The Chicago Way w/John Kass: When good food is simple, what more do you need?
Chicago Way w/John Kass (09/28/26): Revered Chicago restaurateur Jimmy Banakis joins John Kass & Jeff Carlin to discuss his recent visit to Greece, the foods scene there, and what he thinks every restaurant should do to insure people come back. Plus, Kasso questions why some places put a clown show to impress?
Comments 2
Good food should be simple. American products a whole bunch of them are toxic including liquor. Sugar is in everything, corn syrup that destroys people and so many others. Cook simple and be careful as what you buy. The Government has allowed that our fruit is spraying so we cannot eat apples with the skin on. Ridiculous I say. The Lettuce are no good, the romaine lettuce are all yellow from the best stores and the green is gone in most of them. Awful I tell you and no one seems to care. They feed us junk food. Awful.
This was one of the best interviews Mr. Kass has conducted. He’s level-headed about what makes food appealing. Fine dining makes one think that tweezers are a chef’s most important utensil. My sole exception is to the notion that the key to delicious dishes is excellent ingredients. The fact is, many cooks are quite capable of producing an ordinary meal from them, if not outright ruining them. The quality of ingredients is probably more important in Italian and Greek cuisines as their cooking highlights freshness and vitality. French cooking is different, as hey wish to get to the essence of things. hence the emphasis on long-simmered broths and stocks to produce their sterling sauces. (Fernand Point, the late chef/patron of La Pyramide in Vienne, said, “In the orchestra of the kitchen, the saucier is the soloist.”). The genius of French cuisine bourgeois was using humble ingredients to make delicious dishes.. With that one exception, I applaud Mr. Banakis’s interview and loving manner in which Mr. Kass conducted it.