People Who Feed You

The dishes at Cellar Door Provisions are constantly being tweaked and refined according to the fresh ingredients they have, in an effort to keep things hyper-seasonal and generate as little waste as possible. 

Juan Muñoz started working at Gene & Georgetti in 1979 as a busser. He learned English along the way, got his brother J.J. a job there, and worked his way up to server. He's still there, 45 years later.

The new series America the Bountiful goes beyond food scenes in cities to explore the culinary traditions of America's heartland via individual ingredients linked to specific places, like wild rice in Minnesota.

A few years ago, Francis Almeda opened a coffee shop dedicated to showcasing people's creative pursuits. Now he's a partner in everything from another coffee shop to a pizza business.

Johnny Clark began exploring Ukrainian cuisine during the pandemic and after the Russian invasion, and has now opened a Ukrainian restaurant that he named after his grandma.

For a loaf of bread from Publican Quality Bread to reach you, wheat must be grown and harvested and sent to a stone mill to be ground into flour, which then goes through a process as long as 60 hours at the bakery. 

If you've eaten tofu in Chicago, you've probably eaten Phoenix Bean's product. Jenny Yang bought the company on something of a whim in the mid-2000s, but now it has had to expand into a new factory to keep up with demand, while still only using Illinois-grown soybeans.

Two cousins opened the first Eggholic, a restaurant featuring a distinctive style of Indian food focusing on eggs, in Schaumburg in 2018. By the end of this year, there will be 28 Eggholics across the country. How did they do it?

Sam Rattanopas and Mina Sudsaard met while children in Thailand, and now co-own NaKorn in Evanston, where they serve upscale Thai food. 

At his Chicago restaurant Hermosa, Ethan Lim offers Cambodian-inspired sandwiches during the day and a "Family Meal" multi-course private dining menu at night. He's the subject of a new American Masters profile. 

“God bless the pioneers of the Indian community who brought Indian food [to the United States], but we’ve gotten settled into this greatest hits world,” says Zubair Mohajir, the chef behind the buzzy Wicker Park restaurant Wazwan.