When Grant Achatz's French Laundry pals come to visit him in the serene, light-filled kitchen of his Chicago restaurant, Alinea, the scene strikes them as familiar. Why shouldn't it? They all used to work together. For the dozen years since it opened, the French Laundry, in California's Napa Valley, has come in first in most surveys of the country's best restaurants. As an ambitious young chef from a family of unambitious cooks in Michigan, Achatz talked Thomas Keller, the chef-owner of the French Laundry, into giving him a job practically sight unseen, and he ended up as sous-chef--second in command--for two of his four years there. He wanted to be as close as he could to the best. And now, at all of 32, Achatz has just seen Gourmet magazine name Alinea the best restaurant in America.

That verdict marks the passing of the torch from the most modern, Americanized version of French haute cuisine to something altogether new. The highest and most expensive forms of cooking have always involved the latest kitchen technology. But seldom has technology worked to bring food as far from what was considered normal as it does today. Cooks are straying into the preserves of the laboratory, appropriating equipment, processes, and ingredients that were formerly of interest only to biology researchers and industrial food manufacturers. Among American chefs, it's Achatz who has most successfully walked the balance beam between weird and appealing--probably because of his rigorous apprenticeship with Keller.