Essay: A Young Chicago Chef Pursues Wood-Fired Perfection
WIRED—April 17, 2018
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. 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.
“I’ve done the precise thing,” he says, referring to sous vide cooking. “You embrace technology so as not to waste money.”
Finds Erling Wu-Bower’s sweet spot between tech and touch, read on in WIRED.