The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. This week Mike Sula reviews Mordecai, the new fine-dining restaurant that has joined Big Star and Smoke Daddy in the Hotel Zachary, across from Wrigley Field. According to Sula, it’s another hit from chef Matthias Merges and his hospitality company, Folkart Management. Merges has been busy lately—it’s just six months ago that he and celebrity chef Graham Elliot (Top Chef, MasterChef, et al) opened the Randolph Street spot Gideon Sweet. But Merges, who for many years was Charlie Trotter’s right-hand man, has long been an entrepreneurial sort. In fact, as recounted in Sula’s 2014 feature “What happens when all-star chefs get in bed with Big Food,” he’s partly responsible for the popularization of one of the techniques that have come to epitomize modern fine dining: sous vide cooking.
“I remember one day when I’m cooking on the line—it’s so brutal,” he recalls. “It’s like, ‘I wish I can manipulate the temperature and control it to a point that is so much more refined than I can do with my hands.’ I’m like, ‘There has to be a way to get this [technology] from this million-square-foot factory into a 900-square-foot kitchen.'”
Those are just a few innovations that have come through seemingly unlikely collaborations between local chefs—all distinguished by their commitment to local and sustainable food—and multinational food corporations.
