The James Beard Awards are often referred to as the "Oscars of the food world," and while Chicago chef Erling Wu-Bower has been nominated for three of them, he's lost all three.
"I'm like Susan Lucci!" he jokes, referring to the soap opera star who didn't pick up her first Emmy until she'd earned her 19th nomination.
At the Windy City's Experimental Station, a space which Wu-Bower uses as a test kitchen and where he hosts pop-up dinners, he gives me a preview of the food that will end up on tables at his soon-to-open restaurant, Pacific Standard Time[1]. There will almost certainly be more nominations in his future, but really, I just want to be there when the doors open.
PST's opening will mark a big departure for the chef; he's switching from jobs where he was a precision-cooking disciple to work with notoriously fickle wood-fired hearth and pizza ovens.
Lyndon French
"I've done the precise thing," he says, referring to sous vide cooking. "You embrace technology so as not to waste money."
Wu-Bower was a devotee of chef Thomas Keller's teachings in his landmark sous vide cookbook, Under Pressure[2]. That kind of cooking played a big part in Wu-Bower's career where he worked his way up through top-notch Chicago establishments like Avec, Publican, and Publican Quality Meats. He racked up those Beard Award nominations in the Best chef: Great Lakes category three years in a row for his work as chef de cuisine at Nico Osteria.
At Publican, he used sous vide for foods like pâté, terrines, and pork belly. The technique allowed him to nail dishes again and again, and it is forgiving enough that something could cook half-hour longer than...