Anne and Brian visit and John’s 50th birthday celebrations begin

Anne and Brian were in town last weekend and we enjoyed meeting up with them several times. We four went out to dinner on a bitterly cold Friday night at Marisol, the restaurant at the MCA. No pics unfortunately! But lots of good times.

Saturday morning, John and I went to yoga at Garfield Park Conservatory. Always great! It filled up after I took this pic – there were probably about 75 people there.

In the afternoon, we met Anne and Brian at the Apple store on Michigan Avenue. Our main goal was to sort out a transfer of Hamilton tickets that ended up taking a ridiculously long time. Shame, shame, shame on you Ticketmaster! The ordeal took so long we had to go for a coffee in the middle of it. Fortunately, the coffee was very enjoyable, and Anne was able to pop into Nordstrom’s to get some knee socks. It was a really cold weekend and they were as prepared as possible, but the weather kept demanding more layers be worn!

See the flags in the background? Cold wind coming in from the lake!

Saturday evening, Anne and Brian went to see the Chicago Broadway production of Hamilton. Then on Sunday, they called around (during a snowstorm no less) to have a chance to say hi to Liam and Miles and try one of Miles’s macchiato’s. The verdict was: pretty good! Then we headed off to what was a major highlight and goal of the trip: dinner at Alinea, which Anne treated us to, kicking off John’s big birthday coming up in supreme style! Alinea is a 3 Michelin restaurant that’s considered one of the best restaurants in the world. I really can’t add much that wasn’t covered here: https://guide.michelin.com/us/chicago/search?q=Alinea. It truly was so delightful and delicious, and I totally agree with the reviewer who says it feels like you’re at a party rather than at a traditional restaurant. Unfortunately I can’t share the aromas or tastes, but I managed to take a few pics!

Dinner started at a lush, long formal table, with a silver dome at each of our plates. It was tempting for a selfie just like the Bean is.

We were then invited into the kitchen for a delightful bite inspired by a taco and margaritas, shown being served here. It was so cool to be in there with all the kitchen staff working on the dishes yet to be revealed.

We then went back to a dining room set up with small tables (whoa!) and the rest of the meal started. The centerpiece below is releasing coconut and other tropical aromas.

These fires burnt in vessels filled with salt and a charcoal, and the little pot of fall-inspired mushroom and other flavors was nicely warmed up after sitting on the fire grate throughout another course.

A special offering was French toast with truffles, and we got that just for John for his birthday. He shared – it was quite delicious. I can’t remember what the server is doing here but the preparation for this dish and many others happened table-side by the super knowledgable and friendly servers.

I was really amazed by this next dish. After the fire was put out and the pot of mushrooms was served, the next course was a transition to dessert. The server dug out a yam from the salt, where it had been warming all along (surprise!) and arranged yam, a hot cream/cheese, nuts, and probably much more into these little wooden bowls. This was one of my favorite dishes of the night.

Very friendly wait staff! They are such experts at what they do. We had the wine flights along with the meal too (anyone who is monitoring my attempts to drink wine, I didn’t do the wine flight, but I did have a glass at the start of the meal! And I wore a necklace.)

And then we were into dessert, which had a very whimsical quality! We got these spun sugar balloons filled with helium – the balloon and string were both edible and tasted like apples!

Then the full crescendo of dessert started. Dessert started with using artwork from the ceiling as platters for each table, then a musical, scent-filled and visual performance happened, with seemingly all the servers in the dining room at once, making dessert live on our platters. Oh, and all this stuff, super delicious!

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All told, it was an amazing night that we all enjoyed immensely. Thanks a million, Anne and Brian, we had a great time during your visit!