April 07--The upcoming Bunny the Micro Bakery and Wunder Pop concepts (both opening May 22) have Iliana Regan, chef/owner at Elizabeth restaurant (4835 N. Western Ave., 773-681-0651), pulled in multiple directions.
She found one elegant solution by hiring Aaron Martinez to be Elizabeth's first-ever chef de cuisine. His first day is Wednesday.
"While I will collaborate with him on ideas, he will execute the menus, recipes, et cetera," Regan says. "I'm very excited. He came in to do a pop-up; he's better than me, so that's when I thought he needs to be the boss."
Martinez comes to Chicago from the Bay area; he was chef de cuisine under Michael Tusk at four-star Quince in San Francisco, where he worked for 18 months, and spent all of 2014 working in Oakland, at James Syhabout's acclaimed Commis. He has been consulting at Lettuce Entertain You, and speculation was that he would be one of the next chefs-in-residence at Intro before the Elizabeth opportunity came along.
"It's really nice to be in a smaller house," says Martinez about 24-seat Elizabeth (Commis, his last gig, has only 26 seats and never served more than 50 diners per night). "It's not that there's more attention to detail; it's just a different type of restaurant. People love the interaction with the chef; it's nice to be able to talk to your guests."
"My time is going to be completely consumed by Bunny and Wunder Pop," says Regan, "and I will be running those businesses from top to bottom. I didn't want to put myself in an early grave, so I told Aaron, 'maybe you want to run the kitchen at Elizabeth.'
"It's a big step, but it's exciting."
pvettel@tribpub.com
