Each year, Good Eating tips its hat to people in the food and beverage industries who are making a difference in Chicago through their commitment, quality, passion and vision. These experts have enhanced the food scene in Chicago with their accomplishments.
K. Kofi and Yvette Moyo
Founders, Real Men Cook for Charity
In 1989, the Moyos decided more should be done to recognize men in the African-American community. “We were anxious to spread the word about all the positive achievements that often go unnoticed by the media and others,” Yvette said.
Father’s Day seemed an ideal date to schedule the first tribute honoring men as role models in the black community. But the husband-and-wife team added a delicious twist. Men were invited to volunteer time and ingredients to prepare special dishes for those purchasing tickets to the event.
As of this year, Real Men Cook for Charity has raised more than $800,000 for non-profit community groups. The culinary fundraiser has expanded to become the nation’s largest urban Father’s Day event, with celebrity-hosted celebrations in Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Miami, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
A cookbook, “Tips, Quips and Recipes from Real Men Cook,” was published in 2002 to celebrate the organization’s 13th year. “Recipes found on these pages are from the lives of ‘real men’ and the tradition of African-American culture of food preparation,” K. Kofi Moyo writes in the introduction.
– Information is available online at www.realmencook.com.
Drucilla Banks
Nutrition and wellness educator, University of Illinois Extension
Just think of her as Chicago’s cheerleader for healthful living and you’ll understand Banks’ enthusiasm about keeping Chicago residents up-to-date on exercise, nutrition and food safety. With a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Southern Illinois University, and a master’s in home economics education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Banks is well-qualified for the work she organizes in her office at the Chicago Extension Center in the Loop.
But you’re more likely to run into the Illinois native out in the community, where she leads workshops. Hot topics for 2002 included “Food Safety at Community Festivals,” “Vegetarian and Plant-Centered Meals” and “Supermarket Survival Skills.”
Banks, who describes her job as translating scientific research data into useable information for consumers, says that sometimes a nugget of information can make an instant change for the better in someone’s life. “I love being a part of that process,” she said.
– Chicago Extension Center, 216 W. Jackson Blvd., 312-578-9956; Web site: www.urbanext.uiuc.edu
Luis Perea and Laura Cid-Pfeiffer
Co-owners, BomBon bakery
Chicago has the second-largest population of Mexican immigrants of any city in the country. With the opening of BomBon last October, it now has a Mexican bakery that ranks right up there too. Thank Perea and Cid-Pfeiffer, both from Mexico City and both former co-workers at Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. Although not a couple in the romantic sense, the pair shared a love of pastry that led them to join forces on this Pilsen neighborhood project.
“We wanted to do a truly good pastry shop, like the ones from home,” Cid-Pfeiffer said. “In Mexico the bakeries are very European, with French and Austrian influences, and so we have European and Mexican specialties.”
Both chefs had formal training before they got into the business. Perea studied at the Culinary Institute of America and Cid-Pfeiffer studied at schools in Paris, against the wishes of her family, who hoped she would become a lawyer. Cid-Pfeiffer also honed her pastry skills by working with the man she is now married to, Jacquy Pfeiffer, director of the French Pastry School at City Colleges of Chicago (and former Good Eating Award winner).
The bakery does a lot of business in parties, Cid-Pfeiffer said: new babies, birthdays, confirmations and weddings. For everyone who appreciates good pastry, BomBon itself is reason enough for Chicago to celebrate.
– BomBon, 1508 W. 18th St., 312-733-7788
En-Ming Hsu
Executive pastry chef, Ritz-Carlton Chicago
She usually works with chocolate and sugar, but one of Hsu’s greatest achievements was made of gold. It’s the medal she was awarded after leading the three-member U.S. Pastry Team to the World Championship, the Coupe de Monde de la Patisserie, in Lyon, France, in 2001.
She is an eight-year veteran at the Ritz, where her inventive creations grace banquet tables and restaurant counters. In that time, she has carried the banner of Chicago to New York City (1997 Pastry Chef of the Year in America for winning the annual Patisfrance Pastry Competition) and beyond. Other awards include “One of the Top 10 Pastry Chefs in America” in 1998 and 2000 by Chocolatier and Pastry Art & Design magazines.
An honors graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Hsu devotes considerable time teaching apprentices and students an appreciation of fresh products as well as the fine points of presentation.
– Ritz-Carlton Chicago, 160 E. Pearson St., 312-266-1000
Bill Reynolds
Director, Washburne Culinary Institute
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Chicago’s oldest cooking school has been in the city for more than 80 years, and Reynolds is the man working overtime to give it a facelift.
Reynolds came to town in 2000 from his former post as the vice president of continuing education at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. Washburne at that point was a struggling institution until the city stepped in, brought it into the City Colleges of Chicago system and brought Reynolds on board to expand the program.
“I had always loved Chicago and love a challenge,” Reynolds said.
A good thing on both counts. Washburne, which serves 100 students in its professional program at Kennedy-King College, went through a protracted fight with neighbors of the South Shore Cultural Center as Washburne pressed to make the Center its home. Under an agreement reached this summer, Washburne will renovate part of the historic building, turning it into a cooking school with professional and continuing education programs and creating a restaurant, all of which is set to open in a year. Washburne also is building a main campus at 63rd and Halsted Streets, to open in 2004. That will offer professional programs, catering facilities and a program to develop urban gardens on the South Side.
“I just saw great potential here,” Reynolds said of the Institute.
Chicago returns the compliment.
– Washburne Culinary Institute at City Colleges of Chicago, Kennedy-King College, 6800 S. Wentworth Ave., 773-602-5487; www.ccc. edu./washburne
Patty and Tom Erd
Owners, The Spice House
With their shelves and canisters of aromatic whole spices from all across the globe, this couple has broadened palate possibilities for home cooks and area restaurants. But they’ve also spent a lot of time talking about the history and lore of spices to just about any group that asks.
“We have done so much teaching and lecturing,” Patty said. “We’ve got 60 to 90 inner-city high school kids coming in tomorrow,” part of a culinary tour that includes Chicago’s Green City Market. Busloads of older Chicagoans stop by, courtesy of Chicago Park District programs, and the Erds conduct a class, Spices 101, for Kendall College culinary students.
“It’s certainly not a Las Vegas act,” Patty said. But the mix of history, cookery and far-off places “that most people in Chicago will never get a chance to visit” keeps people coming back. In addition to their modern roles as flavorings, spices have a past as money and medicine. The exotic origins of spices may be the reason for the Erds’ popularity as a sort of tourist attraction, but the business “is literally the daily grind,” Patty says. And the most common customer question isn’t about Madagascar vanilla or Spanish smoked paprika. “It’s ‘What do you have that’s good on steak?'”
– The Spice House, 1941 Central St., Evanston, 847-328-3711; and 1512 N. Wells St., Chicago, 312 -274-0378
Beverly Decker
Executive director, Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation
Welfare reform in the mid-1990s presented a challenge for many in the non-profit community. The Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation was no exception. “We wanted to be pro-active,” said Decker, who founded the organization in 1990.
The federation, created primarily as a food bank, already had been offering classes in food handling and sanitation to volunteers in its soup kitchen and shelters. “We thought, ‘What better way to be pro-active than develop a job program, to train people in culinary skills and get them employed?’ ” Decker said.
Oliver’s Kitchen was created in 1999 to prepare homeless, welfare-to-work participants for careers in the food service industry. Certified by the Illinois State Board of Education, the program offers 12-week classes in subjects including pantry skills, sanitation and food preparation. And because food service jobs don’t require a high school diploma or GED certification, Oliver’s Kitchen is providing opportunities to what Decker describes as “the hardest-to-train and hardest-to-employ population.”
So far in its short history, Oliver’s Kitchen graduates have an 87 percent success rate, Decker said. And that means that hundreds of Chicagoans have a future.
– Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation,
4345 W. Division St., 773-252-3663; Web site, www.antihunger.org
Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand
Executive chef and pastry chef, Tru
Contributing to charities, writing books and winning awards are just part of the lives of these two busy people. Once married and now divorced, Tramonto and Gand still work as a team at their popular Chicago restaurant, Tru. As partners with Richard Melman, they brought their sophisticated American cuisine to the Michigan Avenue dining scene three and a half years ago, after working at several other award-winning restaurants in the area.
Tru has won accolades from many sources: a 4-star rating in the Tribune, the AAA Five Diamond Award, and named “most popular restaurant in Chicago” by the 2002/2003 Zagat Guide. Tramonto won a James Beard Foundation award for best chef in the Midwest this spring; Gand won a national Beard award for best pastry chef in 2001.
But Tramonto says he and Gand are “most proud of the staff at the restaurant. The spirit of the team, day-to-day, has been great.”
In January, they reunited the surviving team of Windows on the World restaurant at a dinner to benefit the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund for relatives of employees who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Gand has volunteered with Make-A-Wish Foundation, Starlight Children’s Foundation, Slow Food and Green City Market.
Tramonto contributes time and energy to the Cancer Society and Slow Food and will host next year’s Meals on Wheels chefs brunch. Gand is busy with her Food Network television show, “Sweet Dreams.”
Each has recently finished a cookbook, but they already are working on a new book about their restaurant–written as a team, of course.
– Tru, 676 N. St. Clair St., 312-202-0001.
Fred Koehler
Owner, Lynfred Winery
Koehler has made an unlikely success of a winery in the middle of west suburban Chicago. At the same time he has pushed for a revival of Illinois’ vineyards and wineries, done in by Prohibition and the California juggernaut.
What seems an unusual choice was a natural path for the son of a Des Plaines truck farmer who turned grapes and other fruit into wine. Koehler tasted watered wine as a 5-year-old at the family table, he said, where he also learned moderation.
“It was a different generation,” Koehler said. “We were brought up to respect the beverage, more like Europeans.”
But the birth of Lynfred is a typically American venture, a “home winemaking hobby that got out of hand.” Once the cellar was filled, Koehler’s wife, Lynn, suggested opening “a little winery” in preparation for Koehler’s retirement from 25 years of managing restaurants and country clubs. Lynfred, named for the couple, opened for business in 1979. Lynn died in 1984, too soon to enjoy the double gold medal their 1983 barrel-fermented entry garnered at a 1985 Reno competition of 300 chardonnays. That proved the hobby could become a business.
That wine, like most of Lynfred’s output since, was made with grapes from California, Koehler’s nemesis in other respects. Illinois’ grape-growing tradition, which in 1917 made the state the country’s fourth-largest wine producer, was moribund, a condition Koehler attributes to pressure from California to keep thirsty Illinois–particularly Chicago–consuming out-of-state wine.
As legislative director of the Illinois Grape Growers & Vintners Association, Koehler never quite succeeded in winning a tax on wine sales to help finance the state’s wine industry. But development money eventually did flow. Even with a budget crisis, the state has a viticulturist and an enologist, Koehler said. The state’s 180 vineyards still can’t meet the demand from its wineries (29 and counting), but Koehler remains an optimist: “Illinois wine can only get better.”
– Lynfred Winery, 15 S. Roselle Rd., Roselle, 630-529-9463
Portia Belloc Lowndes and Kelly Gibson
Founders, Slow Food Chicago
Gibson and Belloc Lowndes became fast friends because of Slow Food, an international organization that promotes the philosophy of slowing the pace of our lives while increasing our sensitivity to the growth, processing and preparation of the foods we eat.
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They launched the Chicago chapter in 1998; its current roster of 120 members makes it the largest of the 95 chapters around the world.
“We want people to learn about their food, and celebrate their local and regional traditions of eating. We also want to support sustainability,” Gibson said.
The group conducts seminars, classes, food tours and various events in an effort to educate and enlighten. Slow Food Chicago also has championed Green City Market, where during the summer another of its programs, Slow Food Chicago Sprouts, brings “taste education” to children. (Sprouts also visits elementary, junior and high schools during the school year.) The latest venture is an effort to rescue rare turkey breeds from extinction.
“We’ve created visibility for a movement that otherwise no one knew about,” Belloc Lowndes said. “It’s not a political movement, but it’s a movement everybody can relate to. Especially in Chicago, where we have so many wonderful small artisan producers, raising awareness of them is important.”
– For more information on Slow Food Chicago, send an e-mail to portiabl@ yahoo.com; for information on the international organization, visit the Web site, www.slowfood.com.
Paul Kahan
Executive chef and partner, Blackbird
Kahan grew up in the restaurant business, helping his father prepare food in a family-owned delicatessen and smokehouse. Chicago lost a computer scientist but gained an inspired cook when he changed careers in his mid-20s. Since he debuted at Blackbird in 1997, the young chef has been a leader in supporting many charitable food events including Meals on Wheels, Share Our Strength and The Land Connection. He also is in the forefront of local chefs who have been building relationships with Midwestern farmers through markets and personal contact.
“One of the joys of cooking in Chicago is that everyone keeps pushing to improve,” he said. “No one is standing still. I’m proud to have worked for Rick (Bayless) and Erwin (Dreschler) and I’m proud my own work has been noticed.”
– Blackbird, 619 W. Randolph St., 312-715-0708
Don Newcomb
President, ChicaGourmets
Newcomb is one of those people who, friends say, is everywhere at once. The retired chairman of the horticulture department at Triton College, Newcomb always has juggled his passion for flowers with his passion for food. Once retired, his food adventures kept growing.
Newcomb joined the American Institute of Wine and Food and has been a board member for 19 years. He founded an educational dining group, ChicaGourmets, in 1997 and organizes its lectures, tastings and dinners. He is vice president of the Culinary Historians of Chicago. For these groups, he has participated in planning events, including bringing in nationally known food experts.
But charity work also is a Newcomb passion. Recently, he has volunteered for Green City Market. “The most rewarding events I’ve worked on were the Meals on Wheels brunch for the Chicago Fund on Aging and Disability, and the March of Dimes Gourmet Gala, helping organize the chefs auction.” He has worked on both events for about 20 years. We have a feeling he will still be at it 20 years from now.
– ChicaGourmets, 708-383-7543
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Who will be next year’s winners?
If you know someone who deserves a Good Eating Award for outstanding work in the food and beverage industry, drop us a line with their name, accomplishments and phone number. We’ll consider them for next year’s awards. Send to: Good Eating Awards, baiduhai, Room 500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Or fax to 312-755-0212, or send an e-mail at [email protected].