IT was late morning on a Sunday at Sikia, a restaurant that serves one of Chicago’s better brunches. I’d been seated by a smiling hostess in a comfortable banquette against the outer wall of the spacious room, decked out in the manner of, say, a spa in a large hotel somewhere in Africa.
Staff were waiting on me hand and foot, bringing plates of black-eyed pea fritters, chicken and waffles, a bowl of peanut soup. There was more — I can’t remember right now.
Over the years, there have been many breakfasts in Chicago. I lived here for more than three years once. These days, I visit all too often. Those who know Chicago are aware of how crowded a good breakfast joint gets in this town; Chicago has a nasty habit of getting out of bed in the mornings. Sometimes, you wait for more than an hour just to sit and eat eggs. Sikia, to my mind, was one of the best places I’d eaten brunch here in years. So why was I sitting at the only occupied table in the restaurant?
Elsewhere in the city, I could see in my mind the clusters of people standing in front of popular spots like m.henry and Yolk and Tweet and Orange. I’ve stood in these lines, shivering, sipping coffee, cursing my stupidity. By driving south on the Dan Ryan Expressway for a few miles from the center of town? Voila. No lines, no wait.
Not that the lack of foot traffic was all that surprising. Sikia, a teaching restaurant operated by the Washburne Culinary Institute, occupies one of the most decayed corners on Chicago’s often deeply troubled South Side. The intersection of 63rd Street and Halsted used to be something; it used to be, in fact, the heart of the second-busiest retail district in the city. That’s old news. More recently, about the best thing to recommend this corner, deep in the heart of the impoverished Englewood neighborhood, was that it is just two blocks from where a certain Dr. H. H. Holmes murdered all those poor people who came to stay in his hotel during the Columbian Exposition over on the lakefront. (You can read all about it in Erik Larson’s gripping non-fiction book, “The Devil and The White City.”)
Simply put, this is not the sort of neighborhood that you come to by accident. I was here because Bill Reynolds told me I had to come. I met Reynolds, the provost of the Washburne Institute, over dinner at the school’s other teaching restaurant, The Parrot Cage.
The Parrot Cage is a place that I had visited before – from the moment my friend Emily introduced me, I was a huge fan. The location, after all, is pretty hard to top. Just fifteen minutes or so south of the lakefront museums, past the giant McCormick Place conventionopolis, down Lake Shore Drive past some of the city’s most blighted areas, past the leafy bits of Kenwood, where the Obama family home occupies a quiet street of handsome houses, past Hyde Park and its brooding University of Chicago campus, past beaches and marinas, down at East 71st Street…past all this, you’ll find the South Shore Cultural Center.
The name is deceptive. Cultural Center. It implies fluorescent lighting and community theater. This Cultural Center is nothing like that. Though run by the city of Chicago, it feels a bit like a resort. This could be because it used to be a country club. You enter through a massive archway, drive past manicured shrubbery (notice the golfers off to your left) and up to the center itself, painted orangish-pinkish, its architecture vaguely Spanish Revival. It looks a little like a dated Barbados hotel that could be something, if only it would submit to a proper sprucing-up.
Inside the building, which dates back to 1916, the lobby is immaculate and quiet. Ahead, beautiful public areas face a wall of windows looking straight out to Lake Michigan. It is no longer a country club for the reason that so many enterprises fail: a flat refusal to change with the times. Even as the demographics of the area were drastically altered, the club refused to admit blacks or Jews. Membership dwindled, the club is long gone. Today the whole shebang is a city park. Folks in the neighborhood refer to the club building as The People’s Palace.
Golf, lakefront exploration and the Parrot Cage are the main reasons for those not invited to a wedding reception (for instance, the one that Mr. and Mrs. Obama once held here) to come to the South Shore. The building is now partly occupied by a second campus of the Washburne Institute.
Students serve you with a smile; maple-glazed pork chops, shrimp and grits for $7, tasty turtle soup for $8, competent etouffees ($18) and of course, more chicken and waffles are all strong performers, plus the view is always great, both of the lake and all the ladies wearing fantastic hats in the style of Aretha Franklin’s inauguration head gear, but not quite as fabulous because nobody beats Aretha for church hats. Ever.
One might think a place like the Parrot Cage would do an overwhelming amount of business; one might be wrong. Chicago’s South Side comprises a vast swath of the 228 mile-square city (that’s a little larger than the five boroughs of New York City, FYI), but most of the money in this town is squirreled away up north. Even at a relatively reasonable $18, in this part of town it’s a tough sell for a plate of chicken and shrimp – never mind the good quality and skilled preparation.
This is not to say that South Siders are a nothing but a bunch of rubes, or that nobody can afford an $18 entrée. The South Side is not some squalid, apocalyptic nightmare without end. (It’s only like this in some places.) Don’t try telling that to people from other parts of town.
There’s a reason for their skepticism — the South Side does seem to have a thing for putting its worst foot forward. Usually, it’s the terrible stuff happening here that makes the news. And when a place like the Parrot Cage finds its way on to local television, as it did not long ago, the bump in traffic, according to Reynolds, was minor. When people who do not live here are told nice things about the South Side, generally all they can think about is all the bad things they have also recently heard about.
When I met Bill Reynolds, I was on what must have been my fourth visit to the South Side in no more than six months; it’s such a nice change of pace from the increasingly overcrowded North and more recently popular parts of the city’s West Side. It reminds me of a simpler, dumpier and less bro-tastic Chicago, the blue collar, rusty old Chicago I loved to hate so much back when I was surrounded by it in the mid-1990s in the Uptown neighborhood, known primarily for its mentally ill homeless people, garish urban renewal efforts, gang activity and a place that made kick-ass, thin-crust pizza. Today it has all of the above, plus a lot of expensive condos.
I’d asked Reynolds for a moment of his time over the phone; without any warning or notice, he informed me that he’d be happy to cross town at rush hour to meet me for dinner. Within an hour or so, we were sitting across the table from each other at the Parrot Cage. My question, simply, was how the Washburne, founded in 1937 and rescued out of its death spiral only recently, had grown so much and so fast. Being well-familiar with the City Colleges of Chicago system of which Washburne is a part, one naturally has to assume that outside forces were at work here. (I once applied to attend the CCC’s Uptown campus; it was all going really well until I got stuck with an assignment to write an essay answering the question, “Who are your heroes [e.g. Michael Jordan, Oprah] and why?” I wrote a furious screed against the perceived insult to my intelligence as well as an angry condemnation of this nation’s obsession with celebrity. I never heard from the admissions office again.)
To see the Washburne firing on all cylinders: two beautiful campuses, two good restaurants, a dynamic character like Reynolds as provost – had the Culinary Institute of America secretly decided to partner on an inner-city campus? Not quite. It turned out, however, that Reynolds and the CIA go back – way back, actually. He worked for the Hyde Park, NY-based institution for 25 years before coming to Chicago.
How he got here is a great story. When the city of Chicago and the Culinary Institute came together to figure out how to get the Washburne back on its feet, it was Reynolds who went to consult. It wasn’t pretty.
“This can’t be right,” Reynolds remembers telling his cab driver — the address he had been given was to a decaying, half-abandoned building with broken windows. Then he noticed: Upstairs, there were lights on.
Gingerly, he made his way into the building, where he found 50 students in a poorly lit room with virtually no materials to work with. What he noticed quickly thereafter was that absolutely nobody was complaining. At the CIA, he says, a place where everybody had everything, there was plenty of moaning.
Impressed by the students and excited by the challenge, he made his report, turned it in, recommended that the CIA get involved and went back to his day job: Heading out to California’s Napa Valley to open the Institute’s successful Greystone campus, where he remained for five years.
Along the way, the Institute decided not to go to Chicago, a decision Reynolds says he found immensely disappointing. Five days later, the city called and asked him if he wouldn’t like to come out and lead the Washburne into the 21st century. Or the 20th, depending on how the budget process would go that year, that year being 2000. Now look at them.
For more information on the Washburne, visit kennedyking.ccc.edu/washburne
WHAT’S UP, DOWN THERE
While other parts of Chicago are more gentrified, don’t lump the South Side all together. There are many different kinds of neighborhoods down here; think of it as a second Chicago you’ve yet to discover. Here are a very few of the things that I love most about this part of the city. — David Landsel
CHECK IN If you’re serious about learning more, stay down here. Check into the University Quarters Bed & Breakfast, run by Peter Schuler and his wife, Paula. The entire first floor of the building is given over to common areas and small, nicely-appointed guest rooms — there’s now a suite upstairs. Located on the northern edge of the Woodlawn neighborhood, you’re an easy walk from the University of Chicago campus, which means the place sometimes gets booked solid. The B&B is located in an area that, up until recently, was off many Chicagoans radars. You’ll still get the occasional incredulous look from your cabbie when you give them the address — ignore (winter rates from $112, universityquarters.net).
MEET THE NEIGHBORS Around the corner from the Schuler’s bed-and-breakfast is Woodlawn’s Experimental Station, a multipurpose neighborhood gathering place that works to incubate small business and effect positive change in the surrounding area. Most casual visitors come for the Backstory Café, a bright little room that’s one of Chicago’s coolest secret coffee houses. Every Saturday morning (through December) there’s an excellent little farmers market. The on-site Blackstone Bicycle Works is a major magnet for neighborhood kids; the Station’s Executive Director Connie Spreen says its more than just a bike shop, it’s a way to foster community. “If they know they are part of a community,” Spreen says, “they’ll grow up to be part of one.” 6100 S. Blackstone, details at experimentalstation.org.
WEIRD ART The impressive Museum of Science and Industry is possibly the biggest lure the South Side has after US Cellular Field (home of the Chicago White Sox). But it’s the Hyde Park Art Center that should be your first dose of culture down here. Around since 1939, its mission is to “stimulate and sustain” visual arts. Its shows are certainly stimulating — a recent visit featured thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing photography by local students. Through Dec. 13, “Shanghype!” focuses on the video art of fifteen international artists studying an ever-changing Shanghai. Admission is free; stop in the sleek, on-site Istria Café, which serves excellent gelato and Intelligentsia coffees in a room with big windows facing out into the neighborhood (5020 S. Cornell, hydeparkart.org).
EAT UP! You can eat food from all around the world in Chicago, but when you’re on the South Side, you want to focus in on some of the North’s most delicious southern cooking. It goes without saying that both of the Washburne Culinary Institute teaching restaurants should go on your schedule (see the main story for details), but you’d be remiss if you stopped there. Catfish lovers need to make a beeline for BJ’s Market
for mustard-fried catfish, greens and macaroni and cheese. There are two locations, but try the newer on W. 76th Street, around the corner from the controversial St. Sabina’s Church (details at http://www.bjsmarket.com). For ribs, start with Lem’s, beloved for that Chicago favorite, rib tips, doused in sweet and spicy sauce. Just bring your own container of handi-wipes as they never give you enough napkins (311 W. 75th St., [773] 994-2428). For sweets, look no further than Gimme Some Sugah, a deliciously friendly bakery in the South Shore neighborhood. Try the very popular potato chip cookies and the red velvet, but for Pete’s sake don’t skip the lemon bars. Like the owner said, boxing up my most recent order, “Now, you open this box, and whatever your troubles are, they’ll be over” (2234 E. 71st St., [773] 363-9330).
For more information about travel to Chicago, visit explorechicago.org