I don't think Alinea is quite like either Manresa or Can Roca. There are only a very few restaurants worth comparing it to in terms of specific cooking/presentation style...El Bulli, sure, and Moto, and probably the Fat Duck (I haven't been there). But not even WD-50 or the gang in Donostia-San Sébastian aren't doing quite what Alinea and that small set of peers is doing. (I don't mean qualitatively, though that's part of it too, I mean the whole theater of the thing, as Jeff notes.)
At Can Roca, or Arzak, or Manresa, or even most of the Mugaritz/Akelarre-type places, the majority of what you're served is 1) recognizable as a variant of a form of something you've eaten before, even if all the ingredients or techniques aren't, and 2) usually served on a plate or some other familiar serveware. The idea of all or nearly all of what you're served being largely unfamiliar in both form and presentation is limited to just a few places, and Alinea's in that group.
At Manresa, for instance, you're going to be served the Arpège egg, and you're going to get hunks of animal, and you're going to get vegetables that look like vegetables and are the vegetables they look like, and you're going to get recognizable starches, and so forth. At, say, Mugaritz, which is somewhere in the middle of this continuum, you're going to get the weirdness like the rocks that are actually potatoes and the beef tartare that's actually watermelon, and even the charcoal is just a black coating on an otherwise very familiar cube of meat, but you're also going to get salt cod in a sauce and a slice/pile/cylinder of chocolate something or other that looks like another pastry chef might have executed it. At the really transformational places, you might not get a single thing you recognize by sight...or if you do, you probably won't trust what you see until you eat it...and you might see only a handful of things-on-plates all night.
The whole set of restaurants here, as with long/formal tasting menus of any sort, or true street food, really aren't for everyone. Some will never like them, for one reason or another. And Alinea and its actual peers demand an incredible amount of attention and participation, so that even those who are inclined to like or at least appreciate this sort of thing -- the Bourdain example comes to mind -- can be turned off by this specific execution. It's a very challenging way to dine.
I read Jeff's report and I see what I've seen from a lot of people who've gone there: while he does say whether he likes or dislikes given dishes, it's more like he's attended a combination of a university seminar, an art show at which he's almost entirely unfamiliar with what he's seeing, and at both of those events there was very high-end catering and a conversation with his fellow attendees to conduct. I have only read maybe a half-dozen reports in which I feel the diner really relaxed and threw themselves into a more purely hedonistic and emotional response, as they might at many other restaurants, and I think all of those have been from people who go to restaurants like Alinea a lot.
From everything you've written, Jean would hate it, and I'm not entirely certain you'd find it beyond an interesting intellectual exercise. I could be wrong, but that's my guess; if Can Roca was only tolerated as a treat for you, Alinea would be torture for your primary dining companion.
At Can Roca, or Arzak, or Manresa, or even most of the Mugaritz/Akelarre-type places, the majority of what you're served is 1) recognizable as a variant of a form of something you've eaten before, even if all the ingredients or techniques aren't, and 2) usually served on a plate or some other familiar serveware. The idea of all or nearly all of what you're served being largely unfamiliar in both form and presentation is limited to just a few places, and Alinea's in that group.
At Manresa, for instance, you're going to be served the Arpège egg, and you're going to get hunks of animal, and you're going to get vegetables that look like vegetables and are the vegetables they look like, and you're going to get recognizable starches, and so forth. At, say, Mugaritz, which is somewhere in the middle of this continuum, you're going to get the weirdness like the rocks that are actually potatoes and the beef tartare that's actually watermelon, and even the charcoal is just a black coating on an otherwise very familiar cube of meat, but you're also going to get salt cod in a sauce and a slice/pile/cylinder of chocolate something or other that looks like another pastry chef might have executed it. At the really transformational places, you might not get a single thing you recognize by sight...or if you do, you probably won't trust what you see until you eat it...and you might see only a handful of things-on-plates all night.
The whole set of restaurants here, as with long/formal tasting menus of any sort, or true street food, really aren't for everyone. Some will never like them, for one reason or another. And Alinea and its actual peers demand an incredible amount of attention and participation, so that even those who are inclined to like or at least appreciate this sort of thing -- the Bourdain example comes to mind -- can be turned off by this specific execution. It's a very challenging way to dine.
I read Jeff's report and I see what I've seen from a lot of people who've gone there: while he does say whether he likes or dislikes given dishes, it's more like he's attended a combination of a university seminar, an art show at which he's almost entirely unfamiliar with what he's seeing, and at both of those events there was very high-end catering and a conversation with his fellow attendees to conduct. I have only read maybe a half-dozen reports in which I feel the diner really relaxed and threw themselves into a more purely hedonistic and emotional response, as they might at many other restaurants, and I think all of those have been from people who go to restaurants like Alinea a lot.
From everything you've written, Jean would hate it, and I'm not entirely certain you'd find it beyond an interesting intellectual exercise. I could be wrong, but that's my guess; if Can Roca was only tolerated as a treat for you, Alinea would be torture for your primary dining companion.
