20 Years of kevinEats

I consider the birth of this blog to have occurred on August 17th, 2006, the date of my first meal at Alinea.

I grew up culinarily sheltered. My parents were not particularly adventurous in terms of cuisine, and thus my childhood diet was decidedly ho-hum, with our local fast food joints often appearing in the dinner rotation. It was only when I went off to college that my eyes were opened to the range of gastronomic possibilities out there. Spurred on by a new set of collegiate acquaintances, I began exploring all the gustatory options available to me in this new environment. After I graduated, I moved back to Southern California and started the process of eating my way through the region.

This was the context in which that Alinea meal took place. I was dipping my toes into the world of fine dining at this point, and during a business trip to Chicago, I decided to pay the restaurant a visit, as I'd heard that Chef Grant Achatz was putting out the most creative cooking in the country. It was certainly the most creative cooking I'd ever encountered, given that I'd never experienced anything remotely close to modernist cuisine (or molecular gastronomy, as they tended to call it back then). What I came across at Alinea helped change my perception of what food could be. Even though I didn't understand much of it--some of the dishes clearly went over my head--I knew that what I was eating was special, and thus felt compelled to document the affair.

I didn't even have my own digital camera, so I borrowed my coworker's and (poorly) photographed the full meal, which people just didn't do that often two decades ago. Those photos, along with accompanying narrative, were posted to my Myspace account, using the site's built-in blogging feature. The response I received from friends, and more interestingly, complete strangers, was largely positive, and motivated me to start chronicling other dining experiences.

Following Alinea, I reckon that Urasawa, French Laundry, and Joël Robuchon were the next posts that really helped grow my audience (people tended to prefer reading about the super high-end spots), and by the dawn of 2008, it was becoming clear that I should probably launch my own web site. One of the people that convinced me to strike out on my own was the author of the now-defunct chuckeats.com, and as a nod to his counsel, I chose the moniker kevinEats for my blog, which went live in March 2008. My first posts on the new platform detailed meals from the recent trip I'd taken to Japan, though I did keep posting on Myspace as well until the end of '08.

My site saw an upswing in infamy throughout the "golden years" of food blogging that spanned the late 2000s to the early 2010s, when there were dozens of LA-focused food blogs operating, pretty much all of which are now extinct, sadly. By the middle of the last decade, long-form blogging was clearly on the decline, replaced by the likes of Instagram and its ilk. I'm part of a dying breed. In fact, I'm actually a bit surprised that the blog has lasted this long, and often wonder how many years I have left in me. Nevertheless, kevinEats is still up and running at 20 years of age, and I figure that I should at least do something to commemorate the occasion:

• The first thing that came to mind is to revisit the restaurant where it all began: Alinea. Ideally, I'd dine there as close as possible to the 20th anniversary of my first meal, which seems doable. Of course, if I'm going to be in Chicago, I'd like to check out some other top spots in the City as well, and the likes of Ever, Kasama, and Smyth certainly come to mind.
• I'd also like to take the opportunity to drink primarily 2006 wines in 2026. My focus will be on the "great wines of the world," which, admittedly, is a nebulous term, but my selections will likely consist of bottlings from leading wine regions and iconic producers. I actually think 20 years is a bit of a sweet spot for this sort of undertaking, since most of the wines should be in their drinking windows, and shouldn't be too difficult/costly to acquire.
• Lastly, I'd like to start the process of donating all the menus I've amassed over the years to the Los Angeles Public Library, which specifically maintains a collection of historic menus. I've accrued over 2400 pieces at this point, and would like them to be preserved for future generations. After all, food is a reflection of culture, and I think it'll be illuminating to maintain physical manifestations of what we ate during our particular period of human history.

That's it for now, but of course, I may think of other ways to celebrate my one score milestone as the year progresses. I'm looking forward to a fruitful 2026!