This article is one of the best I’ve read in a while.
I never got the chance to go to schwa, and if you read the article, I think you’ll understand why it’ll probably be difficult to go there any time soon, probably next to impossibly unless I move back to Chicago, but that article has pushed it to the top of my list.
The food sounds amazing, and with a staff of three, the atmosphere must be chaotic and wild. Carlson was at Trio, the magic restaurant that has produced dozens of great Chicago chefs (Grant Achatz of Alinea was there before it closed). I wish I had been at Northwestern a few years earlier so I could have dined there before it closed.
In another life/a pipe dream, I would desperately love to be a chef. I’m not sure exactly how to articulate it, but the lifestyle is so diametrically opposed to what I’m doing now, and so utterly appealing. It’s like being a rockstar, but with food. I think I’m a pretty good cook, but I don’t claim to have any insane genius at it. I follow recipes, and buy good ingredients. That’s not hard.
The practical part of me knows that 60% (or so) of new restaurants fail. I’d have to go to culinary school, and then spend years immersing myself in a city’s kitchens. I’d be poor and I’d spend every night working, never get to go out or do anything else.
But god does it sound like fun.
Maybe I’m romanticizing it. Other than working as a waitress for a few summers, I really have no idea what the life is like. Let’s just say back up plan, if things go horribly wrong in my life as a lawyer, I’m gathering up whatever money I have, packing it off to culinary school, and living the dream.
One of my favorite quotes from the article: “Up until the day I closed, I was a shitty father. Loving your child is easy when you’re not there or everything is done by somebody else when you are there. Now I come into the restaurant two hours later, at nine thirty in the morning. I feel like I’m already behind, but those two hours are the best part of my day, when I’m getting punched in the face by my baby.”
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