Grant Achatz Has A Trio Class Reunion At Next

• Michael Gebert

Next’s latest menu, a retrospective look back at Trio, the Evanston restaurant that made a former French Laundry sous chef named Grant Achatz into one of the city’s—and eventually one of the world’s—most famous chefs, started this past weekend. But it’s one thing to serve guests the dishes of your younger self—and another to see your old friends from those heady days of youth. So last night Next and the Aviary threw a party for the people Achatz worked with at Trio from 2001 to 2004, and invited (for a price) assorted friends and good customers of his restaurants.

• Michael Gebert

• Lobster dish . . .

• Michael Gebert

• . . . and then Dave Beran drops the rosemary into boiling water

The next stop was another of Trio’s iconic dishes (in fact, I just put it on a list of Chicago classics next to deep dish and Chicken Vesuvio), one that’s still on the menu at Alinea to this day: Black Truffle Explosion.