In January, Kendall College opened its “Culinary Curiosity Exhibition,” a culinary museum spread throughout the school. Displays in seven themed areas feature everything from early-19th-century spit motors to ornate meat and cheese slicers. For Mel Mickevic, who with his wife, Janet, donated the 300 pieces in the collection, the opening was the culmination of a long journey to find a taker for his treasures.
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In the late 1940s he met Justin Alikonis, a research director for the Paul F. Beich candy company in Bloomington, Illinois—and the father of Janet, who was three at the time. Alikonis was cleaning out a storage shed and offered Mickevic copper kettles, candy rollers, and other equipment. “While I was on the road and limited by the size of my trunk, he was filling up my third-floor apartment,” he says. They became close during the course of many visits over the years, and in 1983, after her father died, Janet moved to Chicago and they began living together; they married in 2001. Their 110-year-old, 12-room house in Uptown is still packed with stuff—early agricultural devices, hammered copper pots, 35 sets of candy rollers.
Kraig, who teaches classes in food history and politics at Kendall, also mentioned the Mickevics in passing to his friend Christopher Koetke, dean of the college’s cooking school. An avid fan of culinary history, Koetke phoned them, went to see the collection, and says he was so astounded his head was spinning. “Mel and I really hit it off,” he says. “We shared a love of the antique mechanical devices as examples of human ingenuity and problem-solving ability, and I liked his commitment to putting the collection in a meaningful context.”
The next steps for the Culinary Curiosity Exhibition include the installation of up to six additional cases around the school and the creation of a comprehensive Web site. Koetke suspects the museum will become a magnet for other donors: Northwest Cutlery has already given a meat pounder from the 1900s, and he’s looking at a “bunch” of other items, as well as trying to line up funding for upkeep. A pamphlet guide is in the works, and at the moment visitors to the Dining Room at Kendall College can see exhibits there, in the third-floor hall, and in the lobby, among other locations.
