EL ideas

"Chef Phillip Foss has led a quiet riot for years at EL Ideas, where experimental tasting menus, including the now-celebrated french fries and ice cream, upend expectations to great effect. The restaurant has also held onto its Michelin star." - Eater Staff

"The other Chicago item shouldn’t be that big of a surprise as chef Phillip Foss of El Ideas, the funky experimental tasting menu restaurant in Douglass Park, is appearing on tonight’s show. Foss, a Milwaukee native, says he’ll be a guest chef on the episode which will feature Chaos Cooking, a type of style — a phrase coined in 2022 by Eater’s Jaya Saxena — as a new type of cooking that’s an “aggressive, weird, troll-y fusion that’s also thoughtful, being incredibly well received, and actually good.” Foss says he’d never heard of the term until he was approached to appear on the show. But he feels it’s a philosophy he’s embraced through the years at EL Ideas where the menu can include chicken liver Twix and a Chicago-style lobster dog. He also mentions how chaos cooking involves an element of shock. His restaurant has served foie gras and black truffle milk from a baby bottle, for example. But the biggest example might be a “cocaine” course which involves a line of coconut and lime powder served on a mirror with a razor blade and straw. “Though it is easily the most cost-effective item we’ve ever offered as a course, it provides exponential dividends in shock value for our guests,” Foss writes." - Ashok Selvam

"There’s a kind of dour pretension generally associated with fine dining that’s become the subject of several cinematic takedowns as of late — think Ralph Fiennes as the executive chef from hell in the 2022 thriller The Menu. That narrative, however, falls away completely at EL ideas where chef Phil Foss and his team prove that there’s room for joy in avant-garde cuisine. Secreted away in Douglass Park, the restaurant exudes an unassuming Midwestern-ness (Foss is a Milwaukee native) with a well-lit dining room and wide-open kitchen where diners can sidle up for a mid-service chat. That sense of fun translates to the tasting menu in courses like tzatziki with sunchoke chips and piquant toasted garlic. It’s served sans utensils, which means everyone in the room is left to lick their plates with abandon. Foss is also famed for his French Fries & Frosty, a dessert inspired by his daughters’ habit of dipping fries into their Wendy’s shakes. A marvel of molecular gastronomy in a milkshake glass, it’s a hot-and-cold melange of crunchy potatoes, steaming potato leek soup, and nitro-poached vanilla ice cream." - Ashok Selvam, Naomi Waxman

"El Ideas wants to make fine dining fun, and they succeed in accomplishing that goal. It’s not as wild a place as Schwa, but it’s also BYOB and more approachable. At least it’s more approachable once you find it, because you’d never notice it on a random stretch of 14th Street near Western unless you’re specifically on the hunt. The kitchen encourages you to kick it with them as they basically talk you through what they’re doing, which can be really helpful and fun if you don’t normally do this kind of thing. But it’s also fun for the expert who wants to know more about the process of creating such an exciting meal. We haven’t been here yet, but want you to know this spot exists." - Team Infatuation

"Chicago’s EL Ideas still captures the essence of a cool kids’ dinner party." - The MICHELIN Guide