And you are here why?

When we heard that Charlie Trotter's was closing, we had to go back for one last meal.  We've been there many a time, and the experience has always been memorable ( more here ...), to say the least. I remember the first time we went - when we got married, our friends (major shout-out to Mirabell, Tom, Ed and Sarah!) bought us dinner there, and, it was awesome.  Awesome not just because of the "Newly married" glow, but awesome in that timeless decadent sense of a brilliant haute cuisine experience. But this time, this time , Charlie pulled a full-on George Lucas on us last night.  In one shot, he not only managed to clobber stuff that I held dear, he managed to retroactively rewrite my memory so that they were never cool in the first place! Seriously, the rip-off-ness was awesome, Awesome I tell you!   We walk in, and the hostess says, and I quote, "Do you have a last name?" Huh? Somewhat puzzled, but perfectly willing to play along, I responded ...

Update :  We went back for one final dinner at Trotters, and it was a disaster of Epic proportions .  Of almost Lucas-ian " rewriting your memories " proportions.  The bottom line - I doubt I'll be missing Trotter's much.  C'est la vie... The Sun-Times reports that Charlie Trotter's is closing after 25 years - definitely the ending of an era in Chicago food culture.  Chicago had fine-dining before him, and there certainly be alta cuisine after him, but he changed the restaurant landscape in America in a way that few have managed to do.  Along with Alice Waters and Thomas Keller, he is one of a select pantheon of chefs who are to restaurant culture what Bill Walsh was to Football, someone whose approach and ideas were so influential that we unquestioningly accept them as part and parcel of the way things are , and whose family tree incorporates pretty much anybody who is anybody on the American food scene.    Over the years that we lived...