Some time late last night, shortly before midnight, tickets quietly went on sale for Next’s third menu, a prix fixe flight inspired by childhood that reportedly includes, as of this post, as yet unknown but sure to be creative variants of peanut butter and jelly, mac and cheese, hot cocoa and the like. One course may be served in a vintage lunch box. Another may involve a mini campfire crackling away in the center of the table. One assumes all will involve some degree of nostalgia-tinged whimsy.
Now, I’ve eaten at Next. It was the first menu, “Paris 1906,” and it was OK. The service was great, the food less than memorable, or at least not so spectacular, even for the supposedly good price, that I even bothered trying to get tickets for the second menu, ostensibly takes on Thai street foods (Next’s gimmick is that the menu changes completely every three months, though Thai was an odd choice, given all the great Thai options in Chicago). But with this third menu, I think I’ve reached a philosophical impasse that puts me at odds with Next, almost all, ironically, unrelated to the food. Which is one of the problems.
The people behind Next are very talented, and certainly smart marketers, yet I’ve come to the conclusion its very concept is a somewhat conservative, and maybe even cowardly, approach that not only detracts from the food but couches greater profits as risk and exclusivity as democracy. It’s a deft sleight of hand trick – brilliant, even – but almost insidious in its execution.
Most fine restaurants – that is, the 99% that pick a cuisine and stick with it – spend their entire lifespan building on themes, developing flavors, tweaking recipes, steadily raising the bar. Next does this, too, but almost as an academic kitchen exercise whose benefits are not always apparent to the diner. It’s not just a question of competence, it’s a question of experience: can even the most talented chef truly channel Paris and Bangkok, with all the centuries of tradition that have informed each? Is emulation, approximation, good enough? For that matter, can you really put a personal twist on recipes that have existed for eons? Should you? At least the “childhood” menu affords the Next chef more freedom, but success or failure, in a few short weeks he will already be on to something else.*
By rotating the menu every three months, Next absolves itself of improving on a set or relatively set menu, one of the surest traits of the best restaurants. Instead, it wipes the slate clean, starting over with each new cycle, which then requires a bit of a learning curve. Again, exciting stuff – for the staff. But as the kitchen scrambles to perfect its new menu on the fly, diners must settle for what may be less than exact preparation. Indeed, anecdotally, meals at the end of each menu at Next tend to be more consistent then meals at the start of the cycle.
And yet with each rebirth, Next fosters an almost unheard of degree of hype. Critics who typically visit a restaurant three or more times for a single review are compelled to review Next based on one visit, every three months, which not only negates their ability to assess the consistency of a single menu, but also keeps Next in the spotlight to a degree that other restaurants can’t expect. (Even Alinea, the culinary peak that made Grant Achatz a star and begat Next, can’t expect a fresh review every year, let alone three times a year, despite constantly changing and refining its radical, adventurous menu.) That gives Next an incredible advantage when it comes to publicity. It also gives Next an incredible advantage when it comes to manipulating the often overly compliant press, whose reviews, it should be noted, often mention menu items most diners do not receive, and whose reliable presence and attention makes them easy marks for such a sharp-eyed and status-conscious business.
Which brings us the the faux democracy of Next. Next’s ticket model is totally unique to restaurants, but unfortunately its system for selling tickets might be as well. Next does not take reservations over the phone. Instead, Next exclusively accepts reservations (that is, sells tickets) via its website, which, incidentally, often crashes or malfunctions under the burden. Communication as to availability of tables, both on-sale times and day-of availability, is limited exclusively to the restaurant’s Facebook page. Ergo, those early birds who discovered Next’s third menu was up were either a) hanging around Next’s site late Tuesday night, b) logged into Facebook late Tuesday, having already “liked” Next, or c) connected to someone on the inside who tipped them to do either a) or b). Which automatically cuts out those working late, in bed before midnight, sans a fast internet connection and any other number of hurdles faced by those without the luxury of free time and a flexible schedule. Which is to say, likely a self-selecting pool of educated, affluent patrons, because, alas, free time and flexibility are luxuries in 2011. And then there’s the matter of paying, which needless to say is not nearly as much of a bargain as Next’s initial hype implied.
Admittedly, most fine restaurants price themselves out of consideration, for myriad reasons that range from cost/quality of ingredients to preferred clientele. But Next holds its accessibility out as a disingenuous tease. Sure, there were reportedly $35 seats available for this third menu … but only if you were up at midnight on Tuesday, scouring the internet, and able to impulsively commit to a night out several weeks, even months, in advance. Which is to say, the people who fit that criteria can probably afford the higher priced tickets, anyway, as they’re already a rather rarified bunch.
Yes, Next encourages a vibrant secondary market, but this, too, seems like a method of cutting costs and keeping revenue high from a restaurant that has been explicit about choosing its system as a means of maximizing profit (by way of minimizing loss). It’s a cynical strategy disguised as egalitarianism. Which may come as no surprise, seeing how Next’s co-owner, whose sole restaurant experience remains Alinea and its praised/pioneering/hyped/trendy adjuncts, is a former stock broker who made millions on the market. How very timely. “We are the 1%” indeed.
It’s one thing to price yourself out of reach of 99% of Americans. There will always be well off, rich or lucky people, and I can’t say if it’s fair or unfair to take advantage of the current economic system. The alternative is to make less money on purpose, which is sort of a paradox. But the fact that this restaurant both debuted and has thus far thrived during one of the toughest economic times the country has ever faced does give me some degree of pause. As did Alinea, whose high price makes any restaurant seem cheap by comparison. But it’s not the fine dining model that’s the problem in this case. It’s the Next model in its entirety, with all its facets and moving parts, each of which individually epitomizes a degree of implicit exclusivity that kind of rubs me the wrong way, maybe for admittedly personal or hard to place reasons, but which taken en toto I find especially egregious.
There are any number of restaurants so hard to get into I don’t even bother. There are nearly as many so expensive I don’t even consider. Next, in theory, can be both affordable and attainable, but it makes it very difficult to align those two desirable traits. Which is sort of cruelly mocking those without the means to circumvent the various obstacles. Which is to say, Alinea’s accessibility is rarified, but Next’s is almost … sadistic. And the reason I single out Next is because Next is literally unique.
What other restaurant is virtually guaranteed to be booked up blind for the season, as such, before anyone has had a single bite of their food, let alone even had an idea of the menu? As long as the service remains strong, I think that’s more than enough to carry Next over whatever culinary speed bumps it encounters; surely, the radical shift from menu to menu obscures any frame of reference when it comes to the actual food. Meanwhile. Next’s business model keeps it in the spotlight, which primes/potentiates hype. It just keeps on swimming, like the shark in “Jaws.”
As the man said, “what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine.”