The stout brick structure at 816 W. Armitage Ave. holds a kind of hallowed aura among diners of a certain age. My parents easily recall the “amazing” food and “perfect” service from their three-hour, nine-course dinner at the late Charlie Trotter’s namesake restaurant some 30 years ago. The “lobster purse” anecdote remains legendary in our house — when my mom gushed so effusively over a lobster-stuffed pastry course that staff brought her a second one for free.
After sitting mostly dark since it closed in 2012, the restaurant and its custom-made French Bonnet stoves have roared to life once more. Trotter’s son, Dylan, is hosting a pop-up here, alongside Alinea chef and owner (and Trotter’s alum) Grant Achatz. Originally slated to run for two weeks in January, it’s been extended through Feb. 9, with seats costing up to $335 a head.
But Dylan is also keen to put his own stamp on this storied place. “I’ve been doing this my whole life,” he said. “At some point, I will want to step into my own.”
It’s not all for nostalgia’s sake. Dylan Trotter aims to reopen the restaurant later this year, to connect younger generations to his father’s legacy — and to carve out one of his own.
When I asked what shape Trotter’s 2.0 might take, Dylan hesitated to offer specifics for his future “neighborhood restaurant.” In past interviews, he’s mentioned wanting to partner on pop-ups with other Trotter chef alumni. He told Eater Chicago he has, so far, interviewed five chefs interested in taking the helm in the kitchen.
“People under the age of 40 don’t know who Charlie Trotter was, and my goal is to change that,” Dylan Trotter said. His famous father died of a stroke in 2013, less than a year after closing the restaurant to pursue a master’s degree and travel the world.
“This is a historic Chicago landmark that should be known by everyone, young and old,” Trotter said of his father’s restaurant. “I think the younger generation should look back at history and see: How did we get to where we are now?”
Five days into the sold-out, first pop-up, I met the 33-year-old Trotter on site in Lincoln Park. The place hummed with staff and media waiting to chat up the restaurateur. Donning a blazer and thick-rimmed glasses, Trotter recalled growing up here as we admired the painstakingly restored dining room that felt like a time capsule. The original sconces, brocade wallpaper and maroon accents mix with a melange of new and original upholstered chairs. The tables, draped in crisp white linens, were set with the original gold-rimmed charger plates, inlaid with that famous serif “T.”
“This is the last physical connection I have to my father and the neighborhood I grew up in,” he said. “There are a great deal of memories for myself here.”
A self-taught chef, Charlie Trotter opened his namesake fine dining restaurant in a converted Lincoln Park brownstone in 1987. It went on to become one of the world’s most decorated and influential dining destinations. Trotter, who often compared cooking with improv jazz, purportedly never served the same menu twice. He’s credited with trends that have shaped fine dining in the decades since, from wine pairings to sustainably sourcing ingredients, as well as all-vegetarian tasting menus and weaving Asian influences into dishes at a time when haute French cuisine ruled.
Young cooks like Achatz moved to Chicago specifically to work at Trotter’s. The chef and owner behind the three-Michelin-starred Alinea and one-Michelin-starred Next lasted only a few months, however, owing to the intensity of the workplace. Over the years, stories of Trotter’s challenging work environment flowed freely — sometimes fanned by the man himself. In 1996, he was annoyed to come in second in Chicago magazine’s ranking of the city’s meanest people, just behind legendary Chicago Bull Michael Jordan. In 2003, Charlie was sued by two of his employees over allegations of improper compensation and labor violations.
Dylan, on the other hand, remembers a loving father and generous man, dedicated to going above and beyond on service.
“People love sensationalist headlines, but I’m here to tell the real story,” he said.
When it came to food and managing people, he admired his dad’s attention to detail. “He was a leader,” he said. “He put people on the spot, so they had to think.”
Dylan got his first job at 14 working in the dish pit at Trotter’s To Go, the deli and catering business near DePaul University, which closed in 2012. Unlike his father, whose career path was solidified in college when Charlie fell in love with cooking, Dylan’s journey into hospitality took some twists and turns.
He was 22 when he found his 54-year-old father at home, unresponsive from a stroke. A few months after his father’s death and still in a deep depression, he was having a drink at the bar of the now-closed GT Fish & Oyster when chef and partner Giuseppe Tentori, who had worked at Charlie Trotter’s for nine years, approached him.
“He said to me, ‘What are you doing with your life? Come work for me in the kitchen,’” Trotter recalled. “It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I threw myself into something and learned to love the adrenaline of the line.”
Tentori remembered it slightly differently — that Dylan approached him about a kitchen job. In either case, Dylan worked there for a few months, then joined the team at Tentori’s steakhouse, GT Prime (which closed in November), as a runner.
Dylan went on to work for chef Matthias Merges, who had been the head chef at Trotter’s for 14 years. He moved to Los Angeles for a year to work at the 350-seat BOA Steakhouse, where he concluded that he was better-suited to the front of the house than the kitchen.
After he returned to Chicago, Dylan assumed ownership of the property from his family. He slowly started fixing up the adjoined buildings at 816 and 814 W. Armitage, which were built in 1881, replacing the HVAC, plumbing and some carpeting, adding fresh coats of paint. He began combing his dad’s extensive archives — cassette tapes of his speeches, his 12 cookbooks and VHS tapes of his PBS cooking show — which Dylan has plans to digitize. About six years ago, he quit drinking, around the same time he began to dream about honoring his dad inside the old restaurant.
On the occasions he’d bring Trotter’s alumni to the dormant restaurant, for tours or attend events, he noticed how the space sparked powerful memories for people.
Dylan Trotter holds photographs of his late father, Chef Charlie Trotter, with chefs Norman Van Aken (from left) and Emeril Lagasse — both close friends of the famed Chicago chef who passed away in 2013. Trotter hopes to reopen his father’s Lincoln Park fine dining destination later this year.
Lou Foglia/For WBEZ
Dylan used to spend Nov. 23, the anniversary of his dad’s death, alone. But in 2023, he decided to throw a celebration of life at the restaurant, inviting alumni and his dad’s friends and family. Coincidentally, a week before the party, he got an email from Achatz.
“He said, ‘I’m thinking of doing a tribute menu for your dad next year at Next,’ ” Trotter said. A week later, they met at the party and started talking about the menu, which would feature dishes from Charlie’s first five cookbooks. Next’s Trotter tribute menu ran from September through New Year’s Eve 2024 and featured both by-the-book recreations and riffs on beloved dishes. Dylan went 10 times. Among the standouts: chilled Yellow Taxi tomato soup with avocado-cilantro sorbet.
“The tomato itself is made into tomato water, to bring it back to the pure essence of tomato,” Dylan recalled. “It took me right back to Dad, who was a big lover of tomatoes. It feels creative and innovative and different, but it’s still this thing from 1999.”
In the fall, Achatz approached Trotter about bringing Charlie’s food back to life, in the space where it began, as a continuation of sorts of the Next Trotter series. Dylan agreed. Things shifted into high gear over the past few months as they got the venerable old kitchen, last renovated in 1996, ready to fire dishes again. “These things were built to last,” Trotter said of the equipment, which mainly got internal upgrades. “They just needed a little TLC.”
The Next at Trotter’s pop-up menu includes dishes that are personally significant to Achatz, including eggplant and potato “cannelloni,” a dish he cooked on the line at Trotter’s; rutabaga gnocchi; poussin with chicken gizzard; pastry chef Nancy Silverton’s panna cotta; and truffle ice cream with warm, liquid-center chocolate.
During its first two weeks, nightly waitlists for the pop-up reached 500 deep, with folks trekking from Texas, Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Ohio to experience it. Tentori dined at the pop-up with a group of industry vets, including Tony Priolo (chef and owner of Piccolo Sogno) and fellow Trotter’s alumni John Shields (executive chef of Smyth and The Loyalist) and Joe Campagna (writer and former restaurant general manager).
“When I first walked in, my first thought was ‘Is it going to smell like new paint or like old restaurant?’ But it smelled like a restaurant that’s been there for a long time, that never closed,” Tentori said. “Like a time capsule, but one that was maintained the right way, as Charlie would like. The food and experience — everything from the temperature of the plates to the wine and service in the way Grant does it — was impeccable. The restaurant is closed for 12 years, and the execution is, like, perfect.”
Dylan, who self-describes as “just the host,” has commenced each seating by asking a few questions.
“I ask if anybody at the table dined here before, and ‘Does this room feel familiar?’ If someone says, ‘We sat at that table over there,’ I’ll say, ‘Well, you gotta sit at that table again tonight!’ ”
In many ways, he’s the curator of this living museum; he’s also starting a podcast dedicated to his dad and the slice of Chicago’s culinary history in which he played such a pivotal role. As Tentori said, “He really understands what his dad did, in terms of Charlie’s legacy.”
“If I hear that one more time,” said Tentori with a laugh, when I asked if he was among said shortlisted chefs whom Trotter has reportedly interviewed to head up the restaurant. (Tentori just split with the Boka Restaurant Group after almost 18 years.)
“The pop-up is the first step, and I can’t wait to see what else Dylan is going to do with other chefs, people or by himself in that space,” he added. “They’re not big, they’re giant shoes to fill, because of the high expectations people have for those four walls. It’s not just a restaurant. Those are magic walls — if they could talk! But I can’t wait to see what Dylan will do.”
“We’re still trying to figure it all out,” Dylan said. “As my dad would say: When he opened the restaurant in 1987, he had no business opening a restaurant. He had no idea what he was doing. Sometimes that’s OK. Sometimes it’s better if it doesn’t feel so patented or cookie-cutter like the rest. It’s about learning as you go.”