Each of our restaurants are fueled by our passion for innovation and challenging the status quo.

When we launched the Aviary, our unique, award-winning cocktail lounge, we began by asking ourselves: “What if we approach crafting cocktails the way we approach cooking?” The result is an innovative bar where we leverage techniques we usually apply in our kitchens at Alinea, Next and Roister to the world of beverages.

We wanted to create a book for the Aviary since our first days being open. Chef Achatz recalls some of his formative years as a chef, when he was first learning his craft and was poring over massive, jaw-dropping tomes in search of knowledge. Fat, heavy, beautiful books like those by Thomas Keller or Alain Ducasse were brimming with beautiful, full-page photos that profoundly inspired him.

We had never seen a beverage book that compared to those iconic cookbooks. Cocktail books usually fall into a very narrow category in terms of style and design: “The Gentleman’s Guide to Cocktails”. The small, black book. Few pictures, if any. Kitschy illustrations, and recipes that are portioned for a single drink.

This is due to how books are typically produced. For any book, publishers seek to ensure profit and minimize risk. This often means that the photography, design, layout, recipe structure, and printing quality are intentionally compromised.

Further, the bulk of profit generated for a book goes to the publisher; restaurant cookbooks generally only see “good publicity” for the most part.

For us, neither the economics nor the production process fit our idea and how we wanted to work. Rather than accepting this, we wondered about doing it ourselves. But we first needed to find some innovative, unconventional thinkers who would be willing to take some risks with us.

We found this in husband-and-wife team Sarah and Allen Hemberger. Shortly after we published our first cookbook, Alinea, we came into contact with Allen, who was cooking some of our recipes and journaling about it along the way. Incredibly, he ended up working through the entire cookbook. When he finished, he and Sarah decided to create a book about his experience. They sent the first copy to us.

As we flipped through it, we realized that maybe instead of compromising our visions for what we wanted our Aviary book to be, we could approach this whole problem from a totally different angle. We emailed Allen and Sarah and asked if they’d like to work with us to completely circumvent the current publishing system and make these books ourselves.

And... here we are.