ML - Michigan Avenue

Michigan Avenue - 2015 - Issue 7 - November - Duncan Keith

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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He's toured the world cooking for rock stars like Aerosmith, Madonna, and Sarah McLachlan (with whom he wrote the cook- book Plenty), but Chicago is where Jaime Laurita's heart is. It's also where the New Jersey native has found the inspiration to create gourmet products like Bello Boy Moscato and Pasta Perfetto. As he recently prepared to set off for Madonna's Rebel Heart tour (this time as backstage coordinator), the Wicker Park creative spoke with Michigan Avenue about his new wine, Deep, life on the road, and how Chicago feeds his spirit. You're known as a chef, but you do so much else. How do you defne yourself? I've been called a lot of things—an alchemist, a witch doctor. I'm kind of a conduit for the calm. My goal is to give as much peace to the artist as possible. What is your role as Madonna's backstage coordinator? I build her world every day with the team. When you're on the road, the one thing you're deprived of is that feeling of home base, so it's my ultimate goal to create a level of consistency that feels the most like home. Let's talk about the new wine. Deep is my new Barbaresco. It's a really great Italian varietal of a great vintage year. We really researched the 2010 Barbarescos— that's our vintage year—which are being compared to the '05s, which were really great quality with a great growing season. Who in the Chicago culinary community do you admire? I appreciate Mindy Segal, from Mindy's HotChocolate (1747 N. Damen Ave., 773-489-1747; hotchocolatechicago.com), who has done her craft for so long and then all of a sudden her dough rises, if that makes sense, and now she puts out this great cookbook [Cookie Love]. And Debbie Sharpe from Goddess and Grocer (1649 N. Damen Ave., 773-342-3200; goddessandgrocer.com). To me she's an icon. How does Chicago inspire you? There's just an energy in this city. I've been to most metropolitan areas and a lot of cities across the world [on tour], but when we come back to Chicago, the artists and crew always say the same thing: The crowd is the best in Chicago. It's the greatest city for me in the world. chefjaimelaurita.com MA Dishing it Out James Beard Foundation Award winners Rick Bayless and Steve Dolinsky savor the success of their podcast partnership. by el a ine glusac In January 2014, Rick Bayless, the award-winning chef behind the Frontera restaurant empire, and Steve Dolinsky, ABC 7 Chicago's "Hungry Hound" food reporter, paired up to create The Feed Podcast (thefeed podcast.libsyn.com), a weekly audio talk show on food, plus travel, wine, beer, and spirits. This spring, the podcast won a 2015 James Beard Foundation Award for Book, Broadcast, and Journalism. "We were pretty surprised," says Dolinsky, citing competition from the venerable Southern Foodways Alliance. "But we're doing a more ambitious podcast. We wanted to make it feel like a radio show." With a varied diet of interviews; cooking segments; reports from dining frontiers such as Lima, Peru; and chef challenges, the podcast is the aural equivalent of a magazine with a nose for sussing out unexpected foodies, such as Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche. Their dream guest? Not critic Ruth Reichl or bad boy Anthony Bourdain, but ex-Chicago comic and Portlandia star Fred Armisen. Explains Dolinsky, "We like the unexpected." When he's not on the road with world- famous rock stars, chef Jaime Laurita finds time to launch gourmet products like his new Barbaresco, Deep (right). Ready for the World ON TOUR WITH MADONNA AND PREPARING FOR THE RELEASE OF HIS NEW WINE, DEEP, CHICAGO CELEBRITY CHEF/DESIGNER JAIME LAURITA IS FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS. By J.P. AndERson from left: Steve Dolinsky and Rick Bayless with chef Kevin Hickey of The Duck Inn. 100  michiganavemag.com tAste sound Bites

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