If you don’t have $1,500 to blow on his dinner with Thomas Keller, here’s another chance to catch Grant Achatz when he's in town promoting the new Alinea cookbook (which, by the way, is getting good and not-so-good press). Achatz will be offering “instant stimulation” (or so goes the series tagline) on October 30 at the Idea Conference — a sort of poor man’s TED. A mere $750 gets you into the conference, where he'll lecture about Finding Inspiration in Modern Culinary Arts (you’ll also get to hear D.J. Earworm discuss The Anatomy of a Mash-Up!). Or you could just use that money to jet to Chicago and blog each dish at Alinea like the New Yorkers at FoodMayhem recently did — their verdicts differed, to say the least, with one amateur critic saying it was "like being at Disney World for the first time," and the other saying “Alinea stinks … don't deconstruct a dish if you can't put it back together again.” Ouch!

Idea Conference [Official site]