Charlie Trotter's
Fine dining restaurant · Sheffield Neighbors
816 W Armitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60614
Highlights
Legendary fine dining celebrating food, wine, and hospitality
Legendary fine dining celebrating food, wine, and hospitality
"While the Jean Banchet Awards took place on January 26, Emeril Lagasse and his son were dining at this renowned restaurant." - Ashok Selvam
"A landmark fine-dining address at 826 W. Armitage Avenue that sparked a culinary revolution in Chicago after opening in 1987, famed for its obsessive commitment to sourcing, daily changes to an elaborate tasting menu, a celebration of vegetables, and a willingness to push boundaries (including a love of game meat as a counterpoint to wagyu hysteria). Patrons were famously loyal and willing to spend — one diner, investment banker Ray Harris, “claims he never had the same meal twice after visiting 424 times.” The space closed in 2012 and the chef died in 2013, but the bronze sign and many memories remained; the son has taken control and is restoring the 1881 building with a DIY approach (replacing paint, matching the original crimson carpet, updating exit signs and lighting) while reimagining the interior into a nostalgic first-floor “Charlie’s Room” and a more personal second-floor “Dylan’s Room” with new Italian sconces and a rebuilt wine cellar. Cookbooks (now out of print) are prized artifacts—he plans to digitize photos to inspire a new generation—and memorabilia still lines the kitchen walls. Friends and colleagues repeatedly stress the weight of legacy: Carrie Nahabedian told him, “He wants to preserve his own legacy — this is his to preserve — not necessarily just his father’s... He’s the guardian of it.” Tentori reflected, “Being in a restaurant with so much culinary history and getting to dine in the kitchen gave me chills,” adding, “The next generation doesn’t know Charlie’s story.” Dylan Trotter, who found his father after the stroke and says, “I’m the one who found him,” is deliberate about reopening: “I want to get it right.” The history also includes controversies and toughness — the chef once ranked No. 2 on a list of the city’s worst bosses and was openly competitive about it — but many protégés acknowledge both his exacting manner and his influence on chefs nationwide." - Ashok Selvam
"At Charlie Trotter’s in Lincoln Park I learned that the late, legendary chef Charlie Trotter took Lopez under his wing, hiring him to work summers in the late 1990s and setting him on a path toward fine dining; under then-sous chef Reginald Watkins Lopez was impressed with the importance of familiarizing himself with the kitchen’s plethora of fresh ingredients. That early mentorship was pivotal in steering Lopez toward culinary school and a professional career." - Serena Maria Daniels
"A Michelin-starred fine-dining establishment celebrated for an inventive vegetarian tasting menu; the chef-owner publicly praised a pioneering vegetarian cookbook author, saying her two volumes were the only cookbooks from which he had cooked every single recipe, highlighting the author's significant influence on upscale approaches to vegetable cuisine." - Aimee Levitt
"A rigorous Chicago kitchen described as cutthroat, sterile, and stripped-down; the intense environment forced the chef to question many assumptions about cooking and the restaurant world." - Brenna Houck
