Family Recipes Tell a Culinary History + 7 New Chicago Restaurants
Why I decided to take my mom’s recipes instead of letting them go in the trash
Over the last few months I have encouraged my parents to start getting rid of things they don’t need or ever use. We’re trying to take small steps to reduce the clutter in their house for whenever they decide to sell and downsize. You can imagine the amount of things that accumulate over the course of nearly 50 years living in the same house: old suitcases, clothes that sit in the back of the closet, tchotchkes of all sorts from paper weights (my mom has amassed a beautiful collection if I’m being honest) to various depictions of airplanes (my dad is a pilot and sold his plane recently, so these models give him some sense of joy I’d think) to a collection of dainty tea cups I never understood why they were in their house as no one ever used them.
There’s one drawer in particular that has been a recent topic of discussion and, frankly, a point of contention between my parents. Over the years my mom has gathered an unruly pile of recipes. It started with a well-organized lucite box holding handwritten note cards categorized by recipe type (desserts, breakfasts, appetizers, meats, etc.) that exploded into this somewhat chaotic mess of newspaper and magazine clippings, printouts from the internet, and more scribblings on sheets of paper. I’ve encouraged mom, who really doesn’t cook anymore — that task now falls to dad — to go through them and keep the ones she thinks she (or I) may want and chuck the rest. Needless to say, after three months of talking about it, the drawer continues to overflow.
I was at their house the other day and brought up the drawer. Instead of asking if she’d done anything with it, I decided to brave the beast myself. As I slowly and cautiously opened it, I feared pages would explode outward toward me or start cascading to the ground. Thankfully I didn’t end up under a pile of papers, but instead I reached for that lucite box and smiled as I saw my mom’s handwriting. I quickly glanced through the cards, and then through a file folder and decided I want to keep the box and go through any of the other handwritten recipes I find in the drawer. I realized these recipes tell stories of my family’s history, my childhood and adolescence. And of many dishes my mom cooked for us: French toast pudding, a decadent triple-chocolate cake, turkey tetrazzini, my bubbe’s cherry cheesecake, my other grandmother’s date-nut cake, brisket, matzo ball and kreplach for chicken soup.
Recipes are history. Ask any chef or home cook who has gathered their family recipes or studied the foodways of a certain area. They relish those recipes and stories to take from their past and build on it. They pull from history, put their own spin on a dish, and when you bite into something, you’re often transported to another time.
The other night, Drew and I watched the “Chef’s Table” episode featuring Mashama Bailey, the James Beard award-winning chef and partner of The Grey in Savannah, Ga, set inside an old segregated Greyhound bus station. During the episode she chronicles her journey from her carefree childhood in Savannah to her teen years in New York before deciding to cook, which took her to France and back to New York. She eventually moved back to Savannah to open the Grey, where she didn’t immediately find her voice as a chef. It wasn’t until she ate deviled stuffed crabs at the Mayflower Cafe in Jackson, Miss., where she was immediately transported to her grandmother’s kitchen. She started reading old cookbooks, talking to farmers and other local purveyors to get a better understanding of Savannah’s culinary history, and knew the path she would take. While I’m nowhere close to being a James Beard winner, I connect with Bailey’s desire to learn from the past.
Because I write about food, chefs, and restaurants, people often ask if I’m a good cook. “I’m a really good eater,” I jokingly reply. While I am a great eater, the fact is I do like to cook. When I do the food often tastes pretty good, but Drew is the cook in our house and he is a great cook. He can step into the kitchen, see what’s available, conjure an idea, and turn out something delicious. You could say I have an irrational fear of cooking. If I have to cook, I start to overthink it, maybe sweat a bit, and get inside my head. But once I’m in the groove or have a recipe I like or trust — or just take a few deep breaths — I start to trust the process and produce something pretty good.
I have said over the years I want to cook more, that I want to go through the dozens of cookbooks we have. But then I often fall back into my routine of letting Drew cook and enjoying what he puts in front of me (I’m a lucky guy like that). However, with all these new recipes I’ll be taking from my mom, I want to start cooking more to help preserve our family’s culinary history. Is it a deep history? No, but it is still something. I have fond memories of eating certain dishes over the years, even if it is a simple butterscotch pudding, which I always loved when mom would make me that as a kid. Even thinking about it now transports me back to the kitchen of my childhood. And it makes me smile.
SG LIST
Here are the things I’m excited about this week.
SG New Restaurants: What’s opening in Chicago?
There’s no shortage of new restaurant openings in any city and Chicago is no different. Here are some I’m excited about and one I wrote about this week — even if its opening is a year away.
Daisies: After years of success in its original location, Daisies shuttered to move down the street into its beautiful airy new 5,500-square-foot home at 2375 N. Milwaukee. Chef Joe Frillman is a whiz when it comes to fresh pasta and seasonal vegetable-driven dishes (his brother owns Frillman Farms) and acclaimed pastry chef Leigh Omilinsky has joined as a partner. Watch for a daytime cafe and pastry counter to open next month.
Asador Bastian: I’m a big fan of Andros Taverna in Logan Square so I’m excited to check out that team’s new Basque-inspired chophouse in the historic Flair Townhouse in River North. Asador Bastian isn’t just another Chicago steakhouse. The menu has tortilla Española, caviar churros, and pata negra jamón Ibérico. But also live-fire charcoal cooking for dishes like high-quality steaks aged on the hoof for deeper flavor; wild turbot, and Maine lobster.
3 plant-based restaurants: There are countless fantastic taquerias serving steak, chicken, and pork around town, but when you can get all those flavors in a plant-based taco, sign me up. Two places opened recently: 1) Penelope’s Vegan Taqueria opened its second location, this time in Andersonville and it’s BYOB, and 2) Don Bucio’s Taqueria from the owner of Bloom Plant Based Kitchen for al pastor and barbacoa tacos, “shrimp” quesadillas, and burritos suizos. And if you want plant-based Middle Eastern fare, Sephardic Sisters opened in the former Kal-ish location in Uptown by the same folks. Drew and I got it last week and I can tell you it’s delish. I had falafel (always plant based) and Drew got the Big Schnitz Pita — breaded and fried schnitzel with labneh chop slaw — and the baklava cheesecake was as tasty as it sounds.
Lonesome Rose: Another piece of Logan Square is coming to Andersonville. Following Pizza Lobo’s opening in February, Lonesome Rose, a modern taqueria with an incredible agave spirits program from the same people behind Parson’s, opens April 4 on Clark Street.
Hawksmoor: The famed U.K. steakhouse, named the best in the world, is coming to Chicago early next year. I broke the news on Crain’s last week. (note: it’s behind a paywall).
SG Event: Chicago Chef's Cook For Ina’s 80th Birthday Bash
Speaking of wonderful chefs and heritage cooking, the Breakfast Queen is turning 80! My dear friend Ina Pinkney, who closed her celebrated restaurant Ina’s 10 years ago (which is crazy it’s been a decade), actually turned 80 last month, but a milestone like this deserves a lengthy celebration. On April 26, Chicago Chefs Cook, the wonderful group of philanthropic chefs that has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for humanitarian crises in Ukraine and Tigray, and for earthquake relief in Turkey and Syria, will now turn its attention locally. Ina’s 80th Birthday Bash will raise money for Green City Market and Pilot Light. Upwards of 40 chefs will be on hand, including Sarah Grueneberg and Bailey Sullivan (Monteverde), Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill), Jenner Tomaska (Esmé), Carrie Nahabedian (Brindille), Sarah Stegner (Prairie Grass Cafe), Tony Priolo (Piccolo Sogno), and Ken Pollk (Batter & Berries). Get tickets now.
SG Cookbooks: Stained Page News
If you love cookbooks, you need to start following this newsletter by my friend Paula Forbes. She and I worked together at Eater back in the day; in fact both of our city sites (Chicago for me, Austin for her) launched on the same day in 2010. Paula has been a cookbook obsessive for years and covered them for Eater, Epicurious, and Food 52 for more than a decade. She now pulls all of her knowledge into one place, like her April 2023 cookbooks, which just went out. So if you want to geek out about cookbooks with her, subscribe to Stained Page News.
SG Tasty Treat: Nu Bake Phyllo Crisps
I love snacks. Sweet, salty, crunchy, you name it. When we were in Southwest Michigan a few weeks ago, Drew hit Barney’s Market in New Buffalo and found these sweet phyllo crisps and now we can’t get enough of them. They’re light, a little sweet, have a good snap and you can have it on its own or spread some fresh goat cheese on top. These Croatian snacks come in three flavors — cranberry oat, apricot honey, and apple cinnamon. We haven’t been able to find them locally and Amazon seems to be out of stock, but there are other markets, like the one linked above, that will ship.
turkey tetrazzini was a staple in my house growing up!
In the early 2000's, my mother self published a cookbook that was a compilation of her own recipes plus close relatives & friends. While some recipes are questionable (for example my great-aunt Rosie's recipe titled "better than sex cake"), her book is chock full of sweet and funny anecdotes and stories and recipes spanning 5 decades that I mostly never knew about. I'm so glad she did this for all of us.