Jan. 29--For its 16th menu, Next Restaurant has adopted a new altitude, if not attitude.
The shape-shifting restaurant still has its army-sized kitchen staff, led by executive chef Dave Beran, and its superb front-of-house service crew (good enough to recognize me, no matter what I do). But this time around, Next has strapped on its hiking boots for "The Alps," a wintry mix of cuisines from countries that border Europe's extensive mountain range.
This might be Next's least-specific menu since late-2011's "Childhood." That menu interpreted the shared youthful reminiscences of chefs Grant Achatz and Beran, and so was grounded in the chefs' experiences. No such ties exist to "The Alps," which gleefully schusses between France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria.
The menu is presented in travelogue form, each country given a separate heading. But first, there is a parable. Diners arrive to a table set with a glass teapot and an accompanying story: a retelling of 'Stone Stoup," a classic tale in which hungry travelers con the residents of a town into sharing their food. The switcheroo (and Next loves its switcheroos) is that here, stone is the soup's final ingredient, not its first. To say more would spoil the fun.
This opening dish establishes the evening's itinerant and communal nature (all but three dishes are shared), and serves as a metaphor for the indistinct culinary differences among countries where borders meet (and where this menu takes up residence).
The evening begins in a French farmhouse, its tastes highlighted by a rich game pie composed principally of duck and squab meat; potato-dough tourtons filled with salsify puree; and addictive praline gateaux served alongside goat butter.
Next, a metal rack, home to a dangling quartet of just-made pretzels, signals that the tour has stopped in Germany. "Pretzels to me are like chocolate chip cookies; you can argue forever which style is best," said Beran. "But the one thing they have in common is that they're hot and fresh, so we figured that if we're going to serve pretzels, they had to be made to order."
Around that pretzel centerpiece are various sausages, including two-month-aged venison sausage, a mortadella-like sliced sausage, dried jagerwurst nuggets that put our table in mind of Snausages (chef prefers the Slim Jim metaphor, thank you) and a sinfully good liverwurst rolled in smoked pecans.
There is also raclette, melted and shaved tableside and combined with fermented greens, potato and chestnut dough. A thick coating of shaved black truffle (about six grams per person, which is considerable) may be added for an additional $50 per person, and though it adds a decadent, heady element, I'm going to recommend that you pass it up, because the truffle absolutely takes the dish over, literally and figuratively blotting out the other ingredients.
Where black truffle works well is in the "warming yurt" course. A yurt is a temporary, portable shelter, useful for escaping the cold, and the culinary equivalent is a cup of hot chocolate with milk crisps for crunch and, yes, truffle. (Those who balk at the notion of chocolate and black truffle have not had chocolate and black truffle.) The premium beverage match for this course is truffle-infused chartreuse, another giddily over-the-top touch.
The arrival of the chocolate marks the menu's midpoint. We've been steadily increasing altitude since that first farmhouse taste. Now comes the peak, dubbed "top of the Swiss mountain," and not surprisingly, it's a dramatic vertical presentation. A smoldering, upright log arrives, topped with unidentified protein, and then a large glass vase is turned upside down and placed over the log, filling up with smoke and remaining opaque for nearly 15 minutes. When the vase is lifted (were the server using a silver cloche, he might well say, "voila"), you have pieces of perfectly smoked arctic char, placed on a dish bearing cauliflower puree, caramelized cauliflower, poached chanterelle mushrooms and circles of chicken jus. Delicious, so much that the guests at my table were making jokes about ordering a second round.
The presentation contains yet another surprise, which I won't spoil.
One could say it's all downhill from here, and metaphorically that's certainly true. But the bitter greens and fennel-ice salad, representing a descent to Italy and an end to the savory courses, is a most welcome sight after all that winter-ready protein. And the trio of Austrian sweets that follows -- five-spice ice cream with apple syrup, warm apple strudel with creme anglaise and the Salzburger nockerl, a simple, fluffy souffle popular in the Austrian city -- are absolutely heavenly.
What's missing from this menu? Fondue, for one thing, but Beran always makes a point of avoiding the obvious; I'd probably have been disappointed if a fondue course had arrived. But amid the parade of excellent dishes, I didn't quite get the knock-your-socks-off dish that Next so often delivers.
Now in its sixth season, Next competes only with itself. And while "The Alps" certainly scaled the peaks, it didn't quite reach the heights of some of Next's previous iterations.
Stripped down to its essentials, "The Alps" is a winter menu, a progression of dishes that put you in mind of bitterly cold nights and the joy of escaping them, if only for a while. It will be interesting to see how this philosophy adapts in the coming months; "The Alps" runs through May 1, and while warm weather is hardly guaranteed in Chicago on that date, there will be tree leaves and budding flowers and other signs contrary to warming yurts by then.
Phil Vettel is a Tribune critic.
pvettel@tribpub.com
Next
953 W. Fulton Market
next.tocktix.com
Tribune rating: Three stars
Open: Dinner Wednesday-Sunday
Prices: Dinner with wine, tax and service charge approximately $240
Reservations: Prepaid tickets sold online
Noise: Conversation-friendly
Other: Wheelchair accessible; valet parking
