CHICAGO—Most people know they need to try other restaurants when they’re in a great food city. So do I. And yet every time the tortilla soup arrives at Frontera Grill, that plan is out the window.
Chicago has been part of my life once a year since the late 1980s as I am typically here every May for the National Restaurant Association Show. I’ve always seen this city as a more accessible and friendlier New York — the same world-class dining, the same energy, but without the attitude. You can get a reservation. People look you in the eye. The host remembers your name by the second visit. Now that my son lives up here, the trips are happening several times a year, and the city has become something more than a food destination.
It’s personal now.
Rick Bayless grew up in his family’s barbecue joint in Oklahoma City — fourth generation in the restaurant business. He studied Spanish and Latin American culture at the University of Oklahoma, did graduate work in linguistics at Michigan, then walked away from a PhD to do what he was born to do. He and his wife Deann moved to Mexico for six years, eating and studying and writing, and in 1987 they opened Frontera Grill on North Clark Street. Seven James Beard Awards. A PBS TV show. Top Chef Masters. Nine cookbooks. None of that tells you what you really need to know. What you need to know is that Rick Bayless is the best Mexican chef in America, and I have always believed that you could drop him in Mexico City tomorrow and he’d be the best Mexican chef in Mexico.
Of all the great soups I have enjoyed — and there have been some great ones over the years, the mushroom soup at Paul Bocuse’s restaurant in Lyon, Frank Brigtsen’s butternut squash and shrimp bisque down in New Orleans — Rick’s tortilla soup at Frontera holds its own against any of them. It’s been on the menu since opening day. Thirty-eight years. That alone tells you something.
From my understanding, this is how I am told Rick makes the magic. He toasts pasilla negro chiles and blends them with fire-roasted tomatoes, then cooks that puree down with garlic and onion until it’s thick and dark and concentrated — almost like tomato paste, but nothing like tomato paste. The chicken stock goes in. It simmers. Thirty minutes later you’ve got a broth that doesn’t taste like any tortilla soup you’ve had at any other Mexican restaurant in your life. It’s deeper than that. Darker. More serious. That’s the word — depth. Not heat. Not flash. Depth. The kind of flavor that hits somewhere behind your sternum and just sits there. Then the garnishes show up — crispy fried tortilla strips, crumbled chile, shredded Chihuahua cheese, diced avocado, crema, a squeeze of lime — and every spoonful is a different combination. You don’t want it to end. It never does end, actually, because you order it again next time. And the time after that.
Normally my goal when traveling is to hit as many restaurants as possible. All plans revolve around food — reservations are made weeks in advance, notes are filled with backup options, the whole production. My wife stopped being impressed by this level of planning in the mid 1990s. She’d be thrilled if half that effort went into a home renovation. Though the truth is, that discipline is slipping. In London last year, the plan fell apart at Fallow— after my first visit I ate there three times in a row, canceling two other reservations. Somewhere a reservationist in Mayfair still has my name on a list of people never to trust again. There’s something to be said for knowing what you love and not fighting it.
My son makes the dining decisions when we’re in Chicago now. That’s a switch. But giving up that control doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s his city now.
He’s a classically trained chef working for Boka Restaurant Group — one of the premier independent restaurant groups in the country. My friend Kevin Boehm and his business partner Rob Katz founded Boka in 2002, and they’ve grown it to more than 30 restaurants across Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Nashville. Two thousand employees. Multiple Michelin stars. James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur in 2019. The portfolio includes Girl and the Goat, Swift and Sons, Momotaro, GT Fish and Oyster. My son rotates through different positions in different concepts — in the prep kitchen one month, helping to open a new concept the next — learning every angle of this business from some of the best operators in America.
He’s doing it the right way.
The restaurant business is nothing I ever pushed on him. It’s too brutal for that. The hours are long. The margins are thin. The work is physical and mental, and emotional, sometimes all in the same 15-minute window. A lot like parenting, actually, except the customers tip better than your children ever will. You can’t fake your way through it. You either love it or it eats you alive. He loves it. That’s not something he was taught. That’s something he found on his own, and it means more than words do justice. There’s a phone call that comes every few weeks — late, after service — and he talks about a dish he nailed or a night that went sideways, and he sounds exactly like me 38 years ago. Exactly.
Almost four decades of building restaurants in Mississippi — all the early mornings and late nights and lessons learned the hard way — lead a man to a moment like this. You think about the people who showed up for you when you were young and had no idea what you were doing. You think about what this business has given and what it’s cost and how you wouldn’t trade a minute of it. And then you watch your son walk into a kitchen 800 miles from home with the same fire you had at his age — maybe more — and the gratitude just sits on you.
One day he’ll come back to Mississippi and work alongside his old man. That day can’t come soon enough. But right now, he’s exactly where he needs to be — learning, growing, earning it.
No shortcuts.
Frontera still pulls me in every trip. Some things don’t change. But now when that tortilla soup comes to the table, it’s not just the chile and the broth and the 38 years of a man getting one dish exactly right. My son is across the table. He’s got kitchen burns on his forearms and opinions about stock. We’re sitting in a booth 800 miles from Hattiesburg, and he’s talking about this business the way I talked about it when I was his age — like it’s the only thing in the world worth doing. There’s a depth to this moment that has nothing to do with pasilla chiles. It’s the depth of a son who could have done anything and chose this. He’s building a life in the business his father gave his life to. And he chose it — freely and completely — all on his own.
That’s better than any bowl of soup. Even this one.
Onward.
