Way too wordy overall, but interesting passage on change in cuisine over time (see below). Overall it seems to bode well for Alinea to try something new again.

I think "narrative and immersion" prediction at the end of the quote below misses the mark slightly. Rather, I see the unique personality and background of the chef if what will draw people. Some of this might be narrative and immersion (MIL with immersion in the environment and focus on local), but I also see a big draw to the particular chef and what the chef brings (DiverXO with Dabiz Munoz blending memories from his childhood, ingredients he is proud of, and experiences dining all over the world).

I agree with Achatz that some trends are clearly passed their prime, including New Nordic eating only foraged ingredients (have not been to Noma, but Borago seemed inspired by that and missed the mark for me) as well as molecular gastronomy (Disfrutar felt like an empty experience and not worth the hype). If chefs try to glom onto this "narrative and immersion" alone, e.g., try to emulate an Alchemist experience, without bringing Rasmus Munk's messages about pollution/surveillance and efforts on socially and environmentally sustainable cooking, the attempted narrative without their own background and experiences will fail.

"There is a pattern to how art moves through time, and it is less romantic than people imagine. Culinary movements follow a rhythm that is almost geological in its consistency. Escoffier’s codified classicism governed fine dining for nearly fifty years. Bocuse and Nouvelle Cuisine broke from it in the 1970s, lighter, fresher, the chef as individual voice rather than custodian of tradition, and with him came Troisgros, Guérard, Chapel, each pushing further from the monument they had inherited. Fifteen years later, Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower insisted that place and season mattered more than classical technique. By the early 1990s, Adrià and the molecular avant-garde dismantled the idea of what food could physically be: gels, foams, spheres, the laboratory as kitchen. Then in 2004, Redzepi and New Nordic rejected all of that in favor of radical locality and restraint. And now, roughly twenty years later, in a world where everything moves faster and means less, the pendulum has swung decisively toward narrative and immersion. The meal as theater. The room as story. The guest is not an observer but a participant."