Mike Sula

1 week ago | chicagoreader.com | Mike Sula

Divs Ray was too young to remember the French baking classes her mother, Manasi, taught in the remote northwestern Indian steel town of Rourkela. And yet Ray’s guava gochugaru pâte à choux somehow embodies the improvisational style of her mother, who had no problems experimenting with alternativesin a town not well provisioned with the traditional ingredients of French pastry.  “My mom was very flexible,” says Ray, proprietor of the minibakery Umami From Scratch.

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Mike Sula

On day one, Jessica Walks First will teach her students about the Kwakwaka’wakw Salmon Boy who was taken by the Salmon People to their underwater village to learn their sacred laws, emphasizing respect, reciprocity, reincarnation, and the interconnectedness of human and natural worlds. A few lessons later, she’ll speak of the Lakota White Buffalo Calf Woman who told her people how to live in harmony with the sacred bison and the world, and the importance of ceremony and reciprocity.

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Mike Sula

Cheffoirs always seem to follow a formula of triumph over adversity. See Grant Achatz’s Life, on the Line and Rick Tramonto’s Scars of a Chef. This is a recipe likely born in Anthony Bourdain’s seminal Kitchen Confidential. But I’ve read few as harrowing as this one. Duffy’s tragic origin story and rise to greatness have been told plenty of times in print and film, but I’ve never encountered a version this raw and unflinching.

3 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Mike Sula

Cesar Ordaz saw some crazy shit go down at the late Noble Square Italian restaurant Corosh. For about a decade in the early oughts, his dad worked as a chef there, and that’s where wee Ordaz frequently hung out waiting for him. “I’d be at the edge of the bar, a little kid—seven, eight years old,” he says. “Just sitting down waiting for my dad’s shift to end at three o’clock in the morning. Every New Year’s Eve, they would have a ticketed event with DJs on every floor and unlimited drinks.

3 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Mike Sula

Ahhhhh. . . . four year olds . . .  Known for exuberant energy, raging ids, insatiable thirsts for novelty, and pushing the button-down, plastic fantastic boundaries of polite company. Mostly toilet-trained. Ravenous appetites too. But still a little messy. That pretty much crystalizes the state of Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern—which celebrates its fourth birthday this summer.