Last month I attended a Google Authors talk featuring Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas, chef and co-owner of Alinea.  It was fascinating to hear stories about the creative process behind the inventive food and restaurant concepts. I appreciated the obsessive amount of detail put into every aspect of the dining experience, especially this one: Alinea doesn’t use tablecloths, so to keep water from dripping off the glasses and ruining the beautiful (and certainly expensive) wood tables, they check the dewpoint every day and calibrate the drinking water temperature to prevent any form of condensation. And in a nod to their event host, they mentioned that they google every guest who makes a reservation, hoping to learn something about them and anticipating their service needs accordingly. Most people would call this stalking, but for some reason I found this very touching. It’s more likely this is to prevent scenarios like “Holy crap, we just put the king of Spain at the worst table in the house!” as opposed to figuring out the whims and quirks of an occasional Chicago food blogger. In any case, the service — and food — was practically perfect when we visited last August.

We chatted with Grant afterwards and he autographed our book. It was a thrill meeting a phenomenal chef who’s also a design and user experience geek.