Feature: EL Ideas
A unique dining experience in Chicago that is challenging the conventions of traditional fine dining.
Chef Phillip Foss works with liquid nitrogen at EL Ideas, Chicago. Photo by author.
At 5:45 on a Friday night, the first dinner service customers walk into the small room. The tables are set with freshly pressed linens and candles, watched over by Veronica, the mannequin. The walls are covered in artistic depictions of Chicago’s “L” trains, and just over a short divider in the center of the space, Chef Phillip Foss prepares for the evening’s guests.
EL Ideas is not what comes to mind when you think of fine dining. Located miles from downtown Chicago in Douglas Park, it is housed opposite one of the city’s train yards, neighboring a catering company and a film studio. Foss, the head chef and owner, has been running EL Ideas for more than a decade, and has been on the forefront of re-defining what fine dining looks like.
“We try to make fine dining feel like a fun little dinner party. Try to tear down the walls,” Foss said, welcoming the guests as they settled in for the first of two dinner services of the night.
This philosophy isn’t metaphorical. With no walls separating the kitchen from the dining room, guests are treated to the sounds and smells of the cooking process, and the freedom to come into the kitchen and chat with the staff. With Foss living just upstairs, it truly is like he is inviting his guests home.
EL Ideas eclectic dining room featuring both white linens and graffiti. Photo by author.
EL Ideas was awarded its first Michelin star in 2013, bringing significant exposure and recognition in the culinary world. Foss, however, isn’t in it for the glory. With nearly 20 years of experience and widespread appreciation, Foss could have easily moved EL Ideas somewhere more central.
“The charm of this place, the rent is low, you don’t turn your back on something like this for the limelight,” Foss said, prepping cauliflower. While most restaurateurs need the limelight to survive in this industry, EL Ideas has cultivated a following that keeps the lights on, the kitchen staffed and gives Foss the freedom to pursue new ideas for his ingredients.
First course of tequila and cucumber jello shots with lime and Fresno chili. Photo by author.
Like many chefs with one Michelin star, Foss and his team were hoping for a second. The stars are regarded as the highest accolade in the culinary world, and it is only natural for restaurateurs to strive for all three. After failing to earn a second Michelin star, Foss reflected, and realized he didn’t care about getting it.
“We’re kind of a slave to them (the Michelin guide) and I kind of resent that. I’m also grateful for it,” Foss said. Having the star proved important in making EL Ideas what it is today, but he is no longer concerned about fitting in with the fine dining industry.
A piece by Vanity Fair from October 2015 highlights stories of a handful of chefs from around the world who no longer want Michelin stars. Accounts of anxiety and unbearable pressure have led several chefs to symbolically “return” their awarded stars. In 2003, the renowned French chef Bernard Loiseau committed suicide amid speculation that his restaurant was going to lose its third star in the upcoming guide. In January 2018, EATER magazine wrote about Bangkok’s first ever Michelin star, awarded to a street food eatery helmed by Jay Fai. Fai has since expressed her desire to give the star back, citing immense stress and absurd wait times at her tiny stall.
Like many before him, Foss felt the pressure that came with his Michelin star. Rather than letting this pressure dictate his decisions, he chose to let go of it.
“I listen to the ingredients...let them tell me what they want to be,” he said. After enduring a year that was especially difficult for the culinary world, the team at EL Ideas wants to take things as they come, cooking what they like, how they like it.
Spice shelf at EL Ideas, featuring unique ingredients like “Crystallized Unicorn Blood” and “Cocaine.” Photo by author.
With no outside investors and no one to answer to but himself, Foss has full creative liberty to explore the ideas that come to him. This liberty is one of the things that drew Foss’s apprentice, Chef Rodolfo Oliveros, to EL Ideas.
Oliveros joined EL Ideas in February, picking it from several options that had become available as a result of the staffing shortages across the service industry. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2021 Mid-Year State of the Restaurant Industry Update, the restaurant sector has one of the highest levels of unfilled job openings. With employment levels down nearly 8% from pre-pandemic times, restaurants were desperate to staff their kitchens.
In the eight months Oliveros has been working at EL Ideas, he has discovered the value of the culinary freedom Foss has.
“It’s like being an independent artist versus being on a record label,” Oliveros said. “Yeah the record label gives you hype but at the end of the day you want to own your own stuff.”
With the practical freedom of running one’s own business, and the abstract freedom from obsessing over Michelin stars, the team at EL Ideas can be true to their art, existing beyond the expectations of the fine dining industry
As Friday’s dinner service progressed, Foss and Oliveros worked in perfect harmony to plate each course, timing every movement to the rhythm of the dining room. Being the only two chefs at EL Ideas, Foss and Oliveros perform most of the tasks that an ordinary kitchen would have a full team to perform.
Chefs Phillip Foss and Rodolfo Oliveros work in tandem to plate a main course during the first dinner service. Photo by author.
“I’m the Robin to his Batman, or the Morty to his Rick,” Oliveros said, serving every plate themselves along with the help of front-of-house attendant William Talbott.
Unique dining experiences like the one at EL Ideas are challenging the conventions of the fine dining industry, re-defining the conventions of traditional restaurants and bringing a new accessibility to the culinary arts.
