Daniel Aurel has been cooking since he was young. But it wasn’t until he became an adult that he started to prepare traditional Haitian food.
“I learned to cook from my family, just regular soul food and American food,” Aurel said. “But then, as I got older, I got into my more Haitian roots and started hanging out with my Haitian family a lot more.”
A few years ago, he took a trip to Haiti, his first to his parents’ native country.
“I was able to gather all the recipes and ingredients and spices and stuff from going to Haiti and perfected my own recipes,” he said. “I was able to eat Haitian food that I didn’t get when I was a child.”
Growing up on the South Side, Aurel was more familiar with American food, and one thing he never particularly cared for was frozen pot pies.
Now, as head chef at Lior’s Cafe, 10500 S. Halsted St. in Washington Heights, a perfect example of his experiences growing up as a Haitian American and his culinary arts background is the Cabrit Pot Pie — pulled goat in a mushroom-based cream sauce enveloped in a flaky and buttery pie crust.
“I wanted to do a kind of a gourmet pot pie but also give it a Haitian flair,” Aurel said.
A characteristic of Haitian cooking, Aurel said, is the cleaning of meat and fish. It’s a labor-intensive process whether it’s goat, oxtail or snapper.
Lior’s Cafe head chef Daniel Aurel says that, in creating the restaurant’s menu, he wanted to showcase Haitian cooking and flavors while also appealing to a wider audience who haven’t tried the cuisine yet.
Zubaer Khan / Sun-Times
Aurel rinses the goat meat, pours hot water over it and lets the meat sit for a while before cleaning the meat by pouring lime juice over it and rubbing it with the fruit. This helps to get some of the gaminess out, he said. After about two hours, Aurel seasons the goat with Lior’s house seasoning — a mix of brown sugar, onion, garlic and a secret ingredient — and epis, a blended seasoning base with fresh thyme, parsley, onions, peppers, scallion and garlic that’s the foundation of Haitian dishes. Aurel then makes the mushroom-based sauce and adds carrots, peas, corn and bell pepper.s
The goat and sauce mixture is then spooned into a large ramekin lined with a layer of homemade pie dough and topped with another layer of dough. It bakes for about 15 minutes until it’s golden brown.
In creating the menu at Lior’s Cafe, which is owned by his father, Jean Claude Aurel Jr., the younger Aurel wanted to bring something unique to the neighborhood while also offering a fine dining experience.
“Everything that I have on the menu is something I came with growing up, going to culinary school, then actually going to Haiti,” Aurel said.
The menu is a mix of traditional Haitian dishes such as the Poisson Rouge, Haitian Red Snapper fried whole and served with a tomato-based sauce with red onion, bell pepper and carrots; braised oxtail with butter beans; and griot, Haitian fried pork.
Lior’s Cafe’s red snapper is fried whole and served with a savory tomato-based sauce with carrots, onions and bell peppers.
Zubaer Khan / Sun-Times
Aurel said he also wanted to offer “American fusion” dishes to attract people who may not be familiar with Haitian cuisine but are curious to get out of their culinary comfort zone. That’s where dishes like Shrimp Bombs, fried jumbo shrimp tossed in a sweet and spicy sauce, come in.
Lior’s Cafe, owned by Jean Claude Aurel, opened in August 2023, but it’s been in the making since 2019, said Brandon Lenore, the restaurant’s general manager. “This has been his dream for a really long time.”
Aurel is president and chief executive officer of the engineering firm Transit Safety & Security Solutions and also executive director of violence prevention nonprofit We Love to Uplift. Both are located in the storefronts just south of Lior’s Cafe.
“I did it for the community,” Aurel said of opening the restaurant.
Community is a big focus at Lior’s Cafe, Lenore said, noting that Chicago has a significant Haitian population. With the family being from Jacmel, a port town in the southern part of Haiti, they wanted to create “a beautiful cultural hub for Haitian cuisine, art and music.
“Also, beyond that, just creating jobs for this area, for our neighborhood, creating opportunities for people who may have not had that type of experience in a restaurant who have dreams of working in a restaurant, workforce development was also part of our ethos,” Lenore said.
“We serve good food here, but we also serve our community, whether it’s hiring Haitians, giving them their start in America, supporting our own as far as in the neighboring areas or right here in our neighborhood.”