Next 2016 Dinners!

Next has announced their 2016 Menus!

ANNOUNCING OUR 2016 MENUS & SEASON TICKET SALES:
Our 2016 menus at Next reflect what we've grown to love the most about our ever-shifting restaurant. A perfectly seasonal menu? Check. Underrepresented regional cuisines? Yes. A time-warp to a perfect moment in culinary history? You bet.

First up is a menu that ties snugly to our cold, snowy Chicago environs in the Winter: The Alps. While we don't have mountains of the natural variety here in Chicago, we do crave comfort food, a warm fire, and a hearty beverage during our cold winters. In finding a perfect match for our chilly winter we settled on the amazing cuisines of the mountain regions of Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria and France. Alpine cuisine is about a lot more than fondue we assure you. We'll have blankets, warm drinks, and a convivial spirit ready... you find the skiing first! Season Ticket Price: $95 to $125, tasting menu.

Our summer menu takes us south for a Tour of South America. The diverse cuisines of South America merge native foods with Spanish, Italian, African and even Asian influences. The result is a cultural cornucopia of fresh seafood, exotic fruits and spices, and some standby favorites that have traveled the world. Next will highlight key dishes, techniques and ingredients from a number of countries and regions to develop a tasting menu showing the delicious interplay of cultures that comprise South American cuisines. Watch out for our Next Patio street food offerings, a la carte, during the summer months! Season Ticket Price: $85 to $115, tasting menu.

October 28th, 1996. 20 years ago Grant's first day working at the French Laundry actually began with a meal at the restaurant together with his father. A spontaneous and generous gift from chef Thomas Keller, the meal showed Grant true hospitality. Just one year later Ruth Reichl, writing for the New York Times, named The French Laundry "the most exciting place to eat in the United States." Not only is Thomas Keller a mentor to chef Achatz, he is a friend of ours and our restaurants, a visionary restaurateur, and the proprietor of what we believe is the most important restaurant in America over the last 25 years. We are honored that chef Keller personally approved this menu for Next, and we will faithfully recreate the seminal meal 20 years to the day it occurred. Get ready, TFL is coming to Next. Season Ticket Price: $255 to $285, tasting menu.
Season Tickets go on sale first to 2015 Season Ticket Holders on Wednesday, December 9th at 10AM CST. They will have 48-hour access ahead of the public by logging into Tock with the same email address they used for 2015 Tickets. You may log in here: profile.tocktix.com then navigate to Next.tocktix.com, click Book Experience and scroll to Season Tickets.
After season ticket renewals we will open up Season Tickets to everyone on Friday, December 11th at 10 AM CST. We have more tables offered than 2015 subscribers to ensure there is availability for newcomers.

It's pretty remarkable no one has commented on this thread yet. How the mighty have fallen!

Speaking as a former subscriber, the French Laundry meal sounds interesting, but I'm not willing to spend the money. The service just isn't there and I find the ticketing concept annoying. I had to miss the Vegan meal due to my mom becoming ill. What a waste of money.

That said, I'll still go to Next if I can get deeply discounted last minute tickets from a desperate seller.

I'd be in for any of these menus. Hoping for less strict dietary restrictions this go around.

pepsican wrote:I'd be in for any of these menus. Hoping for less strict dietary restrictions this go around.

That has always kept me out except for the vegan offering.

It's about time Chicago had a Liechtensteiner restaurant.

pairs4life wrote:

pepsican wrote:I'd be in for any of these menus. Hoping for less strict dietary restrictions this go around.

That has always kept me out except for the vegan offering.

Got confirmation from Next that they can't accommodate any dietary restrictions on any of the menus. Looks like I'll have to go solo if I want to try any of these.

Bump?!?

Eeerily quiet on the Next front. Anyone been lately?

Alps was tasty. Decent value for the $$. Kind of felt burned after less than stellar Bocuse meal for a lot of $. But Tapas and Alps have me excited again. Seems like it's a lot more tourists or folks from the suburbs these days than when it was the hot scene among city food lovers early on. But tickets are much easier to get these days so don't need to plan so far ahead.

Appears they have quietly put the first two weeks of South America on sale for those interested in going early.

Looks like changes are coming:

As Next restaurant evolves under a new talent that's making waves, Chicago is also losing one of its most decorated chefs. Dave Beran, a Food & Wine best new chef that's helmed the kitchen at the Alinea Group's concept-changing restaurant since its opening on Fulton Market, is heading to Los Angeles in hopes of opening a restaurant there, Nick Kokonas writes. Jenner Tomaska, who's a James Beard Award finalist this year, is being promoted to executive chef.

http://chicago.eater.com/2016/4/15/1143 ... inea-group

I was delighted by the South America menu this week, as much by the ingredients and loose rustic feel to things as by the inventiveness and execution of the given courses. Highlights were the opening chicha morada-and-apple sorbet, the stone-cooked Chifa (Chinese-Peruvian) black chicken with rice, charred sour pineapple, vinegar salsa, and moist fresh corn tamales, and the mid-meal "picnic" of chicha de jora, chili-lime corn nuts (!) (we would not let them take the paper cones away for the rest of the meal, snacking even when very sated), and universal marinated bean salad my Calabrese aunts would endorse. I will not spoil the arrival mechanism of this course. House crackers and chips and brittles of various heritage grains and cheeses were a point of pride.

Potentially (relatively) challenging elements like beef heart, mackerel in ceviche-liquid foam, chicken feet, and roasted "very" hot peppers were actually some of the more straightforward flavors. Some small bites like ceviches and escabeches with mild fish and shrimp actually brought much more funk and super-intense herbal and toasted-spice flavors. Fresh herbs were as omnipresent here as in a Thai or Vietnamese meal at one of the board favorites, amplifying the Asian diaspora (Chifa and also Nikkei, Japanese-Peruvian) associations.

I was surprised that our initial server reported it was a lighter Next offering in both flavors and amount of food - we felt quite full and like our palates were put through the paces, even in single rib-sticking plates like a sweet empanada with bone marrow aioli. Service was still learning the menu (this early week focused on Peru, and they'll revolve through other South American regions before the end of this theme) and not uniformly calm, if uniformly kind (and uniformly inked). Value felt excellent for many ingredients and dishes hard or impossible to track down locally. The $85 dinner menu at our seating time already included at least two (flavorful, tame) fermented potables as part of courses, sparkling water, and an excellent mate or coffee with the desserts (including the Donut of Donuts). Those of us that had a single glass of South American wine rather than the standard $65 wine tasting - which included mixed drinks and aperitif - were pleasantly surprised by generous pours as low as $10. This is decidedly not their highest-concept effort, and I embrace that.

I'd recommend this menu not only to Next and Elizabeth fans (some nice storytelling and ingredient fetishes at a similar price tier), but also to D'Candela, El Nandu, and (erstwhile) Riconcito Sudamericano regulars. The raw materials and the execution are evocative enough of, and improvisatory enough upon, the best regional street food experiences to both comfort and instill genuine curiosity.

Limited number of TFL tickets just went on sale.

pacent wrote:Limited number of TFL tickets just went on sale.

Have you seen the menu?

Just some previews from Achatz's instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIkyYOHgv_Q/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIiKbUNgEgT/