Behind the Curtain
A celebrated Chicago chef makes his return with an interactive multimedia dinner: “I decided that stability, a 401K, insurance, and being underworked and overpaid wasn’t for me."
Editors Note: I’ve conducted hundreds of chef and restaurant-related interviews over the years, but I can only recall a few quotes from any of those sessions. Remarkably the most vivid phrase was uttered over 20 years ago by a hot Chicago chef named Jason Paskewitz coming off a sandwich battle on Food Network. Paskewitz’s rival on that show was Ben Ford (Ford’s Filling Station - Culver City, California) son of THE Harrison Ford. Paskewitz told me he was going to “Chewbacca-slap” Ben Ford in the mouth. Paskewitz is brash for sure, but he’s always backed up the smack talk with great eats. When he called to tell me he recently quit his cushy country club job and was making a triumphant return to Chicago with a live performance food pop-up, I asked Lisa Shames to investigate…
—Mike Nagrant
As a celebrated chef with close to 30 years in the hospitality industry, including at plenty of Chicago’s buzz-worthy restaurants — think The Blanchard, Gemini Bistro, The New Pump Room and Queenie’s Supper Club, to namedrop a few — Jason Paskewitz has stories. Lots and lots of stories. Some of them with happy endings, and some not, but all entertaining.
At this point in his career, Paskewitz is ready to share his tales working on the line. And the best way for him to do that is through what he knows best: food.
In early June, Paskewitz will launch a limited engagement pop-up called “Jason Paskewitz:Behind the Curtain.” The seven-course dinner will feature standout dishes from his extensive culinary career paired with his favorite music. Following the meal, Paskewitz promises a hard-hitting Q&A session. “I’ve been villainized and I’ve been given accolades,” he says. “But I’ve never been one to hold back.”
Once his residency ends, eight to 10 weeks later, Paskewitz wants to use the platform as a launching pad for other chefs to tell their stories — both literally and through their food.
Priced at $125 with “affordable” wine and cocktail add-ons available, the dinners will be held at 15 W. Illinois St. The space was most recently Welcome to the Farm, the River North country bar and barbecue restaurant backed by a group of big name folks, including Jimmy Butler, Roquan Smith and country singer Chase Rice, that closed in March 2025 after a short run. Tickets for the dinner will be available on OpenTable and go on sale this week.
It was while working at his most recent gig at a Glenview country club that the seeds for Paskewitz’s newest venture were planted, although it took a while for them to come to fruition. How he got there is an important part of his journey.
Once COVID restrictions ended, Paskewitz felt the time was right to slow down and step away from the fast-paced and competitive world of the Chicago dining scene. After all, he’d been there and done that, including having opened — and sometimes closed — 15 restaurants.
“After COVID, the city felt really flat,” he says. “People moved back to where they came from or gave up on restaurants as their second income stream. People were mad. I was mad. Everyone was mad.”
Factor in how tough it is already to run a restaurant in the city and Paskewitz thought a career switch to running the culinary programs at a country club in the suburbs felt right. “I thought given what had happened I was ready,” he says.
Turns out, he wasn’t. “I decided that stability, a 401K, insurance, and being underworked and overpaid wasn’t for me,” he says half-joking. He’s not ruling out a return to that life down the road.
So, when one of his ex-business partners reached out, Paskewitz listened. “He said, ‘I got this space and I want you to come down and look at it,’” he says. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.”
This time, though, Paskewitz was interested, excited even, about the possibility of taking over part of the first floor of the 20,000-square-foot multilevel space. Looking at the big rectangle bar in the center of the room with 30 seats around it, his vision of the 360-degree style of service started to take shape. He would run a curtain around the bar and add a big screen on one side for some potential immersive stuff. He’d put together a menu that reflected some of his more popular dishes throughout his career and maybe some of what’s to come. The experience would allow him to include his other passion, music, as well as that Q&A session.
The curtain birthed the pop-up series’ double-entendre behind-the-curtain name. “I immediately went to the ‘Wizard of Oz’ because I’m a nerd,” says Paskewitz. “It’s like a magic show, theater, a who’s pulling the strings kind of thing.”
For the seven-course menu, some of the dishes have already been chosen.
There’s the caviar-topped oeuf Outhier from Paskewitz’s Lincoln Park restaurant The Blanchard. Of all his dishes, it’s the one he’s most proud of. The feeling, it seemed, was mutual with praise of the dish from writers like the Reader’s Mike Sula. Phil Vettel of the Chicago Tribune gave the restaurant three stars when he reviewed it. (For my part, I wrote in an October 2015 CS review: “… an appetizer from the menu’s Pour Commencer section, in which Paskewitz starts with the famed French chef’s idea for the decadent egg-based dish and then runs with it.”)
Expect stories from Paskewitz on this dish and The Blanchard in general, which won best new restaurant at the Jean Banchet Awards and was a best new restaurant semifinalist in the James Beard Awards. Paskewitz had a messy breakup with his partner and left in less than a year. “That was the best and worst time of my life,” he says.
His short rib agnolotti from Gemini Bistro, a Lincoln Park restaurant Paskewitz started with his then partner, restaurateur Ryan O’Donnell, will also make an appearance. Paskewitz is working on a fun play on bouillabaisse to mark his time at Wave in the W Hotel on Lakeshore Drive. Other Blanchard dishes include truffle crusted foie gras with a madeira sauce and duck a l’orange. Paskewitz might even go back to his early chef days (1999-2001) when he worked at the Loop’s Nine Restaurant & Steakhouse, a big celebrity and athlete hangout, he says, with plenty of stories to go along with it.
“My cooking is straightforward and that’s always given it success, although I’ve had plenty of failures too,” says Paskewitz of his culinary style. “I don’t bullshit people with my food and that’s especially important in Chicago. It needs to be trendy but not too trendy. If cutting edge, diners have to understand what you are doing. And it can’t be too expensive. Chicago is a blue-collar town at the end of the day.”
Just as important as the food is Paskewitz’s pairing of each course with music. He guarantees a diverse soundtrack with artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen and the Beastie Boys to Nas and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. “It’s going to be a huge part of the evening,” he says.
While Paskewitz no longer drinks and hasn’t for the last 6 years — feel free to ask him about his road to sobriety; it’s a doozy — some dishes might be paired with wine or a small cocktail.
At the end of the day, Paskewitz hopes his residency is just the beginning.
“The biggest part of this for me is I want to produce the next round of chefs and maybe even take this on the road,” he says. “I want to get younger chefs involved and give them a platform. I want to be the guy behind the curtain pulling the strings, producing and helping. If I could do that that would make this a success.”
“Jason Paskewitz: Behind the Curtain,” 15 W. Illinois St.; $125 per person. Tickets available on OpenTable.
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