A Day Of Chicago Dining To Make You Sick (Plus, It's Impossible)

By Anthony Todd in Food on Oct 12, 2012 5:40PM

We love Tru - they have levitating food! But after a day like this, we'd rather go to bed.

It's always interesting to see what outsiders want to do when they come to Chicago. Sometimes it's enlightening, sometimes it's amusingly bad. Sometimes, as in a recent article by Forbes Travel Guide Editor Alex Skjong, it's expensive, potentially sickening and, well, impossible.

The article, "A Day of Fine Dining in Chicago," started out innocently enough: Breakfast at Sixteen in Trump Tower. It's a great breakfast with a great view, though it may be the only time we've spent $80 on breakfast for two people in our lives. But whatever; it's Forbes. They're high rollers.

After breakfast, Skjong suggests you head to Giordano's, Mr. Submarine or Home Run Inn. Kind of blase, but not bad—though the calorie count is beginning to mount. Here's where it gets troubling. After a huge breakfast and deep dish pizza, he suggests a decadent, butter-laden dinner of rack of lamb and sweet garlic flan up in the sky at Everest. We're pretty hardcore, but that combination might just kill us dead with spontaneous heart failure.

The best part? End your day by just popping into Alinea for dessert. If you're scratching your head in confusion, it's not just you: you can't do that. You can only get a full tasting menu at Alinea. Owner Nick Kokonas immediately reacted on Twitter: "Does this mean that people are going to start showing up asking only for dessert? … #factcheckplease."

Luckily, Skjong wrote a correction after someone pointed out his error. Now the guide suggests that you instead go to Tru for a multi-course dessert. At least this makes the itinerary possible (but you have to call ahead), but if you weren't dead already from the pizza and multiple courses of French decadence, multiple courses of dessert at Tru (as much as we love it) with wine pairings would be the final nail in the coffin.

Next time, how about you ask a Chicagoan before you write a guide?

The original section on Alinea has been taken down, but you can read it here.