Chicago restauranteur, chef, and innovator Charlie Trotter has died at the young age of 54:
In August last year, as he prepared to close his eponymous fine-dining bastion in Lincoln Park after 25 years of booming business and international plaudits, chef Charlie Trotter talked of taking an extended break to pursue other interests such as travel and a master’s degree.
Doing the same thing for too long wasn’t healthy, Mr. Trotter added, because “Life’s too short.â€
Late Tuesday morning, those words rang hauntingly true.
After being rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital from his home on the North Side, Mr. Trotter died at 54. The cause was undetermined, but police said there appeared to be no signs of foul play. According to the Cook County medical examiner’s office, it appears he died of natural causes.
Clearly, those words took into full recognition his own precarious health. He accomplished more in a relatively short life span than most people do in lives decades longer. He was primarily self-taught. The vision that guided him was largely his own. After only a short apprenticeship and aided by his father he opened his own restaurant where he made culinary history. I believe that Mr. Trotter is most likely to be remembered as a mentor, innovator, and philanthropist.
Young chefs in many of Chicago’s finest restaurants and fine restaurants around the world are alumni of his organization.
I dined at Mr. Trotter’s restaurant only once. It was outside my price range and we went as the guests of more prosperous friends. It was a grand dining experience but our hosts were dissatisfied until I explained what we were experiencing to them. Mr. Trotter’s cuisine relied on the excellence and punctilious selection of his ingredients and the perfection of their preparation. Flavored essences were used in preference to classical sauces. Once they understood the character of the experience they became great fans, returning again and again.
This upset me as much as I can be upset by the death of someone I didn’t really know.
Katherine and I were living in Minneapolis, thinking sort of vaguely about moving to Chicago. Katherine was maybe 4 months pregnant when we ate at Trotter’s. About three courses in we were no longer vague: we were moving to Chicago.
Of course we’d failed to recognize that as new parents there wouldn’t be a lot of twelve course tasting menus in our near future. But Trotter was my foodie dateline. There was before Charlie and after.