Alinea opened 2005, instant hit night one
Alinea opened in 2005 and was immediately reviewed by the New York Times on opening night — a huge deal since the NYT rarely left Manhattan at that time.
Snapshot · Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Grant Achatz (award-winning chef)
Explore episode
Jul 15, 2026
Where this was said
El Bulli, Modernist Cuisine, and the Decision to Open Alinea
At 35:55 · chapter starts 33:30
When Thomas Keller recognized that Achatz's creative instincts pointed somewhere beyond French Laundry's cuisine, he arranged a visit to El Bulli near Barcelona — the restaurant where José Andrés had also experienced his awakening. For Achatz, the visit was transformative: not just a revelation about what food could be, but a feeling of being given full permission to invent. Back in the US, he ran a kitchen at Trio in Evanston with no budget and chefs paid just $20,000 a year in 2001. Rather than limiting him, the financial constraint pushed creative intensity. He describes those years as formative in a way that money could never have bought. The success at Trio — including national recognition and multiple awards — gave him the confidence, the pedigree, and the following to launch Alinea in 2005.
Chefs paid $20K/year at Trio in 2001
Before Alinea, Achatz ran the kitchen at Trio in Evanston with chefs earning just $20,000 a year in 2001 — a constraint he says pushed creativity.
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