Few chefs have caught the media's attention as powerfully as Grant Achatz, chef/owner of Alinea restaurant in Chicago. His food is inventive and constantly surprising, and Alinea was titled the Best Restaurant in North America by Gourmet in 2006, the seventh best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2010, and Achatz received the James Beard award for Outstanding Chef in 2008—all before he hit 40. But the onslaught of accolades became near-irrelevant when, in 2007, Achatz was diagnosed with stage-four squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth. More

Grant Achatz's Alinea cookbook came out back in 2008, but it's getting more attention now with the release of Modernist Cuisine and all of Achatz's new projects (read more about them in our interview). Even if you don't picture yourself making spheres of beet juice or mozzarella balloons every night, it's still a fun book to have on the shelf. Enter to win one of the five copies we're giving away here. More

Alinea chef Grant Achatz just published his memoir Life on the Line, which details his path to culinary greatness and his coinciding battle with tongue cancer. He's simultaneously been in the process of opening his new restaurant project Next, and the accompanying bar Aviary. The man's busy! Learn about his upcoming projects, and his secret love of Little Caesar's. More

"It's impossible to glean by looking and tasting whether a dish was created by a man or a woman." Photographs by Belathée Photography On Monday night I was one of two sacrificial guys (Alinea's Grant Achatz was the other) on a panel discussion titled Gender Confusion: Unraveling the Myths of Gender in the Restaurant Kitchen. We delved into the following fascinating, potentially freighted, and cosmic question: Do women working in restaurant kitchens have discernibly different cooking styles than their male counterparts? And, can supposedly sensitive palates tell the difference? Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin and thoughtful writer–food philosopher Gwen Hyman, co-author of Urban Italian (written with her chef husband Andrew Carmellini), were the women Achatz and I got to... More

As Alinea chef-partner Grant Achatz tweeted last week when this video was posted: "Ppl ask - who eats @ Alinea. Think we only get sophisticated-rich- old. We get avg Joes 2. I swear..." [Video, after the jump.]... More

From the "Lazy Sunday"–inspired Grant Achatz rap: "... Yo, where’s the first course? / Garnished roes, dude. / Then hit the fois gras, it's my favorite food. / I prefer Pork Belly. / That’s a good one, too. / Sweet Potato is the best. /True that. / DOUBLE TRUE...." [MenuPages Chicago]... More

All you food-lovin' Twitter haters out there might change your mind about the microblogging service when you see some of the food luminaries who are tweeting. The San Francisco Chronicle namechecks a few: Ruth Reichl, Martha Stewart, Mark Bittman, Grant Achatz. The paper localizes the story by noting some well-known Bay Area chefs using the service: Daniel Patterson, Chris Cosentino, Nate Appleman, Eater SF, and Richie Nakano. (And, as always, you can follow Serious Eats here: @seriouseats.)... More

MenuPages Chicago talks to Alinea chef Grant Achatz about his involvement with the just-launched Atlantic Food Channel: The blogging has been very self-educational for me. It is rare that chefs take the time to step away from their kitchens (or TV studios) to reflect on the why and what it is that they do. I will produce between 2 and 3 posts per week, in the beginning I will focus on my recent travels to Madrid and Japan and how these trips both informed me of changing times in modern gastronomy.... I think it will be a cool look into what I think is a very transitional time in gastronomy, and how Alinea is reacting to it. Related: 'The Atlantic'... More

The always thoughtful Corby Kummer enters the realm of food blogs with today's launch of The Atlantic's Food Channel (the always high-minded Atlantic calls all of their blogs channels for some reason). Note to Corby and all the other folks at the Atlantic: blog is not a four-letter word. Welcome, Corby, and thanks for the shout-out on your welcome post. The list of contributors, which includes Zingerman's Ari Weinsweig, Alinea chef Grant Achatz, and nutrition and food politics guru Marion Nestle, is impressive, and we look forward to conversing with each one of them in due time.... More

Actually, it's going to be called "Taste," according to indieWIRE. Documentarian R.J. Cutler says of his next project on Alinea's executive chef: “He's considered by many to be one of the greatest chefs in the world, and he’s had tongue cancer, and in battling the cancer, he lost the use of his taste buds on his tongue.” [via MenuPages]... More