Previewing Grant Achatz's Next: 3 Months Of Escoffier, Then...

Next month, Grant Achatz will open a restaurant here that, if all goes according to plan, could be the most difficult, ephemeral and stressful in culinary history. "My idea of fun seems to be more work," he said; he will remain in charge of Alinea, his acclaimed restaurant nearby.

When this new restaurant, Next, serves its first customers on April 1, its menu will be painstakingly reproduced from the classical French repertoire: whole lobes of foie gras baked in brioche, clear turtle soup with Madeira, duck pressed and sauced with its own blood and marrow, as served at the Tour d'Argent in Paris for more than 200 years.

These dishes, which Mr. Achatz has been refining for a year, will be served for all of three months. Next will then morph into an entirely different restaurant, and again three months after that.

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