Looks like it fought back.

boudreaulicious wrote:Looks like it fought back.

Two men enter. One man leaves.

BR wrote:

mattshafferHP wrote:Still no email for me, even as I signed up at the very beginning.

Not sure if you've tried this already, but enter your e-mail address (the one you used to sign up) on the Next page to see if it gives you access.

I requested a new password and that worked. Now if I could only get a table.

RonTam, did you order the regular wine pairing or the upgraded pairing? If regular, does anyone know what the upgraded pairings at the kitchen table look like?

Gali wrote:RonTam, did you order the regular wine pairing or the upgraded pairing? If regular, does anyone know what the upgraded pairings at the kitchen table look like?

There's only one option for wine pairing at the kitchen table.

kl1191 wrote:

Gali wrote:RonTam, did you order the regular wine pairing or the upgraded pairing? If regular, does anyone know what the upgraded pairings at the kitchen table look like?

There's only one option for wine pairing at the kitchen table.

My bad, I was getting the menus confused.

On a separate note, anyone do the reserve wines with the regular menu?

Many of you were influential in helping to build Nick & Grant's business and what did you get in return?

This is a pretty ironic discussion coming from Mr. Plotnicki... who by his own admission emailed me on April 2nd looking for tickets to Next. No, I didn't reply... because doing so would be unfair to all of those people who he is claiming to defend. I bet if he got special treatment he wouldn't be haranguing our restaurant on a public forum.

Quite simply, we came up with a list of roundly 60 patrons of Alinea who have been incredibly supportive over the years... either through sheer number of visits, helping us with procuring unusual or difficult to find equipment or produce, or who have become very special friends of the restaurant. They became our beta testers for both our preview dinners and had an opportunity to buy 2 tables ahead of everyone -- essentially, they were the first emails to go out. Not everyone did, but a few did and were appreciative. So we very much support our regulars... and to be a regular at Alinea means something north of 25 visits... not 4 or 2.

As for extending the Paris 1906 menu for a year... we have no desire to be a French restaurant. If we did this for a year it would feel stale to us. It is not a marketing gimmick... in fact, if we were concerned solely about money we would simply double the price, pack in more seats, and run it for as long as a 'broadway show'.... because after all, that is the model of a hit show -- extend it forever and rake in the bucks. Flat out, we are doing this because it is interesting and difficult. To hear the complaints that somehow we have an obligation to serve everyone who desires the meal misses the point entirely.

To do food and service at this level necessarily limits the number of people we can serve. I am as surprised as everyone else that the tickets are so in demand that they sell out so quickly.

BTW... if any LTH'ers have specific questions about Next or anything else... feel free to post them today and I will try to answer over the next hour or two.

nick.kokonas wrote:BTW... if any LTH'ers have specific questions about Next or anything else... feel free to post them today and I will try to answer over the next hour or two.

can you add an option (via the account settings i would guess) to be emailed whenever tickets are available/released?

i got my initial email but it was during the initial phases where the site didn't work too great. by the time i was registered, etc, the seats were gone. i know seats are being released but i think the email only goes to those that hadn't been previously notified?

every time i haphazardly check the site it says no more seats.

also you might want to check the something to drink subforum, the aviary thread is there and there's a good question about non-alcoholic drinks for the DD (aka the saddest person at aviary).

thanks

The email notifications are problematic for a few reasons.... 1) we would literally be sending out thousands of emails every morning. Many of those hit spam filters, then we get hundreds of emails saying that they never got the email. 2) by the time the email hits the tables will go out and be gone. Essentially we are swapping one notification system for another. 3) we really don't want to be sending out tons of emails to people to the point where they get sick of them / unsubscribe etc. Even if it is opt-in we just don't like that philosophically.

I do post up notifications on Facebook nearly daily. That is the best day to check when they go on sale. I will say, however, that we have had upwards of 3,000 people trying to buy 40 tables... so they go very quickly.

Finally, this will be a non-issue with the second menu onward. We rolled it out this way in order to give preference to those who signed up early. I do recognize that this hardly worked except for the first hour we went live. Starting with our second season we will simply post up 90% of the tickets at once on a single day and sell them for as long as it takes to sell them out. Then we will hold the remaining 10% for same-night sales / walk-ins from Aviary / visiting chefs.

I will check out the Aviary post.

I do want to say thank you to Nick for responding to some of the concerns posted. I appreciate the responsiveness, even though I have no personal investment in the responses.

Nick, are there any plans regarding the ticket subscription?

ndgbucktown wrote:Nick, are there any plans regarding the ticket subscription?

I'll let Nick confirm, but when I was there, a server told me they were looking at the November/December timeframe before releasing the subscription service.

I'd be interested in any information regarding the season tickets if you can share them, too.

And I'm still interested in what happened to Chef Beran's jacket

Hi Nick,

Is it possible to upgrade your ticket (pay an additional cost) so that you can get the Kitchen Table Menu at a regular table? If not right now, maybe in the future?

Thanks!

~Bill Brigden

Here's a question: in the future would it be possible to itemize the emailed bill/receipt? We're going with friends, and frankly we can't remember how to split the bill, as the receipt comes through as just the final non-itemized total price.

Vit,

Can't you just divide the bill by the amount of people and get the per person amount?

Snark wrote:Vit,

Can't you just divide the bill by the amount of people and get the per person amount?

then the people who don't drink are subsidizing the people who do drink.

Bill...

We can't do the kitchen table out in the main dining room for a few reasons...

1. it is more intricate and requires more physical table space for the serviceware.

2. it is a far longer menu and the seating template for the main dining room is such that we cannot support it.

3. we would need to hire 10 more cooks.

-- Nick

Vitesse98 wrote:Here's a question: in the future would it be possible to itemize the emailed bill/receipt? We're going with friends, and frankly we can't remember how to split the bill, as the receipt comes through as just the final non-itemized total price.

I did have a similar challenge, which could have been remedied if the costs were posted on the website outside of the elusive ticketing page. Another challenge I hadn't previously prepared myself for prior to the ticket purchase was deciding how many people in the Kitchen Table was going to pay for the Reserved Wine Pairing/Non-Alcoholic Pairing. Since there was a 10 minute window to buy the tickets, I had to make some educated guesses which luckily worked out perfectly.

Not to be rude, but if you can afford to go to a restaurant such as Next, isn't it just simpler (and more seemly) to just divide the total by the number of guests?

DutchMuse wrote:Not to be rude, but if you can afford to go to a restaurant such as Next, isn't it just simpler (and more seemly) to just divide the total by the number of guests?

That's all well and good, until you have dinner with someone like me, who orders at least 3 negroni's made with top shelf gin, etc. before dinner, another during dinner, a few glasses of wine, and after dinner scotch or mescal, and then maybe an amaro just to straighten things out.

I sympathize with those who don't drink as much or order less costly dinner items, and don't feel like they should be subsidizing my alcoholism.

Not to worry then because you can't order additional drinks at Next!

TCK wrote:Not to worry then because you can't order additional drinks at Next!

Oh, but you can...kinda. At least, we were allowed to add two wine pairings at the table. When we booked we weren't sure if everyone would want wine, so we only bought 2. It became apparent there would be a battle royale over who got to drink, so we asked if we could add 2 more when we arrived. They were happy to oblige and presented the bill at the end of the meal.

kl1191 wrote:

TCK wrote:Not to worry then because you can't order additional drinks at Next!

Oh, but you can...kinda. At least, we were allowed to add two wine pairings at the table. When we booked we weren't sure if everyone would want wine, so we only bought 2. It became apparent there would be a battle royale over who got to drink, so we asked if we could add 2 more when we arrived. They were happy to oblige and presented the bill at the end of the meal.

Well, yeah, but you can't order a scotch after dinner.

Hi all,
Looks like I'm a little late to the party, but I was also at the kitchen table dinner with Ron Tam. It seems like most of the details have already been covered, but I'm happy to answer any questions about our experience. Overall, it was an excellent time -- I tip my hat to Dave, Rene, Grant, and Nick for their fastidious attention to detail.

Cheers,
Doug

Not to be rude, but if you can afford to go to a restaurant such as Next, isn't it just simpler (and more seemly) to just divide the total by the number of guests?

Not to be obvious, but one thing that makes Next more affordable to me is not getting the drink pairing and adding at least 50% to my meal cost. My personal meal cost something like $85, which is not too bad. The regular wine pairing would have bumped it up by $50+. Our dining companions are getting the wine pairing. We are not. Ergo, $100+ of the bill is their's alone, so it's not as simple as dividing it four ways. Unless you honestly believe it to be, er, more seemly to shoulder $50 of their drinking bill, in which case I want more guys like you as friends.

The reason itemization is such an obviously called for change to the receipt is that it's more than possible for four people to dine at Next and each of them owe a significantly different amount. Say, $85 (for the meal and water), around $100 (for the meal and non-alcoholic pairing), around $130 (for the wine pairing) and around $170 (for the meal plus reserve pairing). And of course that number and those numbers will likely be different each time one dines there, since the price of the base meal will shift and slide. Yet nowhere online or on my receipt is it broken down like I did above. There's just the final tally.

Did you ask for an itemized bill?

Darren72 wrote:Did you ask for an itemized bill?

There is no bill - the "bill" has been prepaid via the ticket purchased online. What is being requested is that ticket buyers are given more info that breaks out the component costs of what they purchased, presumably with receipt of the ticket.