As many Indian restaurants worldwide consider serving beef taboo, chef Sujan Sarkar savored the rare opportunity to taste quality meat. Beef from Nebraska was considered a specialty at one of the Michelin-starred restaurants he worked at in London, Galvin at Windows, a French spot formerly inside the Hilton Park Lane in London. Sarkar, chef at Indienne — Chicago’s lone Michelin-starred Indian restaurant, and one of only three that have earned that status in the United States, says British beef couldn’t compete with USDA prime cuts.
Beef is expensive, not widely available in all parts of India, and is considered holy in many sects of Hinduism. However, in the U.S., non-Indian Americans tend to associate Indian cuisine only with that singular cultural practice. It’s such a widespread perception that English speakers, like Chicago baseball announcer Harry Caray, even have an expression tied to it — holy cow!Chicago Seven member Abbie Hoffman turned it into an anti-authority metaphor and is credited with saying “sacred cows make the tastiest burger.” UHF features “Weird Al” Yankovic’s playful portrayal of Gandhi in 1989 while ordering a medium-rare steak. The first wave of Indian restaurants in America brought the cultural norms of the early 1900s with them and shunned beef. Tandoori chicken was positioned in the ’60s as the Indian American counterpart to the showstopping Beijing duck popular at Chinese American restaurants. Lamb curries and kabobs emerged as stand-ins to satiate America’s beef lovers.
But decades later that Puritan image of India is fading in America, and it appears Chicago, with its storied meatpacking history, has become the center for a new style of Indian dining that embraces the beef. One tell is Sarkar who says one of his favorite restaurants is Asador Bastian, a well-regarded Basque steakhouse that’s a short walk from Indienne. Though Indienne proudly features vegetables in all menus — not just the vegetarian option — Sarkar has been experimenting with a beef dish. For private events only, he’s serving a short rib braised with a Madras curry inspired by black peppercorn sauce. It makes sense, after all, black pepper originated in India.
“Some people are cooking camel, ostrich,” Sarkar says. ”We don’t have to do it here, because that’s not from here. But in America, beef is one of the main sources of protein, and people like that — and it’s good.” These days, seeing beef on an Indian menu is hardly shocking. The protein has earned a place in prominent Indian restaurants across America like Dhamaka in New York; Rania in Washington, D.C.; and BadMaash in LA.
The beef brisket at Indus in suburban Chicago is stellar.
Beef can be found in India, but diners need to be in the know. It might have different names. Sarkar remembers seeing it called water buffalo. Vinod Kalathil of Thattu has memories of attending engineering school in India and seeing the reactions from his Northern India classmates when they saw beef served at the dining hall: “They were absolutely shocked,” Kalathil recalls. And Sheal Patel of Dhuaan BBQ remembers walking through night markets in Mumbai and Delhi and seeing plenty of street vendors selling beef and pork dishes.
Patel represents a wave of second-generation chefs all over America who have experimented with their home spice pantries, livening American staples from burgers to omelets to pizzas. Patel says TikTok has played a role with desis sharing techniques and photos from their travels. “I don’t think 10 years ago this would be a very welcome topic,” Patel says. Patel calls Dhuaan a tribute to the food his mother cooked as well as his visits to Central Texas where barbecue — particularly beef — is king. His brisket and masala beef cheesesteaks have popped up at bars across Chicago.
Kalathil, who grew up in India, would see beef labeled as “mutton sukka” (dry beef) offered at restaurants in the South Indian state of Kerala, where it’s more common to find beef. Kalathil and his wife, chef Margaret Pak, have served beef at Thattu, their lauded Keralan restaurant, from day one. Inspired by Pak’s Korean heritage, they use short rib in their beef fry — slow-roasted thin slices of meat fried with coconut oil and flavored with curry leaves and onions.
“We want to make sure the food is for everybody,” Kalathil says — Thattu has plenty of vegetarian options, too. “And if some people don’t want to eat that, that’s perfectly fine.” However, he says beef is essential to Keralan culture.
Thattu is playing with different cuts of beef as short rib is expensive, and while Western restaurants may use the bones for stock for soups or sauces, there’s little history of utilizing scraps in South Asian cuisines. They may even switch to boneless lamb in their biryani as some guests have expressed a preference. Pak and her kitchen crew are also tweaking a new beef burger offering.
A watershed moment in Indian American history may have occurred in 2015 when Lucky Peach, the defunct food magazine ran a recipe for tandoori steak using thick beef ribeyes as opposed to the thin cuts found in traditional South Asian beef dishes. That begot a steak pop-up run by chefs Dave Chang and Akhtar Nawab and cheekily named Ruth Krishna’s Steakhouse, though Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse attorneys quickly hit the effort with a cease and desist letter.
Flash forward to 2023 when Diaspora Spices began selling Steak Masala as a competitor to McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning. Diaspora founder Sana Javeri Kadri, who grew up eating beef — she’s Hindu, Jain, and Muslim — says the spice mix, which went through four or five recipes, is a top seller that customers use on vegetables and meats alike. She says Diaspora has received zero negative feedback. The mix is made with Diaspora’s Surya Salt, Aranya Black Pepper, Sirārakhong Hāthei Chillies, Pahadi Pink Garlic, Hariyali Fennel, and Wild Ajwain.
Highland Park’s Indus also serves a wagyu beef steak.
A 12-ounce American wagyu ribeye from Vander Farms comes with spiced herb butter, “chimmichutney,” and nizaami dum aloo.
“This myth that India is vegetarian is obviously the voices of few speaking louder than the country at large,” Javeri Kadri says. “It’s a very Hindu, upper-caste take — most lower-caste folks don’t have the privilege of not eating meat.”
Chicago should be used to religious and class restrictions. Blue laws, which date back to the late 1800s, were Catholic doctrines that prohibited activities like going to the movies, traveling, or selling anything on Sundays. Even as laws loosened, some operators continued to keep restrictions. In the ’80s, many Chicago grocery stores would cover their meat coolers with a blue wrap to prevent customers from putting beef into their shopping carts.
Earlier this year in suburban Chicago, a new contemporary Indian restaurant, Indus, debuted featuring a wagyu beef ribeye and brisket cooked in a pellet smoker (Indus also smokes vegetarian dishes, like daal, with tasty results). Indus is one of the few Indian restaurants around Chicago that brings out steak knives. Owners Sukhu and Ajit Kalra say the brisket is so popular they’ve been getting requests from Jewish customers who wanted it for their High Holidays. It wouldn’t be the first Jewish-Indian crossover. In August while at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as his wife prepared to accept the Democratic presidential nomination, Doug Emhoff complimented his wife Vice President Kamala Harris saying she “makes a mean Passover brisket.”
This beef dish from Michelin-starred Indienne is available for private events only and made with American wagyu, a short rib kofta, tomato pachadi, varuval, and curry leaf.Indienne
However, many restaurants remain uncomfortable discussing the topic of beef. Some chefs around the country declined to comment for this story. They didn’t want to alienate customers with strong opinions about beef. It’s still a sensitive subject and one that drifts into politics, with Hindu nationalism driving narratives. Rakesh Patel of Patel Brothers, the world’s largest South Asian grocer, founded in 1974 in Chicago, says his company has never carried beef. He says it was challenging enough to hear objections from vegetarians when the chain began carrying fish, though frozen fish is one of the chain’s biggest money makers.
But some see the subject as a matter of hospitality. In years past, James Beard-recognized chef Zubair Mohajir has shied away from serving beef at Coach House, his tasting menu restaurant. Mohajir is Muslim, so beef isn’t prohibited, but he’s avoided it to offend any customers. It’s a form of respect. At his new restaurant, Mirra, which blends Mexican and Indian flavors, there’s a carne asada dish that, according to co-chef Rishi Manoj Kumar, is as much a tribute to Mexican cuisine as it is a way to honor Chicago’s steakhouse culture and history of meatpacking.
But as India isn’t a monolith, neither is South Asia. Chicago is no stranger to dishes like frontier beef. Local Pakistani restaurant, Khan BBQ, has served the item and other beef options like chapli kebab for more than two decades along Devon, Chicago’s main South Asian hub. A newer entry, Tandoor Char House in Lakeview — a Pakistani Indian fusion spot — has long embraced beef with items like beef seekh kebab and beef nihari. Owner Faraz Sardharia says his father being from India and his mother being from Pakistan granted him the freedom to design a menu without boundaries.
However, many Pakistani and Bangladeshi American restaurants (and other countries within the South Asian diaspora) still label themselves as “Indian” for marketing purposes — it was easier to conflate rather than to explain nuance to American diners Googling “butter chicken near me.” Beef is often absent from these restaurant menus to avoid sounding off any alarms. Others, however, were bolder, sneaking beef onto the menus — dishes like Bangladeshi beef tehari — to pique the interest of non-South Asian customers.
Indian American chef Hetal Vasavada, a recipe developer and writer, competed on Season 6 of MasterChef when Gordon Ramsay and the gang made her recreate the chef’s famous beef Wellington. Vasavada, a vegetarian, rose to the challenge. She read through Reddit threads full of comments from uneducated viewers who weren’t familiar with India’s diversity, attempting to pigeonhole her. She had never cooked or tasted beef in her life, and the show’s fans saw that as a liability. They wanted her off the show. She relished her success in that environment. When it comes to celebrating holidays like Diwali, which is traditionally vegetarian, Vasavada keeps an open mind.
“I think because India is so vast and everyone celebrates it so differently, it’s hard to say what’s right and wrong. In the end, I truly do not care what you eat,” she says. “Practicing as a Hindu, an Indian American, I don’t eat meat, but if you want to eat meat, go for it — I am unbothered. Celebrate and eat however you choose. And I think we just need to be a little bit more open-minded and less pushy about our beliefs on others.”
Many objections to serving beef at Indian restaurants in America come from immigrants who long left South Asia and believe their hometowns or villages have stayed the same since they’ve left, Kalathil says. He wants to see more restaurants serve beef and pork. That philosophy is shared by many of his colleagues, including Sarkar. The old-fashioned mindset poses a danger to creativity.
“That is with all Indian food — not only the beef,” Sarkar says. “People still have an outdated understanding of how things should be.”
At around noon on a Friday, chef and owner Miriam Montes de Oca hurried out of her restaurant, Morena’s Kitchen, and headed to Rush Medical Center. Her 26-year-old daughter, Tatiana, was giving birth to Montes de Oca’s second granddaughter, Hailey. “I ran to the hospital because Tatiana was supposed to have the baby quickly, but [Hailey] didn’t come until the next day at 8 o’clock in the morning,” she says.
Hailey’s arrival coincided with the revival of Morena’s, as Montes de Oca had recently reopened the restaurant at a new location, 3758 W. North Avenue in Humboldt Park. She shut down the original restaurant — located about three miles west in Belmont Cragin at 5054 W. Armitage Avenue — three years ago.
Welcoming a new granddaughter while restarting her business has been a whirlwind for Montes de Oca, but she’s enjoying the journey. Before the closure, for five years, Morena’s Kitchen served Dominican staples like sancocho, oxtail, and red snapper — and Montes de Oca’s famous Dominican fried chicken.
The chicken is legendary.
The spice blend for that chicken hasn’t changed, and Montes de Oca guards the recipe with absolute secrecy. Diners can also taste that it’s been cleaned in the Caribbean way, with citrus or vinegar. Heated online debates over whether you should wash meat — the CDC says no, almost everyone with melanin says yes — fail to realize that most Caribbean, Asian, and African meat-washing techniques serve mainly as a brine to remove the gamy taste meat can often have, giving the dish a clarity of flavor, which Morena’s chicken — and their oxtail and lengua — have. “That fried chicken can’t go nowhere,” Montes de Oca laughs. “People love it the most.”
Montes de Oca closed her restaurant in January 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was a hard time. There was not enough money coming in, so I preferred to close down before it was too late for me,” she says.
Miriam Montes de Oca cooking in her new kitchen.
She took a job with United Airlines at O’Hare International Airport to pay bills. With the extra time not running a restaurant, she was able to help Tatiana with her 2-year-old daughter, Catalina. Free airplane tickets also allowed Montes de Oca to go back to the Dominican Republic three to four times a year after not having been home for nearly two decades. “I was without my country for 16 years,” she says. “And when I closed the restaurant, I went back and I fell in love with my country again.”
Montes de Oca got the opportunity to reopen Morena’s when Vladimir Rodriguez, the owner of a Mexican bar and restaurant called La Leña, found he could no longer handle the expenses. He offered the restaurant space to Montes de Oca, and she didn’t hesitate. Rodriguez kept the bar half of the space, connected to Morena’s through a sliding door that’s usually open with customers easily moving through both businesses. The partnership has been good. “We work together,” Montes de Oca says. “The clients that drink over there, they ask for my food. And when people finish eating here, they say, ‘Oh you got a bar next door?’ and I tell them to go ahead and take a look.”
Still, when customers search Morena’s by name online, the old location still pops up instead of the new North Avenue location and La Leña comes up when searching by address. “I need to change it,” Montes de Oca says. “Everybody is confused. They ask me, ‘Are you La Leña’s, are you Morena’s? Are you Mexican, are you Dominican?’”
Seafood and other Dominican specialties are available.
The best way to find the address, hours, and special announcements is through Facebook and Instagram — Morena’s regulars will find the menu unchanged, with a notable new section. Although firmly a Dominican restaurant, Montes de Oca retained some Mexican holdovers from La Leña’s menu like tortas, tacos, burritos, and chilaquiles. She notes that keeping the items helps La Leña’s old diners with the transition, but they also sell extremely well because she offers less commonly served meats like tripe and lengua.
Business has been good overall, with some ebbs and flows, Montes de Oca says. “To be out of the business for almost three years? I can’t complain.”
Many of Morena’s customers have transitioned to the new location seamlessly, either through word of mouth, Facebook posts, or walking by and doing a double take when they see the old sign. “Three days ago, one customer came and said ‘More, I thought somebody stole your name!’ I was like, ‘No, it’s me, I’m here. I’m back in business.’”
On weekends, Montes de Oca serves Dominican dishes like chivo guisado and rabo guisado (Dominican-style braised goat and oxtail). It can be hard to source specifically Dominican ingredients — especially Dominican oregano, which has a stronger flavor — but Montes de Oca gets many ingredients from a Dominican Chicagoan who brings it back from trips to New York. The restaurant also stocks traditional Dominican sodas, like the brand Country Club, in addition to more familiar brands like Mexican Jarritos.
Other options included mondongo, or tripe stew, and sancocho, a Latin American meat and vegetable stew widely thought to have roots in the Afro Latino community, whose ancestors were forcibly brought to the Caribbean, South and Central America by Spanish enslavers. Montes de Oca is Afro Latina, hence the name of the restaurant and Montes de Oca’s nickname, More. Morena means “dark-skinned” in Spanish, often referring to Latinas of African descent. As for the nickname, Montes de Oca says it’s a positive thing, although many people ask whether it bothers her. “I say no. It’s sweet, not the bad way. And it’s true. I am Morena, and it’s my nickname in the Dominican Republic, too.”
One of the more distinctive Dominican staples available at the restaurant every day are los tres golpes, meaning “the three hits” in Dominican Spanish — fried Dominican salami, fried eggs, and some fried cheese. Montes de Oca eats it with mangú, a cousin of Puerto Rican mofongo made from boiled plantain that she squishes like mashed potatoes.
Montes de Oca tops tres golpes with a savory onion gravy cooked in oil and vinegar. The rotisserie chicken — which fans of Peruvian pollo a la brasa will find familiar. Served with plain white rice, it’s her oldest granddaughter Catalina’s favorite meal.
Morena’s presence on the Chicago food scene is a relief for Dominicans in the city and surrounding suburbs since there isn’t much Dominican — or Caribbean — food in Chicago. Puerto Rican restaurants abound due to the large community here, but if you’re of Virgin Islander and Trinidadian descent like me, Guyanese, Bahamian, Haitian, or Dominican, the options get fewer and fewer. The Caribbean still maintains a presence on the dining scene in Chicago; Cafe Trinidad, 14 Parish, and Garifuna Flava are all great places.
Montes de Oca says one of her customers recently came in and excitedly told her about a Haitian restaurant near O’Hare, called Kizin Creole. “I told him, ‘For real, they got Haitian food?’ And I want to go try it because when I’m not here, I want to try something different. I like to go out with my kids and eat different foods and support other businesses because right now we need to help each other.”
Chicago lacks the abundance of choice diners might find in cities like New York, Miami, or Toronto, where clusters of Caribbean restaurants are within walking distance of each other. Montes de Oca says she would love for the options to diversify for Caribbean diners in Chicago and fans of our food, and she sees herself as part of that push.
Montes de Oca, who has lived in Chicago for 27 years, says she sees that changing in the coming years as New York, home to one of the country’s biggest Dominican communities, gets increasingly expensive. “Lots of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans are coming [to Chicago] from New York now. I have family in who are like ‘I can’t afford the city anymore, I’ve got to go.’”
Even though the Dominican community here in Chicago is small, Montes de Oca says they find a home with many of the Puerto Ricans in the city, both being from Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries, with African, Indigenous, and European influences, as well as other bursts of migration from South and East Asia and the Middle East. “We’re brothers and sisters. We eat the same thing with different names,” Montes de Oca says. For example, she’s happy to make jibaritos — a sandwich of meat in between huge slices of smashed and fried plantains — for her Puerto Rican customers, who represent a large portion of her customer base. Jibaritos are one of those Chicago staples that have become famous because of the Puerto Rican community here. But, it’s also a Dominican food — Montes de Oca says they call it patacón.
Whole-fried fish.
There’s more than fried chicken.
In some ways, Montes de Oca feels her new location is a seamless transition. In other ways, she feels like she’s starting over from scratch. Food costs were a particular shock, and she’s learning how to deal with inflation.
“When I went to the grocery store [three years ago], my plantain was like $35. Now it’s $47,” she says. “My oil was $19. Now it’s $30.”
Morena’s stays open much longer — until midnight most days, and 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday — than most restaurants in the city. That’s despite restaurants rolling back hours during the pandemic due to labor and decreased business. At Morena’s, the longer hours are also an attempt to enliven the Caribbean dining scene here in Chicago.
Chicago’s restrictions don’t support street or late-night food culture, between infrastructure that’s hostile to walkers and those who take public transit, cultural differences that encourage fast eating, and lowered profits coupled with rising food costs. But Montes de Oca is giving it a go.
“I need to make this happen, and my people are happy with that because they say, after 7 o’clock, you don’t find any Caribbean food open,” she says. “You can’t find food from us.”
Manal Farhan lost her appetite. It was November of 2023, more than a month since the October 7 attack by Hamas in Israel, killing 1,139 civilians and members of the Israeli military and taking more than 200 hostages. The violence that day sparked an Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip that had already killed more than 14,000 Gazans (the toll has climbed astronomically since), flattening buildings, and creating a dire humanitarian crisis. Farhan, a Palestinian American in the throes of intense grief, hand-stitched a Palestinian flag and hung it outside her home in Logan Square. Then, she says she received a call from the management company representing landlord Mark Fishman telling her to remove it — if she didn’t, she’d be evicted. “I said ‘I’m Palestinian and there’s a genocide.’ They said, ‘You have to remain neutral,’” Farhan recounts.
Between anxiety about the eviction and the horror of witnessing Palestinians slaughtered and dismembered by bombs daily on social media, Farhan struggled to eat. “When you’re carrying that level of stress, your body stops responding to hunger. Hunger becomes a secondary concern,” she says. But hunger would often return when her mother Karima would make molokhia (ملوخية), a leafy stew with roots in Egypt that today represents a unifying dish across the Arab world. Molokhia, the national dish of Egypt, is ancient. The pre-Arabized roots of its name means “for the royals” or “for the gods.” The leaves, also called jute mallow, spread from Egypt across the Arab world with migration and trade. It’s seasoned simply with salt, garlic, and lemon, boiled in chicken broth, and often served with chicken or lamb.
This humble soup, made with greens and often chicken broth, has become a soothing symbol of solidarity amidst violence in Gaza.
In times of turmoil, we turn to the dishes that make us feel safe, and more and more these days, people in Chicago — home to one of the nation’s largest and oldest Palestinian immigrant communities — are seeking solace in a bowl of molokhia. As one count estimates at least 186,000 Palestinians may have been killed by Israeli forces — according to a letter published by researchers in the British medical journal the Lancet — Arab Americans are searching for comfort and solidarity by any means. In that climate, the dish is taking on a new political significance for many Arabs introduced to it for the first time. Almost every weekend, organizations like the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and Students for Justice in Palestine organize large protests downtown. On Thursday, August 22, groups assembled outside the United Center to protest the exclusion of a Palestinian American speaker at the DNC. Autonomous groups blockade streets in Wicker Park, protest weapons manufacturers like Boeing in the Loop, and even dyed Buckingham Fountain blood-red, spray-painting “Gaza is bleeding.” And now, as the Democratic National Convention descends upon Chicago, protestors march and disrupt politicians’ speeches, condemning them for funding Israel’s army. To ignore the political reality of the people who love this dish, then, would be to tell an incomplete story of molokhia’s place in Chicago.
“I don’t know a Palestinian who doesn’t love molokhia,” Farhan says as we eat and discuss her case at the Palestinian-owned Salam Restaurant in Albany Park. The same Palestinian flag Farhan made in November remains hanging outside her home as she continues to fight what she contends is an unlawful eviction. (The landlord argues that a lease agreement bans any article from being displayed out of a window.) Palestinian Chicagoans and allies have protested the eviction, boycotting the Logan Theater, which Fishman owns. Being evicted here in Chicago for “expressing love and pride” for her heritage, as her federal lawsuit against Fishman states, is ironic for Farhan. Her maternal grandmother’s home in occupied Palestine is now inhabited by Israeli settlers. (Farhan’s lawsuit, which argued neutrality was never the objective — other tenants could fly Christmas and Hanukkah decorations out their windows, according to Farhan’s lawsuit — was dismissed in March and Farhan awaits an appeal.)
Alongside graphic photos of corpses and rubble, I see displaced Palestinians making molokhia in Gaza on social media. “Mloukhieh is one of the most popular dishes loved and made by Gazans. Usually, it is made with chicken or chicken broth, but since no protein source is currently available, we are making it with processed chicken broth. As usual made with love, amidst the war,” Renad, a 10-year-old content creator from Gaza, writes in a caption. The lack of chicken is glaring; meat being nearly impossible to find or buy due to Israeli blockades of food, hygiene products, and medicine. Many, especially in North Gaza, have died of starvation. Still, the dish seems to retain its celebratory and comforting meaning, even in the depths of hell. “Palestinian food is one of the foundational aspects of socialization in our culture … regardless of the fact that [the refugees] were displaced and dispossessed,” says Lubnah Shomali, the advocacy director of Badil, a human rights organization for Palestinian refugees.
Lubnah, a Palestinian Christian, was raised in the Chicago suburbs before moving her family, including her daughter, my friend Rachel, to the West Bank to connect with their culture, even though life was harder under occupation. Lubnah says refugees often pick up different methods of making molokhia from each other, the same debates I hear in Chicago melded. “Within the refugee camps, there persists this need to host, invite people, and make meals,” Lubnah says.
For Mizrahi Jews, Jewish people of Middle Eastern descent, molokhia is part of their memory too, even though the Nakba severed these ties. Hisham Khalifeh, owner of Middle East Bakery in Andersonville, recalls meeting an 80-year-old Mizrahi Jewish man there in Chicago. “He still had his Palestinian ID in his pocket,” Khalifeh says. The man wanted to talk about the food he’d loved in Palestine and all that had changed since he was cleaved from his Muslim and Christian neighbors by Israel’s formation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. Khalifeh says the man told him in Arabic, their shared ancestral language, “Naaood lal tareekh.” Let us go back to history.
“White people love tacos [and] enchiladas… but I remember being a kid, eating molokhia at school and everybody being like, ‘Ew, this is slimy green stew,’” recalls Iman, a Mexican Palestinian Chicagoan. Iman agrees molokhia is a core part of Chicago but is doubtful others will see it that way — which she doesn’t mind. “It’s one of those things I feel is so loved but hasn’t been claimed or taken over by white culture yet.”
The first Palestinians arrived in Chicago in the 1800s, long before the modern Israeli state was established, according to Loren Lybarger, a professor at Ohio University and author of Palestine in Chicago: Identity in Exile. He recalls eating molokhia frequently at the homes of Palestinian community leaders in Chicago during his research.
Molokhia, the national dish of Egypt, is ancient. The pre-Arabized roots of its name means “for the royals” or “for the gods.” A 13th-century Syrian cookbook lists four different versions; one that calls for charred onions ground into paste and another with meatballs. It’s a food that’s inspired myth and religious fervor, as it’s said that the soup nursed 10th-century Egyptian ruler Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah back to health — hence the name. (It’s also sometimes called Jew’s mallow, referring to a claim that Jewish rabbis were the first to discover and cultivate it.) The Druze, an ethno-religious group in West Asia, believed and still believe the caliph was God. So many Druze do not eat molokhia even now, obeying his command. For most people, though, molokhia is no longer solely for kings or gods anymore. But making it can be an affair fit for royalty.
Cooked molokhia leaves have a “viscous quality, similar to nopales in Mexican cuisine,” Lebanese chef Sabrina Beydoun says. Molokhia is comfort food, something teeming and right in the deep greens, the grassy and earthy smell. “My mom would prepare it with a lot of pride,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, I look back on [it] with fondness and nostalgia.”
And everyone has a different way they like their molokhia — the variations and debates are practically part of the experience. “Everyone does it their way, and everyone is convinced their way is better,” Beydoun says, laughing.
My friend Rachel, a former player on Palestine’s national basketball team, prefers molokhia leaves whole (Beydoun says this is common amongst Lebanese people), while my other Palestinian friend Rayean grew up with ground leaves. Farhan’s mother Karima’s special ingredient is a bit of citric acid.
Molokhia is prepared differently depending on the household and restaurant.
The father-and-son team of Ahmed and Mohammed Saleh at their restaurant, Cairo Kebab.
At Cairo Kebab, the city’s only Egyptian restaurant, molokhia became the second-most requested dish among its Arab diners since the spot began serving it daily in 2023 off Chicago’s fabled Maxwell Street in University Village, according to co-owner Mohammed Saleh. “Home foods ground us and make us into who we are,” he says. Molokhia is arguably part of a larger shift, where restaurants owned by marginalized ethnic groups are increasingly serving dishes once relegated to the home, due to both wider awareness through media, desire for the dishes among immigrant communities longing for familiar foods, and chefs feeling empowered to explore their identities in a deeper way.
“A lot of our customers who are Palestinian or Jordanian will ask for a bunch of lemon, or will ask for us to not cook it with garlic,” says Mohammed.
Ahmed, the owner and head chef of Cairo Kebab and Mohammed’s father, adds that unless they’ve had molokhia before, “Americans eat it however we serve it.”
Ahmed makes the restaurant’s version with lots of garlic in sizzling butter, while Raeyan’s family goes light on garlic. I love the chicken with crispy, roasted skin, and frequently alternate between spooning the molokhia onto the rice and chicken, and spooning rice and chicken into the molokhia. Some like it skinless and boiled. Most of my friends eat it with rice; Ahmed says many prefer sopping it up with bread, and some eat it plain like soup, with a spoon or light sips from the bowl. Usually, it’s served with squeeze after squeeze of fresh lemon.
Khalifeh has fond memories of molokhia with quail. Ahmed says in Egypt’s second-largest city, the port town of Alexandria, it’s often made with shrimp, and some use rabbit. In Tunisia, the molokhia is dried and ground into a powder, resulting in a silky, nearly black-colored stew with lamb. Sudanese people, because of their shared history with Egypt, also love molokhia. It’s spelled molokhia, mlokheya, molokhia… The differences are endless and dizzying.
“When I was a kid in Egypt, molokhia wasn’t just a food, it was an event,” Eman Abdelhadi, an Egyptian Palestinian writer and sociology professor at the University of Chicago, wrote in an email. “A whole day would be spent in the arduous processes of washing, drying, and cutting it. It was something we all looked forward to.” Ahmed says that during Ramadan iftars, a time of gathering after fasting all day in the Muslim holy month, many customers request at least two plates of molokhia when breaking fast.
Ahmed Saleh, who owns Cairo Kebab, moved to Chicago in 1990.
For Arab Chicagoans who didn’t grow up with molokhia, Chicago is often the place they first tried it. “We don’t have molokhia in Morocco. But I heard of it because we used to watch old [Egyptian] movies,” says Imane Abekhane, an employee at Cairo Kebab. “Then I came to Chicago, tried the Egyptian molokhia, and I loved that.”
When I first started investigating molokhia for this piece, so many of my Arab friends told me Cairo Kebab’s was the best place to try it in Chicago — a bowl made me understand why. Tender roasted chicken, bright green molokhia balanced with just enough garlic and salt, vermicelli noodles in the rice, and a side of homemade tomato-based hot sauce with chile flakes, chile pepper, and black pepper — all delicious. Ahmed made the molokhia at my table the way it’s sometimes made in Egypt, with flair and performance, a gloopy river of green cascading from one saucepan into another before pooling in my bowl. Mohammed notes that he’s seen more Palestinians and Arabs come into Cairo Kebab for home dishes like molokhia since the devastation began in Palestine last year.
Even if everyone cannot agree on how to make it, everyone I spoke to agrees that molokhia is an Egyptian dish. But because of the large population of Palestinians in Chicago, many’s first meeting with molokhia — including mine — is at a Palestinian friend’s home, or at Palestinian-owned grocers like Middle East Bakery, where Khalifeh says non-Arabs often come in after seeing it online as part of a growing advocacy for Palestinian cuisine and the Palestinian cause — their resistance against Israeli occupation. That gives the dish a certain political significance.
When we made molokhia, Rachel used dried leaves her grandmother brought her from Palestine, an experience Mohammed Saleh says is common. “When we go to Egypt, my parents are always gonna bring back at least one suitcase full of dry pre-packaged goods, including molokhia,” he says.
Frozen and dried leaves are also readily available in Chicago, at Middle East Bakery, Sahar’s International Market, or Feyrous Pastries and Groceries in Albany Park. Both Raeyan and Rachel insist that dried — which produces a darker color than frozen — is better. Ahmed says dried has its merits, but frozen leaves preserve molokhia in its original state more effectively, the process of drying giving it a different taste and color. “Frozen is as close to molokhia leaves harvested in Egypt by hand as you can get,” he says. Khalifeh, in contrast, is adamant that dried is always better, saying it has a flavor and texture that frozen can never achieve. One of his tactics is to put a little bit of frozen leaves into the dried, helping with color and consistency. But he and Ahmed both say that not everyone can make dried molokhia correctly.
And perhaps something is lost in the modernity of freezing, something exchanged when sifting through the molokhia leaves is forgone. “My mom and aunts sit on the floor, removing stems and remnants of other harvest[s] like tobacco leaves,” Beydoun says. “It’s a communal practice. It is a poetic thing to witness.” In dried leaves, I see survival — a way to transport ancestral plants for scattered diasporas. Frozen molokhia must be shipped. But dried can be carried; it is not dependent on any company, just those who have a relationship with the plant.
Still, almost everyone agrees fresh leaves are best — if you can find them. Sahar’s has fresh molokhia leaves this summer, but “they go fast and we sometimes don’t know when they’ll come in,” a grocer told me over the phone. Hisham also directed me to Việt Hoa Plaza, where I found fresh leaves that the grocers there also said are rarely stocked due to the growing popularity of molokhia in East Asian cuisine. According to the Markaz Review, Japanese farmers started growing the plant after advertisements in the ’80s pushed molokhia with slogans like “the secret of longevity and the favorite vegetable of Cleopatra!”
“[It’s] very popular in Japanese grocery stores as well as Korean grocery stores,” says Kate Kim-Park, CEO of HIS Hospitality, adding that their version is slightly stickier. “The plant is called 아욱 (ah-ohk) in Korean,” she says.
Chef Sangtae Park of Omakase Yume in the West Loop has fond memories of cooking molokhia and eating it with friends and family. “I add it in traditional [Korean] miso soup or as side dishes [banchan] by blanching the leaves and sometimes mixing sesame oil, sugar, and Korean red pepper flakes,” Park says.
Ahmed Saleh holds a plate of chicken and rice, which is one of many ways folks enjoy molokhia.
You can also grow them yourself. Iman decided to start planting molokhia and other plants used in Palestinian cuisine likewild thyme (sometimes called za’atar, though it is applied differently than the spice mix of the same name) this March. “I felt like it was an act of preservation and resistance when people are trying to erase Palestinians,” Iman says. Globally, Indigenous cultures stress the importance of seed-keeping, and Palestinians are no different. But planting molokhia was difficult in cold Chicago. “[Molokhia] prefers temperatures between 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) and 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) and well-drained, loamy soil rich in organic matter,” says Luay Ghafari, Palestinian gardener and founder of Urban Farm and Kitchen, adding that Chicagoans should start planting the seeds indoors under grow lights “four weeks before the last frost date,” transplanting them into the garden when the chance of frost is over and the soil has warmed.
“It would get really hot and then it would get really cold again, so I was constantly running them in and out of the apartment when they were little seedlings,” Iman says. Now, the molokhia plants are healthy and mature, nothing like the yield Iman sees from Palestinian fields, but something she’s proud of. Ghafari says molokhia is an annual that can grow several feet tall in optimal conditions. “During harvest season, you often find it sold in large bales because it takes a large quantity of leaves to yield enough quantities for consumption.” But home plants in Chicago like Iman’s don’t yield enough leaves for much besides smaller pots of stew. Iman’s Mexican mother tends to the plants at their family home near the suburbs. “It’s our bonding thing,” Iman says.
Raeyan’s mother Nancy Roberts, an Arabic translator, typed up Raeyan’s grandmother’s molokhia recipe — the recipe we cooked from — that was passed down through generations. This, too, is a kind of sacred seed-keeping.
“I plan to pass [recipes] to my children until liberation,” Abdelhadi says. “Mahmoud Darwish said the occupiers fear memories, and Palestinians have made memory a national pastime.”
After running around in the summer heat of Chicago in search of stories about this plant, what were my memories of molokhia? They weren’t Rachel’s, Raeyan’s, Iman’s, or Laith’s — memories of childhood, family, heritage. But I wasbuilding a relationship with molokhia.
A colleague once said, “Palestine lines my mind.” I never forgot it because it so aptly described these past 10 months for me. Now, somehow, molokhia had settled there too, becoming part of my memory of this brutal time, intertwining with Palestine, with Gaza. “It was very bad today,” Hisham says quietly when I mentioned Gaza during our interview, referring to the Israeli airstrike that day in al-Mawassi, a designated “safe zone,” that killed over 100 people in a matter of minutes, most of them children. In every interview I did for this article, the genocide either kept coming up or the tension was thick as it was talked around. So how could writing about molokhia ever just be about food? How could researching, eating, and making molokhia not make Palestine fill my mind, and enter my dreams?
One night I dreamt that Rachel, Raeyan, and I were bustling around my kitchen making molokhia, me sifting the leaves with henna-stained hands, Raeyan stirring by the stove, Rachel chopping garlic. My friend Omar was in the kitchen too, watching. It was almost an exact replica of how we had looked when we cooked it.
Except Omar doesn’t live in Chicago. He is in Gaza.
The day of the dream, Omar told me the bombing was heavy; he might not live through the night. “I hope you live. May Allah protect you,” I messaged back. The next sunrise, I got a reply. Alhamdulillah. Thank God. Omar was still alive. For months, this has been the cadence of our messages. I may not live through this night. I hope you live. May Allah protect you. Alhamdulillah.
There was a night when, after we all saw yet another horrific image of a Palestinian person’s body mutilated by Israeli attacks and U.S. weapons, it was suggested, I forget by whom, that we go to Lake Michigan and scream. When we got there, we were silent for a long time. It wasn’t embarrassment, but the fear that God had stopped listening to our screams. What evidence did we have otherwise? Then, almost in unison, we screamed, the sound carrying over the water. And I have to believe we were heard.
Naaood lal tareekh. Let us go back to history. Nataqadam lal horeya. Let us go forward into freedom.
Nylah Iqbal Muhammad is a James Beard-nominated travel, food, and entertainment writer with bylines in New York Magazine, Travel + Leisure, and Vogue. You can follow her on Instagram, Substack, and Twitter/X.
On a balmy Saturday afternoon in March, a crowd gathers in the parking lot as Dirk Fucik, owner of Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop, presides over his customary seafood sampling event. Amidst the alluring scent wafting from the grill, Fucik invites eager onlookers to savor an array of oceanic delicacies, including salmon, shrimp, tuna, and fish cakes.
“Try these copi cakes,” Fucik urges, introducing the unfamiliar fish cakes to some intrigued guests. Their puzzled expressions accompany inquiries about the nature of the fish. “They used to be known as Asian carp,” he adds.
In 2022, Illinois launched a marketing campaign spotlighting the invasive carp, which have gained infamy for displacing native fish in the Mississippi River and its surrounding streams. The Chicago Tribune reported that the federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative earmarked $600,000 for a five-year promotional drive to boost the fish’s consumption. Concerns over the unappetizing name “carp” led to a rebranding initiative. Its new name, “copi,” is derived from “copious,” symbolizing its abundance in state waters.
Esteemed restaurants in Chicago such as Ina Mae Tavern and Gaijin joined the cause to popularize copi as a food source, crafting enticing recipes and leveraging their influence to amplify the campaign. Spearheading the promotional efforts is Tetra Tech, a consulting firm, that manages a dedicated webpage and an Instagram account. The latter regularly features upbeat promotional videos with catchy rhythms and slogans proclaiming, “An invasive species that is delicious!”
But two years into the campaign, enthusiasm among chefs and restaurants to promote the fish has waned. Except for Dirk’s, all participating restaurants and fish markets in Chicago have quietly removed copi from their menus.
“Nobody bothered to order them,” says an operations manager at one of the partnering restaurants, who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their relationship with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). Despite having a pleasant, mild flavor, the fish is very bony and hard to process, the manager says. Converting the fish into chopped or ground form was an alternative, yet selling patties at a profitable price point proved challenging. According to the manager, copi was removed from their menu within two weeks of promotion.
At Dirk’s Fish and Gourmet in Lincoln Park, they’ve turned copi into patties.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Brian Schoenung, program manager at the IDNR overseeing the copi campaign, acknowledged challenges in maintaining partnerships. In addition to supply chain disruptions and manufacturing failures, the campaign has had to navigate diminishing media interest along with lukewarm consumer reception.
“We had a dip, and that dip has not been insignificant,” Schoenung says. “We got a lot of media right off the bat. As things fall out of the spotlight, you’re going to see a little bit of a backslide.”
Emblazoned with promotional materials featuring the slogan “Choose Copi,” Dirk’s introduced copi burgers in salsa and teriyaki flavors, and it continues to offer chopped and ground carp.
However, the persistent negative stereotypes surrounding carp make it a hard sell. Fucik says that many consumers mistakenly associate copi with common carp, imagining them to be bottom-dwelling creatures with a muddy flavor. On the contrary, the four species designated for consumption primarily inhabit upper water regions, feeding on algae, wetland flora, and, notably for black carp, mussels, and snails. Fucik frequently finds himself explaining the distinction to customers, emphasizing that copi, unlike their European counterparts, are mild-flavored and boast high levels of omega-3 fatty acids while maintaining low levels of mercury and other contaminants.
Due to its relatively low demand, copi doesn’t grace the menu at Fucik’s restaurant. Sales of frozen fish patties notably lag behind seafood staples like salmon and tuna. On average, about 100 pounds of copi move in a month, compared to the rapid turnover of salmon, with 100 pounds often selling out in a single day.
“I don’t sell a ton of it, but I don’t mind buying it,” Fucik says. “It’s a good cause, and it’s a good fish. And it would be nice to figure out a way to eradicate [them].”
Invasive carp found their way into American waters through deliberate introduction, as detailed in the 2017 book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan. In 1963, researchers at a federal lab in Arkansas advocated for importing these bottom-feeding fish as a natural means of water purification, aiming to reduce reliance on chemical treatments. Amidst growing environmental awareness spurred by Rachel Carson’s influential book, Silent Spring, which illuminated the dangers of widespread herbicide and pesticide use, there arose a pressing need for alternative, environmentally friendly solutions. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Fish Farming Experimental Laboratory imported three cardboard boxes of juvenile grass carp, native to Asia and renowned for their insatiable appetite for seaweed, with hopes of them cleaning up weed-choked rivers and irrigation ditches across the Southern United States.
Dirk Fucik hangout in the parking lot outside his seafood shop.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Within a decade of the grass carp’s introduction, an Arkansas fish farmer, in pursuit of his own batch of exotic weed-eating fish, accidentally imported three other Asian carp species: black, bighead, and silver carp. However, these carp didn’t fulfill their intended purpose. Silver and bighead carp, as filter feeders, depleted plankton and other nutrients from the waters they inhabited, while black carp sustained themselves on mollusks. Recognizing the potential ecological threat posed by these species, the fish farmer handed them over to the government. State fishery workers attempted to breed the carp in a laboratory but were unsuccessful. So they released the fish into the river and expected them to perish. To their surprise, the carp thrived and rapidly reproduced.
As reported in Egan’s book, the carp began proliferating in the wild, with baby bighead and silver carp appearing in rivers and streams throughout the South. They starve out their competition by stripping away the plankton upon which every other fish species directly or indirectly depends. Bighead carp can grow larger than 100 pounds and consume up to 20 pounds of plankton daily. The invasive carp biomass in some stretches of rivers in the Mississippi basin is thought to be more than 90 percent.
Silver carp, slightly smaller than bighead carp, have gained notoriety as YouTube sensations due to their tendency to leap out of the water like aquatic missiles when disturbed by the sound of a boat motor. This makes them a significant concern for recreational industries and water sports. Their disruptive behavior, coupled with their impact on the fish market, make them a primary target among interest groups for government intervention.
“The Great Lakes provide a lot of jobs and bring a lot of money into the region,” says Molly Flanagan, chief operating officer at Alliance for the Great Lakes, who works on invasive species policies. “If invasive carp get into the lakes or get into the rivers that feed the lakes, it could have devastating consequences for our $7 billion a year fishing industry and our $16 billion a year recreational boating industry across the region.”
Around 2010, the invasive carp crisis gained high-level policy attention. Following the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in 2009 (there were concerns fish would jump over to the other lake due to the hurricane), policymakers rushed to devise strategies to prevent the intrusion of carp into the Great Lakes, according to Flanagan. A study conducted by the Great Lakes Commission explored various measures to impede carp from migrating northward, including a proposal to reverse the flow of the Chicago River (again) to sever the connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin — an essential conduit for invasive species movement. However, the exorbitant costs associated with this plan rendered it unfeasible, Flanagan said. Nevertheless, the study prompted Congress to urge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct its own investigation.
Among the options explored is the inclusion of the fish on restaurant menus. The White House had appointed a special committee to address the invasive carp issue, and it was keen on exploring the possibility of turning them into a food source. To test the market, they enlisted out-of-state chefs to prepare complimentary samples, offering them frozen carp at no cost.
In 2010, Fucik received a call from the White House. Initially dismissed as a scam, the phone call proved to be legitimate when Fucik got in touch with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Fucik’s lifelong passion for fish stems from memories of growing up in a Catholic household where fish was a dietary staple, plus regular summer fishing trips with his uncle. After working in the fish market for several years, he opened his store. So when it turned out the call really was from the White House, Fucik immediately embraced the invitation and began to experiment with new recipes incorporating the fish.
The same year, Fucik showcased hundreds of carp burgers at Taste of Chicago, a summer food festival in the city. Despite initial hesitation from some diners, many found themselves pleasantly surprised by the taste. As word of mouth spread, eager patrons quickly formed lines in front of his venue.
Then, Fucik noticed a decline in the momentum of the campaign. He attributes this downturn to an incident in Minneapolis, where an Asian business delegation arriving at the airport was confronted with a sign urging them to “Kill Asian Carp,” a well-intentioned plea aimed at curbing the spread of the invasive species. The visitors found the message off-putting.
In 2014, Minnesota state senators successfully passed a measure mandating that Minnesota agencies designate the fish as “invasive carp.” This move was adopted by other government agencies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in response to the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes. According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed its designation to “invasive carp” in 2021.
In Illinois, the main concern is the infiltration of carp into Lake Michigan via the Illinois River, which connects to the Great Lakes through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. To counter this threat, the state has implemented a series of measures — electronic barriers, locks, and dams strategically positioned at key choke points along the waterway –– to prevent the fish from swimming upstream into Lake Michigan. By deploying multiple barriers, policymakers hope that even if an invasive carp could bypass one, it would encounter another barrier, the DNR’s Schoenung says. The state also implemented contracted removal efforts, paying 10 cents per pound to fishers to incentivize commercial harvesting. According to Schoenung, since the autumn of 2019, approximately 22 million pounds of carp have been removed through these initiatives. Targeted removal has reduced the fish’s population by half and successfully prevented invasive carp from establishing a population in Lake Michigan. In the South of Joliet’s Brandon Road Lock and Dam, the carp population has decreased by nearly 90 percent, according to Schoenung.
Johnny Zheng sits at A Fusion in Chinatown.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Following the earlier marketing attempts, the copi campaign emerged as a pivotal initiative to provide an outlet for commercial fishers to offload their catch. A majority of the harvests find their way into fertilizers, pet meals, and bait for lobsters and crayfish in Southern states. However, recognizing the nutritional value of carp — high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids — and its status as one of the most consumed fish worldwide, there’s a compelling case to diversify the use of these fish by incorporating them into the domestic food market. The high costs of transportation hindered efforts to simply export the fish.
“By doing so, you’re making the best use of a valuable resource, and you’re also incentivizing harvest,” Schoenung said.
In other regions, particularly in Asia, copi is an essential part of the culinary culture. Historical records trace Chinese consumption of carp back to the Tang Dynasty, according to the U.N. During this period, the family name of the emperor sounded similar to the Chinese name for Eurasian carp, or common carp, the only fish cultured in China at the time. To avoid potential political innuendo, the royal family prohibited the sale and consumption of common carp by the public. This restriction led farmers to turn to alternative species for aquaculture, including bighead carp, silver carp, grass carp, and black carp. These species thus thrived in China and became significant protein sources, symbolizing fortune.
Many ethnic groups are bewildered by Americans’ aversion to the fish. The phenomenon even caught the attention of a Korean television outlet that dispatched a crew to interview Fucik. Schoenung noted that the fish’s name change has little impact on the international markets in the U.S. Many foreigners are accustomed to eating carp and indifferent to the stigma around its former name.
Johnny Zheng, an established entrepreneur based in Chicago’s Chinatown, has become an organic participant in the campaign in recent years. Hailing from China’s Eastern Fujian province, he fondly remembers eating carp cakes and carp fish balls during his childhood. Propelled by a strong sense of cultural pride, he says he has made it his mission to challenge the negative perceptions surrounding carp by introducing it to mainstream markets.
In his role as president of the Mid-America Restaurant Association, Zheng discovered a factory specializing in repurposing carp into fertilizers and animal feed. Frustrated by how his cherished childhood delicacy was underutilized, he took over the factory and resolved to transform the fate of the fish by redirecting them to the dinner table.
“When Asian carp make headlines, the coverage is always negative. It’s reminiscent of other narratives about things from China such as its technology — a portrayal of invasion into mainstream American society and driving out its local supply,” Zheng says. “I know this narrative is wrong and want to prove that Asian carp are not mere ‘trash fish.’ They can be delicious and serve as a valuable source of protein.”
Zheng’s primary customers are Chinese, and not the average American. To reshape the fish’s public perceptions, Zheng invested substantial capital in transforming carp into packaged goods. His factory produces fish heads, as well as fish balls and fish noodles. These products have gradually found their way onto the shelves of numerous Asian groceries. In 2022, he opened another restaurant, A Fusion, in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, to prominently feature the fish on the menu. By creating a dedicated supply chain and culinary outlet for carp-based delicacies, Zheng says he hopes to promote their consumption while honoring their culinary potential.
Despite waning media attention to the cause, Zheng says he remains committed to popularizing copi among U.S. customers. While his investment has yet to yield a noticeable outcome, he says he is faithful that his investment will soon generate an impact.
The window at Dirk’s features a sticker reflecting the new branding of the fish.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Schoenung says he expected the campaign to be a marathon. Creating a market for something unfamiliar to many U.S. diners will take more than an overnight operation, but he remains confident that it will eventually take off.
“We’ve got the right pieces in place — we’ve got the marketing, we’ve got the stories, and we’ve got the fish supply,” Schoenung says. “Just building those other pieces, and linking it all together, I am very hopeful and very confident that we’re going to be able to do that.”
For now, Fucik plans to continue to sell copi in small amounts, holding onto hope for future funding that would allow him to host more events promoting the fish. He remains optimistic that public perception of the fish might change through continuing media exposure. Perhaps a headline reporting an injury caused by carp leaping out of the water could reignite interest in consuming the fish, thrusting it back into the news cycle, he says.
“I’m sure we’ll have another surge in interest at some point in time when something comes up,” Fucik says. “Somebody will get hit by a carp in the head in their boat and it’ll make the news. Then all of a sudden they’ll get resurrected again, and they’ll be showing all the videos and then it’ll trickle down to me again. Things get recycled because there is always a new generation of people who haven’t heard about it.”
Playful cocktail spot Lilac Tiger has brought fun drinks and top-notch bar fare (think duck fried rice, tandoori honey fried chicken sandwiches, and “poutine” with Korean curry sauce, paneer, and kimchi) to the former home of Indian restaurant Wazwan. Helmed by a trio of hospitality veterans — chef Zubair Mohajir, Arami owner Ty Fujimura, and chef Won Kim (Kimski) — Lilac Tiger is adding a 25-seat patio out front with space for outdoor grilling. Coach House, Mohajir’s upscale tasting menu restaurant, has claimed the back patio for a cocktail-focused section of its own.
The casual bites at Lilac Tiger are worth seeking out.|
Lilac Tiger
Did you get a glimpse of the eclipse? Blink and you missed it — much like Chicago’s way-too-brief spring. All that means is folks need to make better plans to properly savor ramps and all the season has to offer. The Eater 38 is here to help.
This collection of Chicago’s best restaurants provides answers to the classic question: “Where would you dine if you had one night in the city?” The list recognizes some all-time greats and restaurants that have pushed culinary boundaries. This list is for locals who want to make the most out of their nights. It’s also for visitors unfamiliar with the city.
The spring update brings four new restaurants into the fold. There’s a South Side favorite that is once again getting the attention it deserves in Bridgeport. A daring bar with unique cocktails and a killer casual menu of South Asian bites including an incredible mushroom dish. In Lincoln Park, a tasting menu restaurant attempts to push back at consumer culture — if that’s even possible. And in the West Loop, a Korean couple runs an omakase restaurant with some of the best sushi in the city.
It’s almost time to put away those heavy coats, Chicago. Enjoy.
Eater maps are curated by editors and aim to reflect a diversity of neighborhoods, cuisines, and prices. Learn more about our editorial process.
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If this sounds like a broken record, it is — restaurants all around America are facing unprecedented economic challenges. Still, there are plenty of new projects to look forward to as 2024 is shaping up to be a big one in Chicago, especially as a mild winter has locals and tourists dreaming of outdoor dining during the spring and summer months. At Eater Chicago, we’ve listed 15 upcoming restaurants targeting a spring debut. Among them, seven are either relocations or sequels to existing restaurants. The latter means the new venues feature either more seating or bigger menus. It’s not the same song.
There are also two tasting menu restaurants and three bars. New bars could indicate that the city is healing from the pandemic. And speaking of pandemic trends (when comfort foods concepts, like pizzerias, started sprouting up seemingly everywhere) there’s one new pizzeria opening — and it’s replacing another pizzeria. Time marches on. But at least Chicagoans can rely on delicious new options. Explore the most anticipated openings of spring below.
Bayan Ko Diner owners Lawrence Letrero (left) and Raquel Quaderny.Aliya Ikhumen/Eater Chicago
Address: 1820 W. Montrose, Ravenswood
Key Players: Raquel Quadreny, chef Lawrence Letrero
After Glenn’s Diner, a decade’s old greasy spoon in Ravenswood closed, the owners of Bayan Ko, a Filipino and Cuban restaurant a few doors east, saw an opportunity. The husband-and-wife team is opening their second restaurant, a greasy spoon with items like a Cuban smash patty melt, lumpia, and more. The diner will also serve classic dishes from the original Bayan Ko as daily specials. That space has since morphed into a reservation-only restaurant serving a set menu. Look for an April opening.
Address: 3154 W. Diversey, Logan Square
Key Players: Chef Mark Steuer, Milkhorse Hospitality
The opening date for the bar replacing Lost Lake in Logan Square continues to slide. The target was December 31, but it’s been repeatedly pushed and now it’s April. Nevertheless, chef Mark Steuer, who’s long served southern cuisine at restaurants like Carriage House in Wicker Park and Funkenhausen in West Town, is bringing fun takes on comfort food, like cornbread with foie gras, and more. The space, once decorated with tropical and tiki vibes, is going in a different direction and leaning into ‘80s nostalgia. Steuer and company are touting the bar’s employee benefits rarely seen for restaurant workers — for example, PTO and health care coverage — is proof of their common decency.
This cocktail is called the Captured Shadow.Marisa Klug-Morataya/Dearly Beloved
Key players: Chireal Jordan, Brian Galati
Address: 900 N. Franklin Street, Near North Side
Headquarters Beercade founders Chireal Jordan and Brian Galati have been reluctant to share details about their latest venue, Dearly Beloved, which takes over the former home of French dining stalwart Kiki’s. The duo calls it a “cocktail restaurant,” which means that drinks will be the main attraction inside the 6,000-square-foot space with rare spirits and other drinks with striking and surprising presentations. The food will focus on vegetables, tapping into the founders’ embrace of the unexpected in inventions like a zucchini dish designed to taste like filet mignon. It’s set to debut on Wednesday, May 1.
Feld owner Jake Potashnick at Froggy Meadow Farm.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Key player: Jacob Potashnick
Address: 2018 W. Chicago Avenue, West Town
Chicago native Jacob Potashnick is plugging away in West Town. Feld is a unique fine dining restaurant where Feld will draw upon his international work experiences with a tasting menu format. Imagine an open space where staff works in the middle of the dining room; Potashnick wants to keep everyone comfortably seated to keep the spirit of the room proper. He’s working with SPACE Architects and Variant Collaborative and they’re applying the final touches on the space. An avid social media user, Potashnick mentions the final stretch; he’s been busy taking meetings and, like many restaurant owners before the debut, is feeling a little anxious at this juncture. He’s even grown a mustache. Potashnick says they hope to debut with a few soft launch dinners before officially opening to the public in June.
Egg rolls are a classic Khmai dish.Eater/Melissa Blackmon
Address: 6580 N. Sheridan,Rogers Park
Key Players: Mona Sang, Sarom Sieng, Loyola University
A rare Chicago restaurant where traditional Cambodian food is the star, Khmai Fine Dining made a major splash in 2022 when chef and owner Mona Sang’s project was named one of Eater’s 15 Best New Restaurants in America. Khmai drew hoards of diners to Rogers Park for the rich, deep, and concentrated flavors that characterize Khmer cuisine. In late November, Sang closed the original location and she’s now signed a lease with Loyola University to bring her restaurant near the Rogers Park campus. An ode to Sang’s mother, Sarom Sieng, the new restaurant will expand service and offer breakfast and lunch, plus new dishes. Sang says she’s eager to accelerate the timeline as her mother — now age 80 and a survivor of the Cambodian genocide and a fixture in Khmai’s kitchen — is champing at the bit to get back to business in April.
Key players: Jun-Jun Vichaikul, Naomi Hattori, chef Eric Hattori
Address: 3443 N. Sheffield Avenue, Wrigleyville
The Hotel Zachary and the owners of the Chicago Cubs, the Ricketts family, have reshaped Wrigleyville, squeezing out many independent businesses. But just south of the baseball field, spouses Jun-Jun Vichaikul and Naomi Hattori are taking their best swings at bringing something unique to the neighborhood under local ownership. The couple plans on opening their second location of Konbini & Kanpai, a Japanese American bottle shop, to Wrigley inside the former Dark Horse Tap. The new shop is larger than the Lakeview original and includes a full kitchen. They’ve brought on Naomi Hattori’s brother, chef Eric Hattori (previously of pan Asian food truck Piko Street Kitchen) to create a menu of casual nisei-influenced dishes like egg salad sands on milk bread and bowls of udon. Vichaikul promises an entirely new lineup of Asian spirits, beers, and cocktails like a sake-based Old Fashioned with ginger syrup and barley shochu. Stay tuned for an April or May debut.
Indus
Indus co-owners Ajit (left) and Sukhu Kalra pose at Urban Space in 2021.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Address: 617 Central Avenue, Highland Park
Key Players: Sukhu and Ajit Kalra
The team behind Bhoomi, the food stall at the former Urban Space Food Hall — now known as Washington Hall — is opening a full-service restaurant in suburban Highland Park. Sukhu and Ajit Kalra are promising a menu with traditional dishes and modern twists, from curries to wagyu steaks, smoked meats, and a curated selection of wine paired with fun cocktails. The name pays homage to the Indus Valley. They feel it was one of the first to incorporate spices in their cooking, to make food about pleasure more than just sustenance. The new tagline for the restaurant is “Progressive Indian.” They’re looking at a May opening.
Kor is opening inside the Godfrey Hotel.Kor/Austin Handler
Address: 127 W. Huron Street, River North
Key Players: Soiree Hospitality, chef Onur Okan, Godfrey Hotel
The owners of Rooh Chicago are opening their fourth restaurant brand with chef Onur Okan, a Turkish native who’s cooked at Michelin-starred restaurants like Aliena and Claudia. A wood-burning grill is essential to the menu, with grilled meats and veggies with Middle Eastern and Mediterranean influences. The owners are waiting for licenses and working with the Godfrey in hopes of a late March opening.
Minyoli
Key player: Chef Rich Wang
Address: 5420 N. Clark Street, Andersonville
Taiwanese beef noodle soup, a staple embraced by many as the country’s national dish, will be the star at Minyoli, the first solo project from Boka alum Rich Wang. He’s taking over the former home of Land & Lake Kitchen and Passerotto in Andersonville. Wang’s a native of Taipei, and the menu includes a traditional beef noodle soup, characterized by a deep herbal broth infused with cardamom and cinnamon, filled with springy hand-cut noodles, and tender cuts of beef shank. He’ll also serve lu wei, or snacks braised in the same soup stock, and Taiwanese liquors, beer, and cocktails. The story’s personal for Wang, born in a juàn cun, a “military dependents’ village,” where much of the food originates. These Taiwanese hodge-podge enclaves were first established in the late 1940s toward the end of the Chinese Civil War to house Chinese military personnel and their families. Minyoli should debut in April.
Profesor Pizza is a master of many pizza styles.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Address: 1610 N. Wells Street, Old Town
Key Players: Anthony Scardino, Fifty/50 Restaurant Group
Anthony Scardino has a competitive pizza background and has worked at some of Chicago’s best pizza restaurants. He’s got a passion for Italian food and thoughtfully produces some of the city’s best pizzas. After working at a few ghost kitchens, he’s ready to commit to Old Town where he’ll take over the former Roots Pizza near Wells and North, partnering with the restaurant’s owners, Fifty/50 Restaurant Group. The two parties promise a new restaurant that distills Scardino’s personality. As the restaurant neighbors Second City, there’s potential for collaborations with the legendary comedy troop. The target opening date is, and this is no misprint, April 20. Think about it. Then forget about it.
Soul & Smoke is expanding in Evanston.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Address: 1601 Payne Street, Evanston
Key Players: Heather Bublick and D’Andre Carter
Soul & Smoke, a member of the Eater Chicago 38, is one of the city’s best barbecue restaurants thanks to the husband-and-wife team of D’Andre Carter and Heather Bublick. The two have fine dining experience, and it’s the little touches that lead to world-class brisket and ribs. Their first restaurant was in Evanston, and they are going big in the suburbs. Unlike their counter-service restaurant along the river in Avondale, the restaurant inside a 100-year barn will be full service. They’ll also have a “speakeasy-style dining room” with upscale offerings, a throwback to the couple’s day working at Moto in West Loop. Look for a late spring opening.
Steingold’s is opening a location in Wrigleyville.Steingold’s of Chicago
Address: 3630 N. Clark Street, Wrigleyville
Key Players: Aaron Steingold, Cara Peterson
American Jewish communities have long enjoyed a love affair with baseball, which makes it seem like beshert (Yiddish for “inevitable” or “pre-ordained”) that Steingold’s of Chicago is at work on a new location across from Wrigley Field. Chef and owner Aaron Steingold, a self-professed baseball historian who originally founded his modern Jewish deli in 2017, will bring his popular bagels, deli sandwiches, and a few new items (think latke-tot poutine and everything bagel-dogs on sticks) to the former home of West Town Bakery inside the Hotel Zachary. Culinary director Cara Peterson also promises special soft-serve ice cream in flavors like baklava with honey and salted caramel. While the debut’s been pushed; it won’t happen on baseball’s Opening Day as planned, Steingold tells Eater they hope to open in May.
3LP is expanding to Bridgeport.Aliya Ikhumen/Eater Chicago
Address: 964 W. 31st Street, Bridgeport
Key Players: Henry Cai, Maria’s Community Bar
Henry Cai, the South Side native, continues to spread his culture with unique fast-casual offerings of Chinese-American and Cantonese cuisine. His signature dish is fried rice with three different types of pork, or “three little pigs.” After launching as a takeout-only spot he opened inside Molly’s Cupcakes in South Loop. He’s expanding once more in Bridgeport, where he’ll take over the space formerly occupied by Pleasant House Bakery, Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream, and Herbivore. Look for a mid-April or early-May opening with his signature chicken sandwiches and more.
Evan Funke is an LA chef whose vision comes to Chicago in the form of Tre Dita.Wonho Frank Lee/Eater LA
Address: St. Regis Chicago, 401 E. Wacker Drive, Lakeshore East
Chicago’s largest restaurant group, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, will complete its two-restaurant project inside the flashy St. Regis skyscraper this spring with the debut of Tre Dita, a Tuscan steakhouse from noteworthy LA chef Evan Funke (Felix), The bar opened in late February, but Funke promises much more when the restaurant debuts. Tre Dita will also house a pasta lab where the team can highlight the traditional pasta shapes of Tuscany. It’s scheduled to open in mid-March.
Address: 2020 W. Division Street, Wicker Park
Key Players: Stephen Gillanders
Valhalla, a fine dining restaurant that started on the second floor at Time Out Market in Fulton Market, is relocating to Wicker Park inside the former Mirai Sushi space. Gillanders, a chef behind S.K.Y. Restaurant in Pilsen and Apolonia in South Loop, in early March, confirmed the move on Instagram, a month after applying for a liquor license. He writes: “Trends are avoided at all costs and every idea is met with the question: ‘Why?’ If an idea doesn’t truly have a positive impact on guest experience, it’s tossed out.” He’s declined to reveal exactly when the restaurant will open but writes “soon.”
Snack on grilled pineapple and cardamom doughnuts at Ramova Grill. | Clayton Hauck
Enjoy a Bloody Mary or benedict at these 20 spots
Brunch — not quite breakfast, not yet lunch — is one of the best parts of the weekend. The Eater Chicago Brunch Heatmap is here to help by highlighting the newest options for a delicious midday meal. The latest additions to the list include Kevin Hickey’s revival of Bridgeport’s Ramova Grill, clubby Fulton Market spot Costera Cocina Tulum, and mole-focused Mexican restaurant Manchamanteles. These restaurants join a growing number of kitchens offering exciting brunch menus. So start the day off right with eggs (and much more) at these 20 destinations.
There’s a place where laid-back streetside staples get a seat at the high table. A point where Mexican and Japanese culinary traditions meet, creating a journey for diners where the chef is the guide, and each plate is a revelation. Welcome to the taco omakase — a dining experience that speaks to connoisseurs and adventurous eaters alike.
In an omakase, Japanese for “I’ll leave it up to you,” there is no menu. All you need to do is sit back and allow yourself to be surprised by the chef. Now, take that spirit and wrap it up in a freshly made tortilla.
If you, like me, find the idea of eating tacos in an impressive succession downright irresistible, you will understand why the buzz around two omakase experiences in Chicago had me at hello. First, we visited Cariño in Uptown, where chef Norman Fenton (Schwa, Brass Heart) offers a tasting menu drawing from Central and South America. This is a late-night offering apart from Cariño’s standard tasting menu. Perhaps this option, which costs less than the standard dinner, is a gateway for diners apprehensive of spending $190 to $210 for a meal; the taco omakase costs $125.
Before Cariño opened in December, Taqueria Chingón, a Bucktown taqueria known for its creative food and bold flavors, had periodically offered special ticketed taco omakase dinners, with the first being in October 2022. The small restaurant has a patio but doesn’t normally have indoor seating. Oliver Poilevey, whose parents opened famed French restaurant Le Bouchon, unveiled this taco stand to give his cooks — Marcos Ascencio, Angel Guijosa, Antonio Incandela, and Alexander Martinez — the stage. The group also runs Obelix and will open a mariscos restaurant inside Thalia Hall in Pilsen called Mariscos San Pedro.
Both spots serve up their unique brand of omakase magic: Cariño’s is all about refined, highly personalized service and a balance between planned dishes and masterful improvisation. At the same time, the chefs behind the Chingón-Obelix team work together to deliver tacos that aren’t afraid to punch above their weight.
Both experiences share a promise: Each visit is a one-way ticket to a taco wonderland.
While sharing the common thread of personalization and surprise elements inherent to omakase and the obvious love for the kernel shared by both Cariño and Chingón, each experience delivers its unique story. One is like a friend giving you a hug, while the other one feels more like a high five. So, if you find yourself in the intersection of curiosity and craving in the world of taco omakase, every direction is the right one. Whether it’s a love song to Mexico at Cariño or a gutsy guitar riff at Chingón, these taco omakase experiences in Chicago clearly sing praises to the boundless promise of tacos.
Cariño, 4662 N. Broadway
Cariño’s late-night taco tasting menu is separate from the fine dining restaurant’s standard menu.Cariño/Kelly Sandos Photography
Stepping into Cariño, a space where fine dining restaurants 42 Grams and Brass Heart resided, is like being whisked away to a hidden hot spot in Mexico City. Low lights, meaningful art, and an intimate setting make you feel as if you’re in for something special. The name captures the spot’s essence: “Cariño,” a term of endearment or a word for love or affection in Spanish. Here, “cariño” isn’t just the name; it’s the vibe. Fenton provides an intimate and personalized dining experience that’s attentive at every turn and thoughtfully put together. You instantly feel welcome and know you are in for a treat. Like that cozy dinner-at-abuela’s feeling, only with mad chef skills and a killer playlist. The art at Cariño is selected with intention. Fenton personally knows the artist behind each work.
Land one of the seven spots at the counter for a front row seat to the open kitchen where chef Fenton serves a multi-course meal, ranging from eight to 12 dishes. Every movement is part of a dance choreographed to the soundtrack of Mexico’s heart pulsing in the background. Imagine Control Machete’s edgy underground tracks slipping between the aromas and sounds of the star of the show — sizzling masa. Corn takes center stage after the opening acts of a michelada oyster and a remarkable aguachile. Like magic, masa will transform into a variety of capricious permutations: a blue corn tetela with duck confit cured and balanced with the smoky bitterness of a recado negro; a truffle quesadilla with seasonal mushrooms made on a stone comal (a premium supplement worth splurging on); or a delightfully crispy and juicy taco de suadero with a side of jardín, made with slow-cooked brisket and a “garden” of onion and cilantro.
Fenton explains each course throughout the experience, dishing out tales from his latest trip to Mexico. “You gotta try this,” he said, sliding over a wagyu beef taco. Eager to try it, I had to stop myself to allow for a molcajete gooseberry salsa, so good I could drink it, to be drizzled on. One bite, and it was as if my asada taco had been treated to a luxury vacation.
At Cariño, diners can expect an ever-changing menu with a few anchors, including an aguachile, a take on a more traditional taco, and a dessert. “The taco omakase is curated based on what we as a concept feel like projecting that night,” says Fenton. “Everything else is subject to change based on ingredients and mood.”
Cariño´s Taco Omakase experience is available beginning at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday. The price is $125 per person, which includes food, beverage, and gratuity.
Taqueria Chingón, 2234 N. Western Avenue
Taqueria Chingon in Bucktown offers a unique omakase dinner.Taqueria Chingon
A twist on an omakase experience takes place after hours at the popular Taqueria Chingón. In Mexican street talk, the term “chingón” is a badge of honor for anything that stands out remarkably, for example, tacos, setting our expectations right from the start.
On the night of my visit, the casual eatery was buzzing, so much that it took a few minutes, a few knocks, and a text to open the door. It was all well worth it. Once inside, I noticed that the usual counter area for the trompo al pastor had been transformed into a stage where the taco omakase would take place. Excited, I took one of the eight seats reserved for the lucky few who would huddle underneath the papel picado decorations (left behind by a recent party) to watch the action unfold.
A tiny restaurant off busy Western Avenue, buzzes with a lively spirit in a casual setting. You are at a fabulous after-party where street food goes VIP. The decor and ambiance speak to a collective, spontaneous spirit seasoned with remnants of parties past, casual art, and other mementos.
A twist on the classic quesabirria swaggered in to kick off a set of 10 courses. But forget the birria; we are talking lobster and melted Oaxaca cheese tucked inside a freshly made blue tortilla. The consomé was no afterthought — light, flavorful, with a little bit of a kick, and so good you’ll want to chase it until the last drop.
Then came the tuna and belly loin on a sesame seed tostada with avocado and a pop of mandarin kumquat. I devoured it, making me break my promise not to eat it all to save room for the remaining courses.
More than one cook in the kitchen? This wasn’t just a good idea; it was a culinary jam session. In that tight space, the chef crew for the night — Ascencio, Guijosa, Martinez, and Poilevey — were like rock stars headlining the stage. Each of them got their moment in the spotlight, sharing stories, presenting dishes, talking about the ingredients in each plate, or basking in the feedback.
I did not get the pairing at Chingón, which can be purchased for $50. Pairing options include Champagne, wine, mezcal, beer, and an after-dinner cocktail. During the meal, chef Ascencio shared that Chingón will soon include their own beer in the pairings.
According to Ascencio, the Chingón-Obelix team designs the dynamic menu around the ingredients they want to showcase. Take Ibérico pork, for example, the Rolls-Royce of swine. It’s so good that it deserves its own fan club. The meat comes from the breed pata negra, which is fed a diet of acorns, giving the meat a unique flavor and texture. Guijosa presented a grilled Ibérico pork taco with salsa brava, a masterpiece of simplicity. This taco doesn’t just sit on your plate; it demands your attention — it’s the kind of taco that only the word “chingón” could describe.
Taqueria Chingón´s Taco Omakase experience is usually offered on Mondays. Follow the restaurant’s social media to get information on upcoming experiences. The price is $135 per person. A pairing option is available for an additional $50.
When Shonya Williams, better known as Chef Royce, received a call from her daughter Tot in winter of 2022, she thought her prayers had been answered. Williams had suffered a stroke in 2019, which led her to close her two-and-a-half-year-old restaurant, Kiss My Dish in suburban Oswego. A veteran restaurateur who has opened four restaurants, Royce was taking time to heal while working as a caterer when she received her daughter’s call about a restaurant location that was being advertised as a turnkey rental at the corner of Armitage Avenue and Halsted Street in Lincoln Park.
Williams was already looking to open a new restaurant on the city’s West Side in Austin, but her daughter’s call was a sign: “I really wanted to be back on the scene again. [Cooking] is what I love. So I asked God, ‘When is it gonna be my turn again? I want to do this again.”
Williams signed a lease in Lincoln Park on March 15, 2023 across the street from where Chicago’s largest hospitality group, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, has three restaurants and a fourth on its way. She spent two months renovating the former Taco Bar space, opening Soul Prime, a soul food restaurant with fried chicken, fried catfish, and lobster on the menu, in time for Mother’s Day. But just four months later with a monthly rent of $14,338.51 and sales of less than $1,000 a day, she was thinking of closing.
Shonya Williams is better known as Chef Royce.Chef Royce of Soul Prime stands in front of her restaurant smiling wearing an apron.
Mac and cheese is one of the specialties.
“I didn’t have loans or grants,” Williams says. “I have money that I have saved on my own. And I used every single dollar getting the place to a beautiful look inside, so that I can match this amazing community. I needed support from this actual community that I sit in, which I didn’t know a whole lot about. Unfortunately, I did not spend any money on marketing. I felt like people knew [me and my work], and it didn’t work like that.”
Williams remains in business thanks, in part, to a visit from Keith Lee, an MMA fighter and popular food reviewer on TikTok. Lee reviewed Soul Prime in September 2023. In the video, he swoons over the collard green dip, fried chicken dipped in hot honey sauce, and peach lemonade while sitting curbside. He enters the restaurant after his meal is complete (something he says he’s never done before) to talk to chef Williams, who shares her struggle in bringing her vision to life and keeping it afloat.
The video is uplifting, finishing off with Lee asking Williams to ring him up for $2,200 — matching her sales for that day. But it’s Williams’s comments on the neighborhood that tell the true story of her struggle: A Black woman in a predominantly white area of Chicago trying to serve food that’s often misunderstood by the wider American culture outside of Black neighborhoods.
“I’m not getting a whole lot of reception from the community, but I need them because I’m in their community,” Williams says to Lee in the video. This is one of the few times she breaks eye contact with him and looks out the window, referring to the Lincoln Park area. “I haven’t got it.”
Soul food cooks often have to battle outside perception.
According to a 2023 Chicago Metropolitan Agency for City Planning report, Lincoln Park is a predominantly white community where 80 percent of people are white in the neighborhood even though white people comprise only 33 percent of Chicago’s population. The median household income level in the 60614 zip code is $123,044, well above the city’s median of $65,781. Soul Prime is the neighborhood’s only soul food restaurant. Soul food in Chicago is concentrated on the South and West sides.
“Soul food is one of the African heritage cuisines in the United States, bringing together the culinary ingredients, traditions, and techniques of West Africa, Western Europe, and the Americas,” says Adrian Miller, James Beard Award-winning author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. “More importantly, it’s really the food that Black migrants took out of the South and transplanted in other parts of the country during the Great Migration. It is socially stigmatized because it’s associated with slavery and poverty food.”
From catfish and grits to short rib, Soul Prime’s menu has something for everyone.
Before Lee’s visit one acquaintance advised Williams to lower her prices, add salads, and bundle sides in the cost and presentation of her main dishes, instead of selling them separately. But that’s not how soul food works, Williams says. “I don’t know how to cook any other cuisines,” Williams says. “I make no salads because that’s not what I am. That’s not where I come from. That’s not what soul food is.”
Miller says this is a situation that speaks to the larger issue of a restaurateur considered an outsider, having to legitimize itself outside of her own community, while simultaneously having to educate those unfamiliar with the traditions and prep of her cuisine. Today, it’s disproportionately falling on Black influencers and celebrities like Lee to seek out, sample, and celebrate Black-owned restaurants. Just look at Ayo Edebiri: The prominent Black Golden actress and star of The Bear, who won a Golden Globe this past January for her role in the culinary drama, used her platform after the awards gala to shout out Oooh Wee It Is in Hyde Park as “some of the best food [she’s] had in her life.” These spotlights are often a boon for the business, but they highlight a seemingly ever-present segregation between communities and cuisines and how they’re valued.
Chef Williams has opened four restaurants and brought soul food to Lincoln Park’s toney community.
“People don’t want to pay a lot of money for that, so that’s why it doesn’t surprise me at all,” that someone without the understanding of soul food’s history and complexities would suggest lowering prices, Miller says. “If [Soul Prime] were just to call themselves a Southern restaurant, they could charge a lot more money. It’s really more about class and place than it is about race. People in the same socioeconomic class are usually eating the same kind of food.”
Chef Erick Williams faced a similar conundrum with Virtue in Hyde Park before he won his James Beard Award in 2022. Soul food and Southern food may look similar, but they are not the same. Miller says that soul food tends to be sweeter, more heavily spiced, and higher in fat. Soul food gets its name from the cadre of Black jazz musicians who were miffed by white jazz musicians making the most money from the musical genre that they created, says Miller. “They decided to take the music to a place where they thought white musicians could not mimic the sound. That was the sound of the Black church in the rural South. This gospel-tinged jazz sound emerged and the jazz artists themselves started calling it ‘soul’ and ‘funky’ soul. It was really ‘soul music’ first and then ‘soul’ just caught on in the culture: soul music, soul brothers, soul sister, soul food.”
The term is most typically associated with the Black Power movement of the 1960s but its usage was floating around in Black culture well before that, Miller adds. The sentiment is echoed in the 1983 book Bricktop, by Ada “Bricktop” Smith and Jim Haskins.
“I learned about soul food [in 1910], only they didn’t call it soul food then,” shares Smith, the Chicago woman and entrepreneur who became a legend overseas for playing nightlife host during Paris’ 1920s. Her clientele included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, John Steinbeck, Duke Ellington, and Elizabeth Taylor. “Soul was something you didn’t talk about except in church. Soul food was Southern food. There weren’t all that many Negroes in Chicago when I was growing up, so it wasn’t until I went to places like Louisville and Cincinnati that I met up with Southerners and ate things like spare ribs and biscuits, sweet potatoes, and cornbread, chitlins, and fried chicken.”
Chef Royce is very proud of her team of mostly Black women.
Miller’s work is an effort to dispel misconceived notions around soul food and destigmatize years of history that have relegated it to lowbrow cuisine, synonymous with Black communities, instead of acknowledging its cultural significance that carries years of history within each bite of meat and three.
“The other main critique is that [soul food] is unhealthy,” says Miller. “There are people who think that by making soul food and serving it to our community. You’re literally digesting white supremacy because you’re celebrating stuff from slavery. There are others that say ‘Why are you serving us this food? It’s killing us because they’re looking at the health outcomes in Black communities and directly tying it to soul food. If you actually look at what enslaved people were eating, it’s very close to what we call vegan today.”
He explains how an enslaved person rose before sunrise and was fed “a trough filled with crumbled cornbread and buttermilk.” Their midday meal included seasonal vegetables, which might include meat to flavor the veggies but usually, it was only vegetables. Supper was whatever was leftover from lunch. “Only on the weekends, when work either stopped or slowed down did enslaved people get access to white flour, white sugar, meat and have cakes and desserts. That was special occasion food.”
“Like any other immigrant cuisine, soul food is the food Black people took out of the South and transplanted in other places,” says Miller. “There’s certain signatures [dishes] that show up in celebrations. If you look at any immigrant cuisine in the U.S., typically an immigrant restaurateur is serving the celebration food of their culture, because they want to show off the very best of their culture. They don’t highlight the day-in and day-out stuff. And that’s the way to think about soul food. So these things like fried chicken, barbecue, fried catfish — people are not eating that every day.”
TikTokker Keith Lee was very excited about this place.
In Lincoln Park, Williams says she’s hopeful her restaurant can find a niche: “We shouldn’t have to go through ups and downs because of our skin color and I am glad to help break that barrier with food,” she says.
Miller says there are lessons to be learned from the barbecue world where the genre was once also considered “working class, cheap food, and now people are paying $36 a pound for brisket and $20 a pound for ribs. A lot has to do with barbecue being seen as cool and hip.” That’s essentially what these influencers are doing — spreading the word about something great that other traditional arbiters of value and attention may have ignored.
To date, the September TikTok video at Soul Prime has 9 million views, 1.2 million likes, and more than 23,000 comments. Lee recapped 2023 by ranking his top cities for food (ranking Chicago in his top three) and re-mentioning Soul Prime. Today, Soul Prime is still in business, which Williams credits to Lee’s visit.
“The Keith Lee community is my local community,” says Williams. “They come and say they were sent by Keith Lee. My community is Black people. I know that we don’t live in Lincoln Park. Some of them follow me from the South Side, the South Suburbs, the West Side. The ones who I see who are non-Black, walking up and down the street, those are the ones that I really wanted to reach. They’re coming in now, I love them. I’m grateful.”
Aya Pastry was a rare pandemic success story. While Chicagoans anxiously navigated the early days of COVID, the desire for comfort foods increased, and baker Aya Fukai — who rose through Chicago’s culinary ranks using her imagination and creativity as pastry chef at highly profitable Gold Coast hot spot Maple & Ash — was there with her baked goods: Fukai took inspiration from a variety of sources, including Girl Scout Cookies, which pushed her to create a supercharged doughnut, a decadent treat that looks like a Samoa cookie. Coffeehouses around town turned to Aya to supply pastries, and the bakery’s wholesale operation boomed, counting more than 50 clients including large grocery stores like Dom’s Kitchen & Market and independent coffee shops like Gaslight Coffee Roasters.
But behind the scenes, Fukai wasn’t exactly enjoying her tremendous success. She quietly left the bakery in October. Fukai’s exit came just 10 months after her backers at What If Syndicate dissolved the company. What If co-founder David Pisor brought Aya Pastry under his newly formed entity, Etta Collective.
Few knew about Fukai’s exit, as her name remained on the signs. She says that her deal to sell her 51 percent stake in the bakery for $700,000 closed on October 3. Meanwhile, Pisor told Eater on January 17 that she was still with the bakery.
Aya Pastry is just one of the dominoes to fall in Pisor’s restaurant empire, an empire that at one point consisted of five restaurants in three states. In the past month, Pisor closed the River North location of Etta and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy papers for Etta Collective and Etta River North. On the same day, Thursday, February 1, his attorney made two more bankruptcy filings — one for Etta Bucktown and another for Aya Pastry. The Aya filing revealed Pisor owed $500,000 to Fukai (she received $200,000 upon closing, it went mostly to attorneys fees, she says). A fifth filing had been made on January 18 involving Etta in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are also reports of a $2.5 million loan defaulting and eviction orders, according to Crain’s. The Chapter 11 filings would allow the businesses to continue, and although messaging directed to customers indicate that things are business as usual, questions remain about Etta’s future. Also, plans for a suburban Etta location in Evanston are on hold, Pisor confirms.
Workers said they only received two hours’ notice before Etta River North closed.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
“Our aim is to best position the Etta brand for future success,” a statement provided to Eater from Pisor and his reps reads. “By filing for protection under Chapter 11, we will be able to restructure our financial position while continuing our daily operations and keeping our locations open. As has already happened in our Scottsdale location, we predict that we will emerge stronger both operationally and financially.”
Former workers have been calling out Etta Collective for months, alleging that the company left them without health care. Their final paychecks also arrived two days late. Fukai, along with 11 former Etta employees — servers, bartenders, and operations staff — from River North and Bucktown provide an inside look into the seeming slow-rolling collapse of a national restaurant group. Etta’s Chicago workers saw warning signs of the downfall in August when Etta Collective narrowly dodged eviction at its Culver City location and laid off 10 workers including a handful at the corporate level. The cost-cutting continued as nine Etta River North workers claimed that they saw lapses in their health care coverage despite having premiums deducted from their paychecks. They accuse Pisor and management of allegedly misleading customers about the distribution of a 3.5 percent staff benefits fee added to customer checks. Most have requested their names be kept out of the story for fear of being labeled as outspoken as they search for new hospitality jobs. Some say they are worried about becoming a target of what they describe as Pisor’s litigious temperament.
After the settlement, Pisor quickly touted the arrivals of three forthcoming restaurants in an afternoon interview with Eater on January 22 — Etta Evanston, Etta Dallas, and a yet-to-be-announced Downtown Chicago steakhouse. Yet the bankruptcy filings include a list of unpaid vendors across sectors — restaurant, health care, and construction — that may put the three projects in jeopardy. Familiar names like Slagel Family Farm, Sysco, Kilgus Farmstead, and Supreme Lobster are owed thousands of dollars, according to these filings.
“He’s got open tabs all around the city,” alleges a source who works in construction and design.
In a written response about money owed to vendors, Pisor writes that Etta filed for Chapter 11 in part to ensure day-to-day operations to restructure and “work to resolve those payments.”
Etta Collective’s decline comes in the aftermath of a split between Pisor and former business partner Jim Lasky following a legal battle that started in March 2022. The two opened Maple & Ash, in 2015 in Chicago’s Gold Coast. They went on to form What If Syndicate and opened a Maple & Ash in Scottsdale. However, along the way, Lasky and Pisor’s relationship became strained, according to court documents. In January 2023, the pair agreed to split What If into two companies. Pisor formed Etta Collective, taking Etta restaurants in River North and Bucktown, Aya Pastry, and Cafe Sophie in Gold Coast. Lasky formed Maple Hospitality Group, taking Maple & Ash, one of the highest-grossing restaurants in the country, according to Restaurant Business Online.
Pisor’s employees in this new company, Etta Collective, say the split was an unwelcome change. Fukai alleges it was made without her knowledge or input, despite her being the majority owner of Aya Pastry. Though she’s come to terms with leaving the business that bears her name, she is considering pursuing legal action against Pisor after seeing the bankruptcy filing.
Many other former employees believe they would still be employed under different leadership.
“Pisor was the only thing wrong with that company,” former Etta River North server Drew Riebhoff alleges of Etta Collective.
Pisor earned a reputation as a developer with big ideas. As a restaurateur, he relished creating lavish dining rooms. Before Maple & Ash, he served as the chief executive officer of Elysian Hotels and was a prolific real estate developer. In 2015, Lasky and Pisor founded Maple & Ash. Building on the success of that first steakhouse, the partners, along with executive chef and Elysian alum Danny Grant, opened a second location four years later in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Maple & Ash brought a brasher attitude compared to traditional steakhouses. It had to, as it takes guts to open a steakhouse on the perimeter of what Chicagoans have nicknamed “the Viagra Triangle,” with Morton’s and Gibsons already surrounding Mariano Park. Pisor and Lasky debuted a new brand centered on one of the trends of the moment: kitchens with wood-fired hearths.
An approach that mixed fine dining with approachable irreverence earned Maple & Ash national attention; then-Eater critic Bill Addison hailed the team for its embrace of “the steakhouse motif with unfettered playfulness.” Addison continued, “[Grant] oversees a 12-foot hearth that breathes fire over rows of steaks, as well as a coal-burning oven that produces the kitchen’s greatest stroke of genius: a seafood tower of roasted shrimp, oysters, lobster, Alaskan King Crab legs, and other oceanic treasures, kissing the shellfish with smoke and concentrating their flavors.”
When Etta Bucktown, a more casual restaurant than Maple & Ash, opened in 2018, customers soon made it one of the hottest tables in town, too. A prototypical neighborhood restaurant and easily scaled, a second Etta soon opened in River North with a third following in Culver City, California.
But the partnership reached a breaking point during the pandemic. Maple & Ash became caught up in a scandal over vaccinations earmarked for a safety net hospital on Chicago’s West Side. A Maple & Ash regular, the former chief operating officer of Loretto Hospital, broke protocol and secured a supply of COVID vaccines for the steakhouse’s staff. While all of this was going on, restaurants across the country fought for every dollar and applied for PPP funds, and staff donned masks to keep safe. Pisor and Lasky’s relationship continued to erode.
David Pisor came up with much of the design for Maple & Ash, the steakhouse he and Jim Lasky opened before the two split in January 2023.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
A lawsuit filed by Pisor in April 2022 alleged that Lasky and Grant were freezing him out of the company. A counter-lawsuit accused Pisor of allegedly showing up to a female employee’s house late at night unannounced. Rumors began to circulate on both sides, but before the powder keg could explode, Pisor and Lasky agreed to a settlement in January 2023, splitting the company and keeping any other stories away from the public eye.
Today, Pisor’s empire appears in shambles, and his former business partner at Maple & Ash, Lasky, is defending allegations of PPP fraud levied by restaurant investors. The claims of PPP abuse were used as punchlines during the 2024 Jean Banchet Awards, which recognizes local chefs and restaurants. On stage in January, host Michael Muser, a co-owner of two-Michelin-starred Ever, joked about the alleged purchase of a private jet using taxpayer funds that were supposed to benefit employees. But Maple & Ash’s reputation and brand, at least in the eyes of customers, remains strong. The steakhouse continues to attract crowds in Gold Coast and Scottsdale.
Maple & Ash’s owners declined to comment for this story.
Pisor had big plans in 2023 after breaking away from Lasky. In March, he hired a pair of big names with Michelin-star resumes. Alinea Group alum Dan Perretta served as a partner and executive chef. He brought over Micah Melton, the former beverage director of the Aviary — the upscale cocktail lounge operated by Alinea. Buoyed by a fresh start and new personnel, Pisor teased expansion through a series of media announcements in the spring and early summer. But by August, Melton was laid off and Perretta had quit, allegedly in protest of the layoffs.
For service staff, Etta looked like a great place to work from the outside. The company’s promise to pay 70 percent of medical expenses for employees was particularly attractive. But after those August layoffs — which included firing managers who handled payroll — Etta workers allege that they received mixed messages from management regarding their paychecks and benefits. One ex-employee claims he was told by a manager that Etta had underpaid him in August and that he would receive the missing amount in the next week’s paycheck. When the following payday arrived, he claims he was told he owed money to the restaurant because he was overpaid. Complicating matters, according to workers, was an alleged lapse in dental and vision coverage between July 31 and December 5. Eater reviewed emails from insurance provider Guardian and Etta that backed the claim.
“It was just becoming this big, big process of confusion and lies,” a former River North worker alleges.
In an interview from January and a written statement, Pisor denies any lapses, claiming Etta provided “same-day reimbursement checks” and payments before appointments.
Eater has reviewed worker pay stubs from January 2024 showing the deductions (around $15.56 bimonthly for dental and $67.14 for health insurance for employees without dependents). Another worker tells Eater that their dentist told them their “insurance was no longer active.” They claim management never bothered to tell workers.
“I got a call from my dentist for like $500 because they said that they canceled our insurance in August, but we had still been paying premiums since then,” that same worker says. “And that has been taken out of our checks.”
Similarly, Etta server Riebhoff received a letter dated December 12 from Guardian stating dental coverage had been terminated on July 31 before coverage was reinstated. Workers pushed back during a December pre-shift meeting and benefits were restored retroactively to August. Management allegedly told workers they would be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket health care expenses incurred during the lapse in coverage.
“All employees who attended their appointments and submitted a claim to us received a manual check reimbursement from us directly out of pocket, as we did not want any employee to have to fund their own vision and dental appointments while the billing dispute was still being resolved,” Pisor responded.
In January, Pisor told Eater that the health care concerns were not as widespread as alleged by employees, attributing the claim to just one outspoken worker complaining. However, Eater spoke with eight other employees who shared similar concerns about dental and vision coverage. Pisor added that Etta was in a dispute with Guardian, saying the insurance company overcharged Etta following its August layoffs.
Guardian does not appear on the restaurant’s bankruptcy filing as one of the vendors to whom Etta River North owes money. In a statement, Pisor writes that Etta and Guardian agreed to a payment plan in mid-December after receiving a notice on December 7 from Guardian, giving Etta its 30-day notice that it would discontinue coverage due to nonpayment. However, a $10,042.39 debt to United Healthcare appears on the Etta Collective filing.
Aya Fukai says she left Aya Pastry in October 2023.Aya Pastry
Workers want to know what their deductions were spent on. They also received notice of open enrollment going from December 20 to December 29, 2023. An email sent to workers dated December 29, 2023, announced that the dispute with Guardian had been settled. A representative from Etta’s dental and vision provider, Guardian, declined most questions but did say that Etta is no longer a client.
Etta also tacked on a 3.5 percent fee for customers, presenting it as a payment for “staff benefits.” Workers claim that’s not the case and allege the money goes toward credit card processing fees.
“We were required through management to tell people that that was to go toward our health care,” a former Etta worker alleges.
Pisor’s statement denies this claim, saying the charge is meant to cover health care: “We do not offer discounts for cash, nor do we communicate with customers in that manner.”
Multiple former workers, including Riebhoff, allege that they were told by managers that “if [customers are] paying with cash, we take that service charge off.”
Riebhoff continues, “Yep, I guess if you pay cash, you don’t have to help people with insurance.”
Former Etta workers claim pettiness played a role in the company’s fall, citing numerous instances of Pisor’s hubris. A former employee says they believe “it would be thriving” and alleges that Pisor “completely gutted the restaurant of all of its heart and soul.”
The menu changed so much that regular customers couldn’t recognize the restaurant they once enjoyed; management removed popular items like oysters, ricotta pillows, and fire pie. “They just didn’t want anything that Danny [Grant] created on our menu,” Riebhoff says.
A manager allegedly told Riebhoff that the decision to remove specific dishes was a reaction to the loss of chef Grant after What If’s split. Pisor dismissed that conclusion as untrue speculation, saying while dishes change due to seasonality, the classics remain. In addition, three workers and a source familiar with operations say that to underscore that feeling, someone had defaced a photo of Grant at Etta Bucktown, drawing a penis on the picture.
“That’s how petty that they were about the Danny Grant situation,” a former worker says. “And that’s up at the restaurant for employees to see and walk past every day.”
Cafe Sophie next found footing in Gold Coast.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Pisor writes, “to the best of my knowledge, there’s no photo of Danny Grant in the restaurant with graffiti on it” and that “if I had been aware of any such photo, I would have had it removed and made sure we addressed that issue with staff immediately.”
Grant declined a request for comment.
A source familiar with Etta’s operations says they were stunned by how quickly the chain’s financials soured right after the split with Lasky in January 2023. That source claims Pisor didn’t realize that restaurants in Chicago slow down in the winter months and make the majority of money after March. Part of the reason, the source alleges, was that Pisor didn’t make any adjustments to his lifestyle, thinking he could live his life as if he was still a co-owner of Maple & Ash, which reported $32 million in sales in 2023. He wanted badly to see Etta succeed on the national level but Etta wasn’t ready to expand that quickly at that scale, the source says.
Pride also seems to have fueled Pisor’s desire to open another steakhouse — showing Grant and Lasky that he could exceed the success of Maple & Ash without them. Pisor had an opportunity to partner on a new restaurant at One Illinois Center. Maple & Ash’s reputation impressed the project’s owner who sought to replicate that success. But in the wake of the bankruptcy filings and eviction notes, the project owner confirms they have severed ties with Pisor. They declined further comment, stating they didn’t want their name in the story and didn’t want anything to do with Pisor. Two other sources allege that the owner was continually embarrassed by Pisor’s recent headlines.
Engineers, architects, and management companies haven’t been paid for a $5 million project that includes a new Etta in Evanston. Construction was supposed to start there in mid-February, but parties are pulling out of the project: “As far as right now, that project is dead,” a construction source says.
Pisor described Evanston as “on hold” and that Etta Collective’s focus is on restructuring.
Pisor’s attitude toward flipping the page in teasing new projects without facing accountability irked his former employees. The day he closed Etta River North, Pisor told Eater Chicago he had worked out a deal with his landlord to open a new restaurant in the space.
“When he said he was going to open a new restaurant in that space, that was a bit infuriating for me,” a former worker says. “Because if that is the case, why were we not informed about this and given the option to maybe pursue a future with the company?”
As the bankruptcies get sorted, there are parties interested in buying Etta from Pisor. Court documents identified John Leahy, who owns Lulu’s in Waikiki, Hawai’i, as a stalking horse investor. “He is a long-time colleague who is interested in helping us restructure and emerge stronger from this bankruptcy,” according to Pisor. “Each entity is being restructured so that we can emerge stronger from the filing. We’re excited to start growing again once we come out the other side of this.”
While Pisor talks expansion, grassroots campaigns from restaurant workers, including the activists at the CHAAD Project, have mounted with a goal of alerting members of the hospitality industry of Pisor and Etta Collective’s reputation.
Pisor writes that he’s unaware of such campaigns and feels Etta treats workers well: “We take very good care of them, and we have employees who have been with us for five years. We’re very proud of the team we’ve built.”
That’s contrary to Riebhoff’s frustrations which have built for months.
“In the court documents for the Scottsdale bankruptcy, there is a quote from him saying, ‘I want to keep this place open so I don’t negatively impact my employees there,’” Riebhoff says. “Meanwhile, he closes Etta River North two hours before our shift with no communication whatsoever. I fucking worked for Lettuce [Entertain You Enterprises] during COVID, and R.J. Melman called us to tell us about it — everyone. So for him to just like not acknowledge it at all, to have zero sympathy or empathy, is fucking disgusting.”
Etta River North remains closed even though lights are turned on and tables set as though the restaurant is ready to serve customers. On the morning of Wednesday, February 7, Rieboff was greeted by the sound of 30 or so text messages. He wasn’t surprised with what he read. He and his former coworkers were supposed to receive their last paycheck from Etta, but the payments didn’t come through. So he and four former workers gathered that afternoon outside Etta Bucktown with signs to protest.
“A lot of industry people live check by check, where’s their money?” they yelled. “They have new concepts even though they’re broke!”
Former Etta River North server Drew Riebhoff holds up a sign at a protest in front of Etta’s Bucktown location.Ashok Selvam/Eater Chicago
A former Etta worker holds up two signs outside the Bucktown location.Ashok Selvam/Eater Chicago
Eater reviewed a text from Rieboff to Etta Bucktown manager Max Ostrowski asking about the status of the paychecks. Ostrowski replied that payment should pop up in 24 to 48 hours, “but if Bucktown gets shut down [because] of protest, then the courts could shut us down and we can’t pay anyone and it would be tied up in courts for months.”
That night, Pisor sent out an email to those former workers, writing that “this payment delay was not expected, the court has approved payment, and we anticipate that the funding process will only take a few days.”
On the afternoon of Friday, February 9, Rieboff told Eater that he received his payment and that he was shocked that no insurance premiums were deducted from his paycheck.
As news spread about Aya Pastry’s bankruptcy on Tuesday, February 13, Pisor’s teams sent out an email newsletter to the bakery’s customers: “Aya continues to operate and add new clients to our roster. What does this mean for you, our valued patrons? Operations as usual. We remain dedicated to producing great breads, cakes and pastries that you’ve come to expect, and our day-to-day operations will continue without interruption.”
A similar email was also sent to Etta Bucktown’s customers, a message that addressed the protest earlier in the week, reassuring potential diners that payments were “sent less than 36 hours after they were due” and that management was “filled with optimism about the future.”
Neither message included any mention of Fukai’s departure. When reached, Fukai, who had already seen the Aya Pastry email, said she felt the message “seemed misleading.” Pisor, in a statement, writes that Etta Collective promoted a worker who had been with the bakery for four and a half years to lead Aya Pastry.
Fukai, who already received $200,000 of Aya’s $700,000 sale price from Pisor, wonders if she’ll see the remainder after five years of building the bakery. She empathizes with Rieboff and Etta’s other workers. Though she’s had since October to extricate herself from the bakery, she needs a reset.
“I’ve been working so hard, and I had so many responsibilities, so I’m taking a little break,” Fukai says.
Pork chop suey, duck fat-infused corn dogs and more are served at Ramova Grill.|
Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Chicago — we’re in a leap year, so the city gets an extra day of February antics. For cynics, that might feel like we’re an extra day away from spring, but don’t be one of those fools. A beautiful way to avoid wintertime blues is to enjoy a great meal at a great, new restaurant. With that in mind, welcome to the Eater Chicago Heatmap for February.
The Heatmap features new restaurants and old favorites creating a new buzz. Whereas the Eater 38 is a collection of can’t-miss stalwarts and bucket-list entries, the Heatmap is about the now — focused on recent openings that have the city’s diners talking.
The February update includes four updates: a reskinned hot dog stand, a renovated South Side icon, a tasting menu with a late-night fine dining taco menu, and a hip Lincoln Park steakhouse.
For culinary creator and blogger Samantha Mui, food has always been “the center of everything.” It’s one of the reasons the second-generation Cantonese American launched Thirsty Dumpling, an at-home dumpling-making kit that marries tradition with modern ease.
“There are two kinds of people,” Mui says. “People who plan their food around their activities and people who plan their activities around food.”
You could guess which category she falls into.
Samantha Mui, a culinary creator and blogger, is the founder of Thirsty Dumpling.
For Mui, Thirsty Dumpling is a culmination of personal and career milestones to this point; an opportunity for the act of preparation to serve as a focal point for communing in the age of Postmates and Uber Eats. She’s no stranger to the food space, having worked in several different food spaces including blogging at Sammy Eats and creating cooking videos on YouTube. She’s even appeared on the Bay Area version of Check, Please!and competed on Food Network’s Supermarket Stakeout (the episode aired in early January 2021, in which she made it to the final round).
Mui aims to empower millennials and zoomers by reigniting a spark for home cooking and party hosting. It’s something she admits she didn’t have as often as she would’ve liked growing up, and was part of why she loved hosting friends as she got older. After the height of the pandemic, she felt an element of quality, thoughtful at-home gatherings was lost as everyone was eager to be back outside.
After moving to the Midwest from the Bay Area in 2022, Mui began posting on Kittch, a live-streaming platform for culinary creators where she shared trendy hacks and what have become millennial party staples — charcuterie and butter boards. But she soon realized that wasn’t where her heart was.
Then, she thought of dumplings.
Looking back on her childhood, primarily living with her brother and maternal grandmother during the week while their parents worked, then spending the weekends with mom and dad, dumplings were the one dish she always enjoyed among what she considered “bland, healthier” foods her mother and grandmother made more regularly.
Thirst Dumpling’s kits are designed to help home cooks seamlessly host dumpling parties.
A packaged dough mix takes the guesswork out of dumpling making.
While living abroad in Shanghai as part of a graduate studies program in 2017, she frequented a local dumpling shop whose flavors brought back those childhood memories; she confesses she dined there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Pretty soon, she took to her apartment’s purple kitchen to try her hand at making them herself, experimenting with proteins such as pork and shrimp, seeking the kind of comfort that only a family recipe could deliver.
Like many grandmothers’ recipes handed down through generations, there were no measurements or written instructions. “I realized how much of [the process] was memory-based because I’d watch my mom just throw it all together. I remember her just chopping things up and throwing a bunch of random ingredients into a big, yellow Tupperware bowl, then we’d fold them together. There was no recipe. This was 20 years later and I was able to recreate what she did.” Returning to the United States, dumplings became a staple in her own home — she even included a recipe for Jiaozi-style dumplings in her 2020 self-published cookbook, Melting Pot.
The kits come with the basics for a filling. Just add protein.
Six years later, she finally — albeit impulsively (coming up with the concept in April of 2023 and launching in November) — decided to go all-in on Thirsty Dumpling.
Developing a recipe that would easily translate to home cooks of all skill levels was crucial. With Asian cooking in particular, she’d heard from many home cooks that there were additional “intimidating” factors to recreating dishes on their own.
“We’ve tried to remove all the pain points of making dumplings without sacrificing any of the complete experience, so this is really bridging the culture,” she says.
Thirsty Dumpling’s package includes everything but the meat (or selected substitute, such as Impossible beef or pork) and preferred cooking oil to make an affordable, “cake mix-style” product.
“If you’re scared of crimping, we have the little dumpling folder,” she says. “If you’re nervous about reading instructions and not really trusting yourself, we have the videos to use as a benchmark.”
Dinner is nearly served.
With enough ingredients for 36 dumplings, including a soy-and-sesame-based dipping sauce and a combination of air and freeze-dried ingredients that reflect a traditional Cantonese stuffing — from various cabbages and green onion to ginger, mushroom, and white pepper — Mui has created an arguably foolproof recipe, “so good,” its tagline states, “you’ll catch fillings.”
Much intention and attention to common kitchen mishaps went into compiling the final product. Considering different learning styles was important to her, sharing that she hesitated in her own continuing education (culinary and otherwise) due to inflexibilities in lessons or instructions before realizing she was just a more of a hands-on learner.
“People who don’t cook, when you ask them ‘what happened?’ — it’s those small steps that weren’t mentioned but should have been,” she says. “If you cook, you learn that over time, some things in recipes are implied. That’s why we have the videos. They’re not there to follow step-by-step, but it’s the closest thing to me being right next to you, your bestie in the kitchen, letting you know that you’re good.”
Her mission in fostering togetherness and active participation in the kitchen is further underscored by her “dumpling parties” and classes showcasing what she considers “the world’s most shareable food.” Taking place in coworking spaces like Guild Row in Avondale and the conference rooms of Merrill-Lynch’s downtown offices, they’re her ideal vehicle for building harmonious unions on and off the plate.
Mui found connections in Chicago through a variety of food startup programs.
Mui’s infectious, extroverted personality also mixed well with Chicago’s Midwestern hospitality, making it comfortable for her to connect with the local food community. She’s attended mixers hosted by Vermillion’s Rohini Dey and her Let’s Talk Womxn initiative, and connected with other rising leaders in the city like Francis Almeda of Side Practice Coffee, alongside companies such as Here Here Market and Good Food Accelerator that support independent entrepreneurs in their business goals.
“Chicago is such a hub for emerging food brands,” she says excitedly. “There were so many accelerator programs here — and they were free. The city’s so collaborative. I was so shocked at how many communities exist here to support folks like us. People want to see you succeed.”
She credits her friend, founder of Vietnamese coffee brand (and upcoming Uptown coffee shop) Fat Miilk, Lan Ho with providing her first real introduction to Chicago’s expansive food culture and entrepreneurial spirit. Initially meeting during their pageant days, competing in Miss Asian Global, Mui reached out ahead of her impending move and the two reconnected more deeply.
“I witnessed a lot of her growth, when she was prepping for Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars and watching her grow and figure out Fat Miilk and all the craziness of being an entrepreneur, always be able to turn a corner and come out on top — it was helpful to see someone else on their journey. She’s that person I call for advice.”
Since Thirsty Dumpling’s launch, Mui’s continued adjusting to life as a small business owner, but the feedback so far has been more than enough to sustain her.
So crispy.Garrett Sweet/Eater Chicago
Time to dig in.
“I sent a lot of tester kits to different kinds of people — folks with kids, people having a date night, girls’ nights, whatever. I was so nervous that if someone got my kit and the instructions weren’t good, they would say it was so hard to do — that their experience was bad,” she says. “But just the fact that people say ‘I can’t believe I made that’ — it’s all about that confidence that comes after. That lets me know I’ve made it.”
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