Inside Next: Kyoto

Time Out Chicago examines the exacting and extreme efforts chef Dave Beran and the team at Next have made to nail their Kyoto kaiseki menu. It's been the restaurant's most difficult menu to source for yet. Beran, for instance, needed 9,500 leaves of a rare Japanese maple. So, says the purveyor, "We've had guys out every week, four guys at least ten hours a week, picking the meticulous examples of this leaf." [Time Out Chicago]