The humble carrot. What can you do with a carrot?
Well, if you’re Dave Beran, executive chef of Next, an avant-garde restaurant in Chicago, you instruct farmers around the Midwest to pluck 600 pounds of carrots out of the ground upon the first frost in October. You have the farmers bury these carrots in mounds of sawdust, knowing the vegetables will dry out slightly and sweeten. Months later, you roast 120 dried out, woody carrots each day until they are soft and very sweet, their colors jewellike, their flavor bold and bright. You serve them to diners nearly unadorned on a handmade plate during an elaborate theater-like night of dining called “The Hunt,” and finally show what a carrot can be.
Next was conceived by chef Grant Achatz and his business partner Nick Kokonas, the brains behind Alinea, another high-end Chicago restaurant that earned three Michelin stars and was been named best restaurant in the U.S. by Gourmet magazine in 2006. Next opened in 2011, earning praise as well. After attending the restaurant’s opening menu, “Paris 1906,” Sam Sifton, the New York Times’ restaurant critic at the time, wrote, “My notes from the evening concluded in block letters, hastily written before sleep, a testament to the power of the menu and its spectacular execution: ‘TIME TRAVEL.’ ”