Twitter to Reality: Alinea's Interactive Tabletop Plating
After providing a tantalizing glimpse at Alinea's latest gimmick boundary-pushing innovation in a tweet last March — "Figured out way to make entire tabletop a plate. Fun, engaging, and entertaining,but is it fine dining eating w/ hands from table surface?" — Grant Achatz reveals the method in a voice-overed photo slideshow on The Atlantic's Food Channel. Key to the method is a latex sheet which covers the table's entire surface, onto which Alinea chefs improvise a plating (often getting the diners involved, spooning out a puree or placing some microvegetable). Frankly, the idea of Grant Achatz handing us the tweezers, sitting back, and watching while we plate our own dinner is absolutely terrifying. That's not to say we don't want to do it, but we'd be scared witless the whole time. [The Atlantic Food — watch for a cameo from the same commis who assisted Grant at the Now We're Cookin' demo, here play-acting as an Alinea diner]
