Talking To Vespertine’s Chef About America’s Most Lavish Curbside Pickup Meal

Talking To Vespertine’s Chef About America’s Most Lavish Curbside Pickup Meal

A takeaway meal like no other. Poached halibut with hyacinth vapor.



Vespertine

The most lavish takeaway meal you'll probably ever experience is awaiting your order at Vespertine in Los Angeles this month. As curbside pickups go, Chef Jordan Kahn's tribute menu to Chicago's modernist pioneer Alinea — available through December 20 — is neither simple nor inexpensive. But true wonders are hidden inside each takeout container.

Kahn's menu recreates dishes from Alinea's inaugural year, when Kahn was a Muppet Baby pastry chef in the Michelin-starred kitchen of Grant Achatz. The items as listed on this month's menu — “Bacon, butterscotch, apple, thyme,” “Beef elements of root beer” and so on — sound straightforward but Kahn is hardly the add-a-dash-of-this and dine type.

The ready-to-eat, individually plated small dishes — at $115 per person — are mini-masterworks of impeccable flavor and design. We ordered the DIY family-style version that lets you build the dishes yourself (still a splurge at $95 a person). Although the prep was a joy from start to finish, the tweezing and frothing and searing of ingredients took nearly four hours from cocktails through dessert (an Achatz-inspired Jackson Pollock-style table-splattering