The mixed-use building at 1210 Chicago Avenue in Evanston. Photo: Payton Chung from DCA, USA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Found Kitchen & Social House, the Evanston restaurant that pairs a seasonal menu with a job-training mission, was the focus of a public nominating push in late October 2014 for the Jean Banchet Awards for Culinary Excellence. Supporters were urged to put chef Nicole Pederson forward for Rising Star Chef and the restaurant itself for Best Restaurant and Best Design.
The Banchet Awards are Chicago’s own culinary honors, named for a pioneering Chicago-area chef. Unlike many industry prizes, the first round is open to the public: diners fill out an online ballot with categories that include Best Restaurant, Best New Restaurant, Rising Star Chef, Best Sommelier and Best Design. Winners are chosen afterward and announced at a January event tied to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Grand Chefs Gala in Chicago, which the foundation has long used as a fundraiser.
A restaurant with a second job
Found opened in November 2012. Amy Morton, daughter of Morton’s steakhouse founder Arnie Morton, started it after stepping away from the restaurant business for about 15 years. Its stated aim is to hire and train people coming out of homelessness as a step toward more independent lives, a goal the restaurant has put in writing on its own website.
The dining room matches the idea. Furniture and fixtures are salvaged and secondhand, assembled to feel like a lived-in home rather than a designed set. The menu, built around Evanston-area farms and the market calendar, changes with the seasons. Pederson, who came to Evanston from Lula Cafe and C-House in Chicago and earlier worked at Gramercy Tavern in New York, has said the philanthropic side of the job was a big part of the draw.
Found also runs a program called First Mondays, which opens the restaurant to local nonprofits at cost for fundraisers. The restaurant also recycles and composts, and it was among the commercial customers of Evanston’s Collective Resource food-scrap hauling service.
Not the first nod
The 2014 push was not Found’s first brush with the awards. When the nominees for the previous round were announced, Found appeared on the Best New Restaurant list and Pederson on the Rising Chef of the Year list, with ceremonies scheduled for Jan. 31, 2014, at the Grand Chefs Gala at the Fairmont Chicago. The fresh round of nominations came as the restaurant approached its second anniversary.
Early reviews had been mixed on service but generous about the concept. One critic gave the restaurant three stars out of five and praised its mission, noting front-of-house hiccups, while another gave it four and a half stars.
Details on the awards and nominees come from Banchet Awards and Cystic Fibrosis Foundation announcements and from local restaurant coverage.
Rachel Lindqvist covers community life, the lakefront, dining and the arts for The Evanston Edge.
