Chefs Who Feed Your Soul, Too
Local Food Forum writes often about the steadfast generosity of Chicago’s culinary community, as expressed in fundraising dinners produced by organizations such as Chicago Chefs Cook, The Evolved Network and Green City Market. The photo above is worth at least 1,000 words.
The occasion was Thursday night’s dinner at Gene and Georgetti restaurant (in Chicago’s River North community), which was part of the kickoff for Chicago Chefs Cooks’s five-day Emilia-Romagna Dinner Series. Through Monday, 10 Italian restaurants across Chicago will be serving special meals and experiences with the proceeds going to provide relief to victims of massive flooding in a historical agricultural region in Italy.
Front-center is Chef Sarah Stegner of Prairie Grass Cafe, flanked by fellow Chicago Chefs Cook co-founders Darren Gest and Eda Davidman. The tall man in the back is Cristiano Bassani, Gene and Georgetti’s executive chef.
But I want to bring special attention to the woman in the white chef’s coat, Genie Kwon of Kasama, the red-hot Filipino restaurant in East Ukrainian Village. Genie could well be taking a victory lap, because on Monday she and husband Timothy Flores received the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes. Instead, she was true to her commitment to apply her culinary arts to the Chicago Chefs Cook dinner.
Chicago chefs are awesome.
Rocking Bialys in Chicago
A brick-and-mortar store is hopefully in the future for Sam Zeitlin and his Zeitlin’s Delicatessen. For now, he’s up to eight farmers markets where he sells delicious baked goods — breads, bagel dogs, muffins, babka and cookies — and those round items that on first glance might look like cherry danish, but are actually bialys filled with a roasted tomato, onion and garlic reduction.
I bought four at the South Loop Farmers Market Grant Park on Thursday evening, and this morning my breakfast was one of these babies with some grated and melted fresh parmigiano. So my Friday got off to a good start.
While this is a bit of a stray from tradition — cooked onions and/or poppy seeds are the usual filling — Sam’s are some of the best I’ve had, high praise given that I grew up in and around New York City, where bialys once were staples in Jewish delis and bakeries. “Bialy” is short for Bialystok, the city in Poland from which they originated.
Bialys are often associated with bagels, likely because of their shared place in Jewish foodways, but they are quite different. Bagels are boiled before baking, while bialys are only baked, and of course, bagels have a hole while bialys have a depression in which onions (or tomatoes) are added.
These rolls are hard to find, having been overtaken almost everywhere by bagels, so if you run into a Zeitlin’s, don’t miss the opportunity to buy some. And if you try one of those bagel dogs in the middle of the photo, let me know… they’re on my agenda.
My small market haul: those bialys and a loaf of equally excellent rye bread from Zeitlin’s, asparagus from Los Rodriguez Farm (Eau Claire, Michigan) and munster with fresh dill from Stamper Cheese (Chicago).
Where can you find the best local food, produced sustainably and humanely, this weekend? Do we have a farmers market schedule for you!
This Weekend’s Regional Market Schedule
Update: After a brief, construction-related delay of its season opener, the Saturday South Loop Farmers Market in Printers Row slipped in last week and has returned to our schedule.