charlie trotter

[Ken Gargett]

just heard that charlie trotter passed away - only 54. way way too young and very sad. what a brilliant chef.

i went to a dinner he did in sydney a few years back. not bad when you can have tetsuya in the corner peeling your prawns. extraordinary meal.

i got to interview him the next morning. was one of those odd ones. he had an army of minders running around after him. every minute planned. he was clearly thinking he had better things to do than speak to me but was answering questions, though a bit abruptly. it was not going well. minders kept interrupting.

for reasons i don't quite recall - i think because he first wanted to be a musician, not a chef - i asked about music. he mentioned eric clapton. turned out we'd both seen a concert from the same tour (one of the truly great concerts of my life). him in the states, me in london.

well, everything changed. suddenly we were best mates, i could not shut him up, or scribble quickly enough to keep up. minders were shoo'd away. we yacked away for ages. terrific bloke. finally the minders were so frantic that he packed up but it was one of my fave interviews ever.

such a sad thing. RIP.

[Ryan]

That is very sad. I wondered what happened. I saw somewhere that he was "acting strangely" on stage at a food festival in Wyoming recently.

I ate twice at his restaurant in Chicago, once in 1999 and then again in 2001. Both occasions in my top 10.

Fantastic menus and the service unbelievable.

Something happened there the first time, I'll never forget. I come from a service background and this very much impressed me.

I was eating at the second sitting, we were 20 minutes late being sat as the first sitting was 20 minutes late out, so all the wine while we waited was comped, nice but kind of fair enough.

What impressed me though was the waiting-area staff changed while we were waiting and the new staff member went around asking if we'd like a second glass. I was having a second and was about to tell her what I was drinking but she already knew.

There were about 40 customers waiting, at least 40 reds and 40 whites available by the glass and during the staff handover, the waitress coming on had memorised all of our drinks by sight. We weren't sitting down so it wasn't by table. I was impressed. I don't know if that's standard in high end US restaurants but I've never seen it before or since.

[Colt45]

Unfortunate....

There is a good article on the Chicago Tribune's site - seems he had an inoperable

brain aneurysm.....

Never got to his restaurant, but used to enjoy watching his PBS show.

[DougB]

I am in Chicago for work this week and found out about Chef Trotter died here, at his home, yesterday morning. I went to eat at a restaurant last night that was strongly influenced by him and the mood was somber and of shock.

He turned the culinary world in the States on its' head in the 80's and changed dining, here, forever in a fantastic way. His passing is very sad- especially those of us in the industry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/dining/charlie-trotter-chicago-chef-who-elevated-american-dining-dies-at-54.html?ref=dining,