One of America’s most lauded restaurant groups is undergoing a big shake-up.
Nick Kokonas, the co-founder of the Michelin three-starred Alinea in Chicago, has sold his ownership stake in the Alinea Group, Eater Chicago reported on Tuesday. In a post on X, Kokonos said that he would remain a “minority, passive investor” in Alinea the restaurant only. An investor group led by Jason Weingarten is taking over Kokonos’s stake, with the terms of the deal undisclosed.
“I spent several years seeking someone to buy Steve Bernacki and me out of TAG … It’s a unique premium offering (4 Michelin stars in total) and someone needed to want to operate it,” Kokonas told Eater in an email. “I simply want to work on other projects, unrelated to restaurants, and don’t want to be the reason that TAG doesn’t expand further and create new opportunities for our team.”
Along with the chef Grant Achatz, Kokonas opened Alinea in 2005. It earned three Michelin stars in 2010, and has retained the honor since. The Alinea Group also consists of the Michelin one-starred Next, the cocktail bar the Aviary, the more casual Roister that’s built around a hearth, and the old school St Clair Supper Club. At one point, the group operated an outpost of the Aviary in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City, before closing it in 2020. Achatz will remain on at Alinea, and told Eater that he’s currently traveling and will wait until he returns to Chicago to make a statement on the changes.
Kokonas, who came to the restaurant world after being a derivatives trader, has been a revolutionary figure in fine dining. He succeeded by applying his analytical mind and contrarian streak to what can be an industry hidebound by the old ways of doing things. He launched the reservation platform Tock in 2014, changing how restaurants booked tables, especially at the highest end of the industry. When it came time to release cookbooks for Alinea and Aviary, he spurned the publishing industry to craft and print the books himself, laying out the economics of his decision on his blog. And when the pandemic hit, he and Achatz were leaders in showing how to pivot fine dining restaurants to an effective takeout model to survive—one that restaurants around the country copied.
Taking over from Kokonas, Weingarten has a background in start-ups, Eater noted. He joined the culinary world when he started the meal delivery service Entrée in 2022. Earlier this year, Entrée expanded with the Chicago restaurant Oliver’s. Weingarten did not immediately respond to Eater’s request for comment.
While Kokonas alluded to wanting to focus on work outside of the restaurant world, it’s unclear what his next venture will be. He’d already started unwinding his position in the industry before this, selling Tock to Squarespace and then leaving it in 2022 (Squarespace sold Tock to American Express this summer for $400 million). Kokonas makes wine with his wife in Napa Valley but told Eater that he still considers Chicago to be his home base.
For the past two decades, Kokonas has been called one of the most powerful people in fine dining. But as he exits the Alinea Group almost completely, Kokonas’s time at the top of the culinary pyramid may be coming to an end.
