If you don't know the restaurant Alinea, know this: it's one of the best restaurants in the world and it's as much a mad science lab and art museum as it is a place to eat dinner. It's crazy, I mean they serve things like edible helium balloons. Somehow, this normal guy recreated all of that magic at home.
How did Allen Hemberger, the normal guy who's a visual effects artists in his day job and doesn't quite have a chef background, do it? After eating at Alinea and having his mind blown, he decided to cook every single recipe from Alinea's cookbook. Which you might think is easy and cheating until you realize how complicated each recipe and dish is. The recipes aren't made for normal cooks, like how clothes from the fashion runway aren't made for normal people.
You need special equipment, sometimes even special dishes, various smaller recipes for each main recipe, weird ingredients, new techniques gels, foams, an entire laboratory and an insane amount of skill and patience and craziness to pull it off. Allen had it all, and when he didn't, he learned how to do it or build it on his own or go searching for that special ingredient. Watch his journey below.