Chicago Chefs Win Two Major James Beard Honors
Local Food Forum congratulates the Chicago culinary artists who won medallions at the 2023 James Beard Foundation Awards ceremony held right here in Chicago, at the Lyric Opera House, on June 5.
The very first award of the night, for Emerging Chef, went to Damarr Brown, chef de cuisine at Virtue, a restaurant located in the Hyde Park neighborhood that celebrates Southern and Black cooking traditions. His win provides an extraordinary two-year James Beard winning streak for Virtue, whose owner and executive chef Erick Williams received the Best Chef: Great Lakes Award just last year.
And that Best Chef: Great Lakes award remains in Chicago hands, won this year by the married couple Timothy Flores and Genie Kwon, owners of Kasama, an all-day restaurant located in East Ukrainian Village that features their modern take on the food of The Philippines.
These award recipients not only represent the excellence of the food in the Chicago region’s world-class culinary community, but also its diversity. Cheers to the winners and all of our region’s other nominees and semi-finalists as well. Although some think of the phrase “there are no losers” is a cliche, to be recognized as a contender for the nation’s biggest culinary awards over a nation of worthy competitors is no small feat.
SOAR is Back to Give Boost to Downtown Market Scene
Local Food Forum is a level playing field for all of the Chicago region’s farmers markets. I do have personal favorites, though, and not surprisingly, they tend to be fairly close to where we live in the Lakeview neighborhood.
One of these is the SOAR Farmers Market. Now the first question you might ask is, why the heck is it called SOAR? It’s because it is located in the downtown Chicago neighborhood of Streeterville (SOAR is the acronym for Streeterville Organization of Active Residents).
This market is an interesting mix of farmers market personalities. On the one hand, it’s about as urban as it gets, located on the plaza in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art and very close to Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile, the historic Water Tower and the 875 N. Michigan Ave. skyscraper better known from its previous incarnation as the John Hancock building.
Yet once inside, the SOAR market has a strong vibe of a neighborhood market that happens to have a great lineup of vendors (most of which are familiar from the region’s larger markets). Talking about Nichols Farm & Orchard, Ellis Family Farms, Smits Farms, Finn’s Ranch, Phoenix Bean Tofu, River Valley Ranch Mushrooms, Bennison’s Bakery (no relation) and more.
Barb snapped a photo of me and good friend Elsa Jacobson, who sells for Phoenix Bean Tofu at farmers markets and on Saturdays is manager of The Lincoln Park Farmers Market.
I’d actually only heard about the SOAR market prior to 2020, but hadn’t visited; I was a regular at Green City Market in Lincoln Park and also worked in an office clear across downtown for several years, which rather ruled out a farmers market stop on the way to work. But the onset of the COVID crisis forced Green City to forgo its Wednesday market through 2020, and SOAR, a quick hop on the 146 or 151 bus, became my mid-week market mainstay.
I came to like it so much that I returned frequently in 2021 (also the year I started publishing Local Food Forum), even after the other mid-week markets returned to their usual schedules. I was happy to return on this year’s opening day.
One of my purchases on Tuesday was the first English peas I’ve seen this year. I doalmost all of the cooking at home, and because of my proclivity to hand-cut everything, Barb and I have a running joke about how I’m part food writer and part Amish hausfrau. Nonetheless, there really is some Zen in the process of shelling peas. Maybe I can get Barb to video me shelling and I’ll put it into Local Food Forum.
A modest market haul: English peas from Nichols Farm & Orchard (Marengo, Illinois); tofu salads from Phoenix Bean Tofu (Chicago); strawberries from Lyons Fruit Farm (Fennville, Michigan); eggs from Finn’s Ranch (Buchanan, Michigan); a baseball-bat-size cucumber from Nichols; and green garlic from Lane’s End Farm (Lowell, Indiana).
Here are some more photos at and around the SOAR Market.
The Water Tower, one of the few structures in downtown Chicago this is a survivor of the city’s catastrophic 1871 fire, is a beautiful relic flanked by modern skyscrapers. It is located a couple of blocks west of the Tuesday SOAR Market.