Alinea Mosaic goes live today

I mentioned a while ago that I had pre-ordered the Alinea cookbook (now available on Amazon as well). In the same post I referred to the website dedicated to the book. The website is called Alinea Mosaic and has gone live today.

From a quick look around, the website gives members access to recipes, a forum to allow discussion, the ability to purchase Alinea cookware and videos on how they do things - such as their pineapple and bacon dish. My only gripe with the site at this stage is that they need to sort out the colour palette they are using. Grey writing on a black background is not easy to read. Or maybe I need to go to Specsavers?

As both a food lover and a geek, I find it very interesting how they are combining the web and the book and are quite clear that the two complement each other but don't serve the same purpose. They state that the book is intended as a more formal expression of Grant Achatz's cooking at Alinea, whereas the website will be "rougher round the edges" and will be an ongoing work in progress. With any luck, that means interaction between restaurant staff, including Achatz and members of the site.

I mentioned in my original post that it seems we're going to have a face-off between The Big Fat Duck Cookbook and the Alinea Cookbook and that has been confirmed today. According to the email I received from Alinea, the book is due out in October. According to Bloomsbury, the publisher of the Fat Duck book, it is due out in October as well.

Comments

[timg]

there's a profile of this dude in this week's new yorker, and it's online - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_max

[Anthony Silverbrow]

Thanks for that Tim. I'd been meaning to read that interview.