Next to Sell Season Tickets

If you thought a restaurant selling tickets was far out, read no further. Next Restaurant, the biggest thing to hit Chicago food since the hot dog, is going to sell season tickets for next year.

In case you've missed the food news, Next, Grant Achatz's newest restaurant, doesn't take traditional reservations. It requires tickets. Often, in order to get those tickets, people have been staying up all night, clicking refresh hundreds of times on their web browser and crashing Next's servers. The hype has died down a little - and we've tried to tell people that you can often get same-night seatings through facebook if you're willing to be flexible - but it can still be kind of a pain in the neck.

Well, if you have a lot of cash and a lot of faith, you may be able to skip that process. The RedEye reported yesterday that Next's owner, Nick Kokonas, actually mentioned the possibility of season tickets last April, before the restaurant opened. Now, he's confirmed it. "At some point, likely this month, we will release season [tickets] for next year." The sale will still probably crash Next's server - but at least you'll only have to do it once!

A "season" at Next is three menus. This year, they did Paris 1906, Thai street food and "Childhood." Since dinner at Next runs several hundred dollars (with wine pairings) you can imagine that a season ticket may go for almost $1000. That's quite a commitment. On the other hand, sports arenas and opera houses demand that much money for great seats, and Next's menus have been met with near-universal swooning by critics and diners.

Menus have already been announced for 2012. They include El Bulli (Ferran Adria's temple to molecular gastronomy that closed earlier this year), Sicily and Kyoto. No word yet on how season tickets will be released - but we'd suggest keeping an eye on their Facebook page. You can watch the staff prepare for El Bulli (often very, very late at night) if you follow Chef David Beran on Twitter.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@chicagoist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Anthony Todd in Food on December 7, 2011 9:00 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Opera Tickets

Damn, I can't believe how good opera is. I thought mainly middle aged people and upwards watch opera shows but was surprised to see people in their 20's when i saw phantom ofthe opera. I don't know whether it was because it is a theatre show, but it was damn good. I'm convenienced most people who say they don't like opera haven't seen one.

David Mahon

Actually, twocee, according to the 2010 Census, there are over 23 million households in this country alone that could afford the season tickets. That's any household in the top 20%, as a ticket is less than 1% of their annual income. And there are even more when you look abroad.

twocee

Rome. Frickin' Rome. Except Rome didn't have the internet to remind all of its citizens of the daily disconnect between the classes, so it took it a lot longer to finally fall.

People were living in the kind of fantasy land that Next and its ilk promote during the Depression too. But again, the average citizen didn't really see that, at least not in such blatant ways. Now, we have sky-high unemployment figures reported weekly, we have stagnant economic growth, we have food banks serving exponentially more people every day, and then we get to see stories about how you can pay $1000 for THREE meals during the course of a year. Let's see, that would pay the average grocery bill for about 3 months. And in the food world, this story is not atypical, especially on this blog, which frequently raves about restaurants that charge $50 and up for a meal.

I find it interesting that the editors of Chicagoist, who are typically very pro-Occupy[insert city], who often paint "the rich" in the worst light, and who like to write as though they are very populist, don't seem to find anything wrong with the absolute absurdity of Next and its ilk, and continually promote its existence. I guess since it's a food thing, I simply don't get it.

And yes, I'm feeling very much like my avatar today, so I'm going to go back into my garbage can now.