Meeting Ellen Yin and the team at High Street Hospitality Group at the wonderfully named Bad Butter Bakery on Cortland in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood, in a room filled with freshly made pastries, was one of many highlights of this James Beard Awards weekend.
Yin, a James Beard Foundation Award-winning restaurateur and founder of High Street Hospitality Group or HSHG for short, and her team own The Bread Room, an innovative new bakery and workshop in Center City Philadelphia known for its handmade viennoiseries and baked goods. It’s a perfect match-up with Dan Koester of Bad Butter (we could write that name endlessly and never get tired of it), and the bakery was full of the most deliciously wicked pastries, bagels, sourdough bread, and chocolate-covered pretzels. Yin and her team also contributed a taste of Philly with their wonderful roast pork focaccia sandwiches.
Koester, who recently opened a new brick-and-mortar store, has a great backstory. His first career choice was acting, and then he segued into baking during COVID, immediately knowing it was the right career path for him. He sold his goods from his condo and then began baking out of the kitchen at SoHo House, and after that, The Emily Chicago.
Also on hand was Middle Brow, a brewery and Chicago’s first natural winery that makes natural wines mostly from grapes grown in Michigan, including their own vineyard in Saugatuck. They are opening a winery in the charming town of Sawyer, Michigan, sometime this fall. Also, this fall, they have a grape stomp at their winery in Logan Square—yes, you read that right—an old-fashioned grape stomp with bare feet mushing grapes to release the juice for making wine. And yes, you can most likely participate.
1655 W Cortland St,
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