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Instead, he switched to culinary school with the intention of working in Chicago, and did his best to follow the food scene here. When he heard in 2001 that a Thomas Keller protege named Grant Achatz had taken over as chef of Trio in Evanston, he went to dine there—”It just spun my whole world of food around. I never had a meal remotely close to that, taking food like that and just stretching your brain beyond what you normally perceive it as.”
“Grant looked at me and said, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’”
- Michael Gebert
- Chicken thigh panini on house-made bread, another signature item.
So after six years, Panozzo’s is reconfiguring the room to stress dining as well as retail, moving most of the coolers out and putting in nicer furniture. Like Publican Quality Meats, it will still be visibly a lunch place with a retail component. But it will be one that encourages you to sit down and is more of a showcase for the chef’s handiwork—and for the ingredients he uses, which include bread mostly baked in-house, meats from farmers like Slagel Family Farm and Gunthorp, and as many farmers’ market vegetables as the business can afford at sandwich-level prices. The menu will also stretch to incorporate more dressed-to-order salads and small Italian plates—and there are plans to get a liquor license (the special-occasion dinners have always been BYO).
