I went to Alinea (a famous restaurant in Lincoln Park, very expensive and much talked about) once, and was pretty ambivalent. It was really entertaining, but in the end I thought it was all about being clever, subversive, and self-congratulatory, and not much about wonderful food. In general, I think there’s a lot of that among expensive restaurants in Chicago. It’s not that I am opposed to what gets called “molecular gastronomy;” it’s that if that’s what a restaurant is most famous for, I probably won’t love it. I wasn’t kidding when I said Lula Cafe (a much less fancy restaurant in Logan Square) was my favorite restaurant in Chicago.