The other day I went to a Spanish restaurant that shall not be named. Suffice to say that the restaurant looked lovely on the exterior but it was anything but. Hot waiters in nice outfits, terrible service. Nice food descriptions, awful food. The tipping point for me though was curiously lifting the crisp white tablecloth to reveal a rickety, crappy table – analogous to the entire experience.

I did this curious maneuver because I remembered seeing Grant Achatz, owner of Alinea in Chicago, speak at the Idea Conference many months ago. Alinea has won numerous awards for being an overall fantastic restaurant, in the most part, because of Achatz innovative approach to building a restaurant. His philosophy is to break down a problem, any problem, into the simple and core elements and then decide what it is really doing for the overall objective. So, in the context of a restaurant, what is a white tablecloth doing in a fancy restaurant? Simply hiding crappy tables (it’s true). So, why not eliminate this set rule, have nice tables and instead focus on the meal. The same goes with flowers in the middle of the table. Are they really contributing to the food experience? Achatz uses an arrangement of limes on the table that look even more aesthetically pleasing than flowers but, at the end, are actually used in the house dessert. There is no host greeting you, instead diners go through a long passageway reminiscent of Star Trek or the Wizard of Oz to truly get the feeling that they are entering a new environment. The list of innovations in the restaurant is endless but the brilliance is in the simplicity and sheer logic of them.

Sometimes, when attacking a problem people get caught up in a particular aspect of it and never really see the full picture. Alinea’s approach takes this one step further by dissecting every aspect of the picture and seeing how it can be completely overhauled, deemed useless or improved. PSFK summed up his philosophy in these three rules:

1. Understand your medium: Gain as much information and understanding about the challenges and opportunities that are available.
2. ‘Breaking it down’: Look for even the smallest opportunities to innovate. All of these small opportunities will add up to something much bigger.
3. Rebuilding in a meaningful way: Keep the overall goal in mind. Make sure it is compelling, unique, and personal.

Not just for restaurants, but for everything, Achatz’s philosophy is truly an inspiration to show that one can go beyond reinventing or tweaking the wheel – but building it in a different way.