs wines from the Northern Hemisphere's greatest viticultural traditions with classic dishes from the same Terroirs. Burgundy, Alsace, Bordeaux, Chianti, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, California, Washington State... the juxtaposition of New World and Old World wines with dishes from the precise area where the grapes are grown and vinified allows for an incredible, delicious, and educational progression around the world of food and wine pairings.
Approximately 15 courses complimenting 10+ vintage wines and a few surprises.
$295-355 per person, inclusive of all wine and food.
Please note: non-alcoholic, non-wine pairings are not available for this menu.

Do these seem a little odd to anyone else? It reads like the special events menu for a wine bar in Central Illinois.

mgmcewen wrote:It reads like the special events menu for a wine bar in Central Illinois.

oh man, ha ha

Same party size, please.

Classy. I wonder what other ways they'll dream up to prise every semblance of volition (along with fun and, based on what I've read in the 2014 thread, a sense of value for money) from their diners. Basing at least two of these turgid, restrictive experiences on ad hoc, social and highly casual eating traditions just seems tone-deaf. Maybe it was the same way for the Thailand menu, too, but I don't recall a restriction like that. Perhaps sold-out services were a given back then.

I've been a season ticket holder since the beginning, but it's going to be really difficult to renew on this one. $80-120 for bistro fare, without wine? $70-110 for tapas, again, without wine? Combine those prices with the numerous tickets going for below face value on Facebook, and it's hard to understand the value in season tickets anymore.

I love the original idea of Next, but this is something else.

mgmcewen wrote:Do these seem a little odd to anyone else? It reads like the special events menu for a wine bar in Central Illinois.

If halfhearted themes like these were truly compelling, ING would probably still be around.

The one thing that struck me while reading these menus is their execution of the Terroir concept. Given the focus of an "educational progression around the world of food and wine pairings", seems like you would need absolutely top-notch service and explanation of the story to achieve this. Based on my experiences with the staff there, not sure you can count on them to deliver.

And maybe it's more of a holdover from how I felt about the 2014 menus, but I will not be renewing my season tickets this year.

very disappointed there is no Chicken and Dumplings menu.

Interesting to see a drop in prices (with supplements to get them back up?) but such an uninspired set of options - bistro? tapas? Too many good bistro and tapas spots to go in Chicago for way less imho. It does read as if they know they need to shake things up but not sure they got the right shake.

If the bistro and tapas menus were just that, confined to very traditional boundaries and prepared as they've been prepared by everyone else before, then I would agree - ho hum. But perhaps both references are more of a lightly painted canvas with a lot of room for improvisation. Wasn't much of the El Bulli menu tapas? Wasn't at least some of the Paris menu bistro-type fare? Those were two of my favorite menus. And I loved the Childhood menu, which if taken at face value might suggest Fluffernutter sandwiches. So I wouldn't be so quick to judge the book by the cover, and I'm actually rather curious to see what they have in the works.

On another subtopic, I view the lower prices for the first couple menus as a smart move to diversify Next's clientele. I'm guessing many people who have never visited Next because of the cost will do so for the first time for one or both of the first two menus. Will be interesting to see.

Yeah, because $120 per person, sans wine, is a bargain. They'll be beating down the doors!

Next should do burgers. They could charge $40 a person, and make it carry-out only. That way everyone who wants one could eat there. Then they could do $20 donuts, for kids.

Ain't this rich:

Casual, delicious, and filling for the cold Chicago winter. And the kind of menu you'll want to revisit every few weeks.

BR wrote:If the bistro and tapas menus were just that, confined to very traditional boundaries and prepared as they've been prepared by everyone else before, then I would agree - ho hum. But perhaps both references are more of a lightly painted canvas with a lot of room for improvisation. Wasn't much of the El Bulli menu tapas? Wasn't at least some of the Paris menu bistro-type fare? Those were two of my favorite menus. And I loved the Childhood menu, which if taken at face value might suggest Fluffernutter sandwiches. So I wouldn't be so quick to judge the book by the cover, and I'm actually rather curious to see what they have in the works.

On another subtopic, I view the lower prices for the first couple menus as a smart move to diversify Next's clientele. I'm guessing many people who have never visited Next because of the cost will do so for the first time for one or both of the first two menus. Will be interesting to see.

It will be interesting to see if bistro and tapas are something more than bistro and tapas. In my experience, past menus have been pretty true to title (and I don't recall anything in El Bulli that I would categorize as "tapas" - many of the items would have been at home on the menu at Alinea, though). But if it's just bistro fare and traditional tapas, then the price is way too high, even if it's phenomenal. The cost of each of these menus on a Saturday night is on par with Schwa and El Ideas - I would hope that these two menus would be just as creative for that price.

In any event, none of these menus seem to be worthy of renewing season tickets, especially since tickets seemed pretty easy to get for even the grand menu this year. No need to give them an interest free loan when there is no tangible benefit to doing so, and when renewing also adds a risk of losing money on the tickets if something comes up and we need to change dates.

I was disappointed as well, but at least for the first two dinners, they have lowered the price point, providing creative dishes (perhaps) at a price closer to Next Year One.

"Every week we will introduce new items on our evolving 5-7 course chalkboard menu -- we will also have specials and supplements on a daily basis."

"Please note: optional supplements of $ 15 - $ 75 will be available to order in the dining room."

Sounds like the $80 (really $105) to $120 (really $157) is for a limited menu with lots of extras

PASS

Vitesse98 wrote:Next should do burgers. They could charge $40 a person, and make it carry-out only. That way everyone who wants one could eat there.

Maybe you missed the Alinea take out dinner? I forgot how much it cost, but it was well worth the price:

http://vimeo.com/77976339

I am a little surprised at this landslide negative reaction. Bistro is not El Bulli, but the entire philosophy of bistro, as elaborated by Thomas Keller and others, is to take very simple ingredients and execute their preparation and integration with such precision and skill that something magnificent emerges -- a project for which Next is very apt, and, in my opinion, likely to produce a very appealing evening.

Vitesse98 wrote:Next should do burgers. They could charge $40 a person, and make it carry-out only. That way everyone who wants one could eat there. Then they could do $20 donuts, for kids.

Next did a burger as part of the Childhood menu and it was pretty spectacular. Wasn't suitable for carry-out though.

annak wrote:I am a little surprised at this landslide negative reaction. Bistro is not El Bulli, but the entire philosophy of bistro, as elaborated by Thomas Keller and others, is to take very simple ingredients and execute their preparation and integration with such precision and skill that something magnificent emerges -- a project for which Next is very apt, and, in my opinion, likely to produce a very appealing evening.

I'm surprised at the negative reaction to Bistro in particular. It is the sort of menu, at least in terms of # of courses and cost, that I envision when I read the memoir and they were talking about what came to be Next.

El Bulli, for what little I know, never struck me as a tapas/pintxos place. Perhaps we should look to Albert Adria's, ahem, Tickets for comparison. One might then think they're blogging about the food.

annak wrote:I am a little surprised at this landslide negative reaction.

Really?

There are 3 types of people who post in Next/Alinea threads:
1. Fanboys (Hi Royal!)
2. Those who have a general bone to pick with Grant/Nick (usually Nick).
3. Those who think that spending the kind of money on a meal that Next charges as a sign of a mental disorder. This last category also includes a subgroup consisting of those who were fans of Next at their opening menus prices, but now bemoans the increases ("I was a season ticket holder since X, but...").

Soon to follow will be the inevitable discussion of price/perception/value.

Hey I'm self avowed before anything!!!

Having recently eaten @ Paris Club, I can say first of all, that $80 or so is not that out of line for a bistro meal, surely one of that many courses (assuming they're bisto courses not tasting menu course), and second of all, one would not need to stretch too far to surpass the state of bistros in Chicago.

Royal Lichter wrote:Hey I'm self avowed before anything!!!

I should have added a 4th group: Trolls, of which I'm guilty of here, although I'm usually in the Fanboy category (Hi Royal!).

I like the fact that they are mixing things up and getting away from what has become slightly rote long-form tasting menu. Both bistro and tapas seem to be a break from the ordinary and each offer something different. Terroir could be outstanding; while not all of Next's wine picks have been home runs, I generally think they do a fantastic job in their selections, and I usually come away with one or two wines worth seeking out for home enjoyment. An entire menu devoted to wine could be something special.

I want to continue my subscription, I really do, but I'm skipping today's sale. If a menu gets rave reviews, I'll buy a one-off table, but I just can't justify giving Next another interest-free loan for what usually turn out to be my three most expensive meals of the year.

There are some well-regarded high-end dining spots in Chicago (Grace is the first that comes to mind) that I haven't been to yet because I'm tying up so many of my dining dollars with Next each year. So I'm hoping that change will be good and I'll have a great meal at Grace in the coming months.

And by virtue of the most expensive dinner being the final dinner of the year, two-thirds of the "loan" will not be "paid back" until fall 2015. Together the first two meals cost $150 (excluding drinks, tax, and tip), whereas the third meal itself is $295.

I am now comfortable with buying a ticket (as at Alinea), but not with such an expensive and long-term subscription.

GAF wrote:And by virtue of the most expensive dinner being the final dinner of the year, two-thirds of the "loan" will not be "paid back" until fall 2015. Together the first two meals cost $150 (excluding drinks, tax, and tip), whereas the third meal itself is $295.

I am now comfortable with buying a ticket (as at Alinea), but not with such an expensive and long-term subscription.

I did peruse the ticket availability today out of curiosity. Unless you're willing to commit to a 10 pm or 10:30 pm seating, you'll pay at least $10 more for an earlier seating on an off-peak day.

chgoeditor wrote:

GAF wrote:And by virtue of the most expensive dinner being the final dinner of the year, two-thirds of the "loan" will not be "paid back" until fall 2015. Together the first two meals cost $150 (excluding drinks, tax, and tip), whereas the third meal itself is $295.

I am now comfortable with buying a ticket (as at Alinea), but not with such an expensive and long-term subscription.

I did peruse the ticket availability today out of curiosity. Unless you're willing to commit to a 10 pm or 10:30 pm seating, you'll pay at least $10 more for an earlier seating on an off-peak day.

There's only a couple of prime-time tables available for the 2's and 4's. I got the early shoulders on a Sunday. The prime tables are just insanely hard to get.

I have no problem taking one of the first reservations of the evening, as it allows for an abundance of time to enjoy an after-dinner cocktail or two downstairs.

ReddiWhipSmart wrote:I have no problem taking one of the first reservations of the evening, as it allows for an abundance of time to enjoy an after-dinner cocktail or two downstairs.

exactly. beat the traffic going down, too.

People have been able to get cocktails downstairs? I've been down there once, in 2011. Since buying season tickets in 2012, it's been full every time I've asked.