by valeriemoloney - 329 Reviews - 96 List
With the celebrity status bestowed upon chefs (Thank you, Food Network), it's hardly a surprise that Chicago's top toques get the play they do. Of course, it certainly doesn't hurt to have smoldering good looks. It gets people talking and the tables booked. Here, find four guys and one gal who prove where the heat really is: in the kitchen.
Photo credit: Radhika Desai courtesy of Bravo
Updated: January 20, 2009
Now here's a chef you would have happily taken home to mama. If those steel blue eyes and quiet confidence don't do it for you, then his Black Angus meatloaf and moist black velvet cake will. We love a man with a soft spot for comfort food.
As executive chef of Le Lan, Starling dazzles guests with the delicate and the sweet, the sour and the spicy--all flavors characteristic of Vietnamese cuisine. The boyish good looks definitely fall into the sweet category and the spiky hair makes us lick our lips for more spice.
Of McDonald's chicken and biscuits, a local food blogger opined, "The top of a 2-bite biscuit was covered lightly with a creamy, thinned foie gras. Sausage gravy is dog food compared to this sauce. It sank right into the crumbling pastry, filling in all of the buttery nooks, and upon touching the tongue, melted away." If that isn't a compliment, then here's one more: Chef, you're smokin'. You can put together a tasting menu for us anytime, even if it?s just a thinly veiled ploy to get you to visit our table more often.
