Road Food: Exploring the Midwest
One Bite at a Time
Kendall College, School of Culinary Arts, Chicago, Illinois
April 27, 28 & 29, 2012
Sunday Breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s
Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art
Speaker Profiles
Mary Bergin, The Drive-In Restaurant: Before and After the Dawn of Fast Food, Food Theater
Mary Bergin is a lifelong journalist whose weekly and syndicated travel column about Wisconsin began in 2002; topics almost always are close to home. Regional foods and rural business endeavors figure prominently in her award-winning books about Wisconsin and the Midwest (Sidetracked in Wisconsin, Hungry for Wisconsin and Sidetracked in the Midwest). Bergin is constantly searching for destinations, attractions and other businesses distinctive to the Midwest.
Shirley Cherkasky, Pies on the Road
Shirley Cherkasky is a culinary historian and founding member of Culinary Historians of Washington, D.C. and Culinary Enthusiasts of Wisconsin. She was public programs coordinator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Since retirement, she has been an independent scholar with a special interest of American confectionary. She has compiled more than 1300 entries in the International Directory of Food and Beverage Museum, available at www.foodhistorynews.com.
Louisa Chu, Food Trucks: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Louisa Chu is a chef, writer, producer and adventurer. She has cooked around the world, from Paris to Alaska. She graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris with Le Grand Diplôme for cuisine and pâtisserie. She has appeared on Food Network’s Iron Chef America, Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and PBS’s Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie. Her writing has appeared in Gourmet, CHOW, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.
Rob Gardner, Maxwell Street Tour
Robert Gardner, a founder of LTHForum.com, loves to eat. He’s discovered the way to eating bliss is by eating local. Gardner and his family quest to eat (nearly) all their food from the Upper Midwest, a food zone Gardner calls the Big Ten Conference. Gardner co-founded Local Beet (www.thelocalbeet.com) to provide a practical approach to local eating to a wider audience. Gardner currently serves on the Board of Slow Food Chicago.
Julianne Glatz, What happened to Horseshoes?
Julianne Glatz has been the food writer for the Illinois Times, Springfield Illinois’s alternative weekly newspaper, since 2006. Prior to writing for the Illinois Times, Glatz earned a certificate in Cooking Principles at the Culinary Institute of America, owned a catering business and taught cooking classes. Growing up on a produce farm provided Glatz with a knowledge of and appreciation for local ingredients and sparked her exploration of indigenous foods and their history both in her hometown of Springfield and in her travels.
Dave Hoekstra, Born to be Mild, Oral Histories and Pathways of the Midwest Supper Club
Dave Hoekstra has been a Chicago Sun-Times staff writer since 1985. His work has also appeared in Playboy magazine, the Chicago Reader and the Journal of Country Music. Ticket To Everywhere, his collection of Sun-Times travel columns, was published by Lake Claremont Press. He also wrote Farm Aid: A Song For America and contributor to The Unofficial Guide To Chicago.
Bruce Kraig, Maxwell Street Tour
Bruce Kraig is an accomplished scholar in the history of food within the larger context of the social and cultural history of the United States. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and has won numerous awards including the Silver Apple Award for “Hidden Mexico,” and an Emmy and CHRIS awards for the program “Hidden China,” as well as the Gold Apple and Bronze Medal for the program “Food for the Ancestors.” Bruce is President of Culinary Historians of Chicago and of Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance.
Catherine Lambrecht, Greater Midwest Foodways State Fair Heirloom Recipe Competitions
Catherine Lambrecht is a founder of Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance. She is program chair of Chicago Foodways Roundtable of Culinary Historians of Chicago. A founder and moderator of LTHforum.com culinary chat site. Former President of Illinois Mycological Association. Former President of the Highland Park Historical Society. She was Vice Chair of Advisory Council for University of Illinois Extension at Grayslake and former Vice President of the Lake County Extension Foundation.
Lucy Long, Culinary Tourism in the Land of Meat and Potatoes and Green Bean Casserole
Lucy M. Long, Founder/Executive Director, Center for Food and Culture, Bowling Green, OH. Adjunct Faculty, Boston University, masters program in Gastronomy; Research Associate, Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, Bowling Green State University. Author of Culinary Tourism (Univ. of Kentucky Press, 2004) and Regional American Food Culture (Greenwood Press, 2009). Currently editing Food and Folklore Reader (Berg) and Encyclopedia of Contemporary Ethnic Food in the US.
Janine MacLachlan, Farmers’ Markets of the Heartland: an ultimate road trip Trail
Janine MacLachlan is a food writer and farm groupie who has served as leader of Slow Food Chicago and task force member for Chicago’s Green City Market. She has written for Relish, Cooking Light, Country Home and Tribune publications. She studied at the Culinary Institute of America. Her book, Farmers’ Markets of the Heartland, will be published in 2012 by University of Illinois Press.
Clara Orban, On the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail
Clara Orban is a certified sommelier and author of Wine Lessons: Ten Questions to Guide Your Appreciation of Wine (Kendall Hunt Publishing). Orban is writing A Guide to Illinois Wines to be published in 2013 by Southern Illinois Press. Clara Orban is professor of French and Italian and chair of the Department of Modern Languages at DePaul University.
Terri Ryburn, Marked for Life: My travels on 66 in ’53
Terri Ryburn-LaMonte is a recognized authority on Route 66, which was her dissertation topic. In 2007 she bought a gas station along old Route 66 in Normal and is restoring it to its 1931 glory. Terri retired from Illinois State University’s School of Kinesiology & Recreation.
Kelly Sears, Summer Vacations in Northern Wisconsin
Kelly Sears, Executive Chef for Marcel’s Culinary Experience, Glen Ellyn, is a lifelong Midwesterner who has spent nearly every summer of her life in Northern Wisconsin. She and her husband currently have a weekend home near Hayward where they host friends and relatives all year long. The goal of her talk is to describe what summer is like in Northern Wisconsin, especially from a culinary perspective.
Stephanie Smith, Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art
Stephanie Smith joined the Smart Museum as associate curator in 1999 and was named deputy director and chief curator in 2010. She is an affiliate member of the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts and a contributing editor to the journal Afterall. She has held curatorial positions at Rice University, where she earned her MA in art history, and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
Michael Stern, Keynote speaker, Will Success Spoil Regional Food?
Since coining the term Roadfood in 1977 and pointing the way to America’s best eats, Jane and Michael Stern have written more than forty books and are weekly guests on Public Radio’s award-winning “The Splendid Table.” Their website, Roadfood.com, pioneered internet food reporting and photography. They currently are contributing editors of Saveur magazine and regularly write for Parade.
Joanne Stuttgen, A Gopher Turned Badget Eats Hoosier, and Vice Versa and Ethnographic Food Writing, or How I Ate My Way Across Wisconsin and Indiana and Lived to Write About It
Joanne Stuttgen is a folklorist and author of Cafe Wisconsin and Cafe Indiana, two ethnographic books about the food, people, culture, social rituals and history of each state’s small town cafes. Stuttgen is also a co-author of Cafe Wisconsin Cookbook and Cafe Indiana Cookbook, which offer recipes for and a more in-depth examination of cafe food.
Marilyn Wilkinson, Introduce Wisconsin cheese selection for the wine and cheese tasting
Marilyn Wilkinson manages National Product Communications for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. She began her career as a journalist with a Midwestern newspaper chain. She has contributed to The Taste of Mexico, with Mexican chef Patricia Quintana, and a revision of The Joy of Cooking. She is a former chair of the of American Institute of Wine and Food – Chicago Chapter and Food and Beverage Section of the Public Relations Society of America. She was elected to membership as a Les Dames d’Escoffier.