You can also go inside the Alinea kitchen with a photo slideshow from Hungry photographer Tuan Bui.

A Note from Tuan:The Alinea kitchen staff are a marvel to watch. I visited the kitchen during prep time, when the staff was getting the food ready for that evening’s dinner guests. I can’t come up with a metaphor fitting enough for how each of the chefs moved with such purpose and precision, whether it be slicing and carefully coring heirloom tomatoes or paring cinnamon sticks down to exact length and diameter. What struck me was the quiet in which they worked - no orders had to be given, no questions or instructions yelled across the kitchen - each person knew exactly what they needed to do for the day.

In the middle of this, Grant Achatz would seem like just another cook if you did not already know his face beforehand. For much of my time there, he was hunched over a cutting board, delicately slicing the seeds away from the pulp of a horned melon. As fast as his fingers worked the knife - three careful flicks, a scrape of the pulp over the board, then onto the next seed - I did not see much more than a few ounces of pulp accumulate over the course of an hour. It was this sort of deliberate intensity, despite the seeming futility of the task at hand, that was imbued in his entire kitchen staff.