Chicago’s food scene is informed by who worked for whom: You come up under, say, Paul Kahan, or Mindy Segal, or Rick Bayless. ![]() None of the articles written about the opening indicated who the chef was. It goes back to 2013, when Pikas and Bezsylko signed a lease on a corner space in Logan Square, had a friend build two long wooden tables for the dining room, brought on two more cooks (Justin Behlke and Alex Truong), handwrote the menu on a roll of butcher-block paper, and, in February 2014, opened Cellar Door Provisions. How is it possible that some of the most original cooking happening anywhere in this country is at a restaurant that has never touted its chef as any kind of public figure, and in fact, for a long time, didn’t really have a head chef in the traditional sense at all? ![]() It’s also weird because the hype surrounding a new restaurant opening pretty much always revolves around who the chef is. This might not seem that weird-plenty of people go out to eat without caring who the chef is-except that as a food writer, it’s been my job for the past decade to know this type of information. Cellar Door Provisions has been my favorite restaurant in my hometown of Chicago for years, but until recently I could not have told you who the chef was. “I can’t see any pleasure in having a quiche factory.” Part 2: The Chef “The more of something you make, the worse it gets,” Bezsylko says. And the quiche matters so much that no compromises will ever be made to sacrifice its quality. It matters that the food makes you feel good and healthy-not just as a diner but also as a cook. It tells you that it also matters whether the cooks enjoy working on something. But it also tells you that there’s more to Cellar Door than creating the best possible version of something. The quiche tells you what uncommonly, absurdly, perfectionist-ly good cooking is going on at Cellar Door Provisions. But I think the quiche-both in its greatness and in its limitations-makes the clearest introduction to the very particular mentality of this restaurant. The menu changes daily, but here’s an example of what you might find.I have a lot of thoughts about Cellar Door: about why it’s my favorite restaurant in Chicago, about why it’s significant that it’s in Chicago, about how it rejects and rethinks so many deeply ingrained aspects of restaurant culture. But when we leave having had the best dinner we’ve had in weeks in the same seat where we responded to work emails the day before, we’re just happy to live in a universe where this place exists. The same way a public park can be a venue for a summer cookout, a gym for people without any hangups about working out in public, and a bathroom for your Labradoodle, Cellar Door Provisions can be a lot of things all at once. This attention to detail makes it feel special enough for date night, while still being casual and quick enough for a dinner you’re dreading with your needy co-worker who wants to fill you in on the details of their cat’s hernia surgery. And instead of pastries, they’re eating a perfectly tender butcher’s steak topped with preserved sardines, or a piece of medium-rare salmon that you could slice through with a bent paper clip. In addition to the bottomless coffee that’s fueled the last 40 pages of your completely coherent masterpiece, there’s a selection of incredible pastries like chocolate croissants that are so flaky they should consider hiring someone to sweep the shards off the floor like a barbershop.Īt dinner this place transitions to table service and switches menus, but other than that, things don’t change too drastically - except more people are drinking natural wine. It’s small but works for whatever you might need - meeting your boss for lunch, catching up with a friend, or working on your timely political screenplay about giant mutant tardigrades. ![]() You never know exactly what’s going to be on the menu until you walk in, but just like the music they’re playing - from Destroyer to Anderson Paak - it’s somehow always exactly what we want at that moment.Ĭellar Door Provisions is a bright and open cafe in Logan Square where you’ll see as many people working on their laptops during the day as sitting down for a full meal. In our dream universe, every restaurant would be like Cellar Door Provisions - friendly, laid-back, and only serving fantastic versions of whatever they feel like making that day.
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