12hrs In Chicago - A 3 Michelin Star Chef Shows Us his best steakhouse, local gems & fave desserts

Welcome to our new series, Yes 3 Chef, where we take you with us to meet some of the best chefs in the world as they show us where to eat in their city. This is episode two, Chef John Shields, Chicago. Hey everyone, I'm Layla. I'm Adrian. And this is S3. We're here with the newest three Michelin star chef in America, Chef John Shields. Congrats on your third star. Thanks. Thanks so much for spending the day with us. We're pumped. So tell us what you have with us today and without revealing too much, what we have planned. We're seeing the city of Chicago. I love the city. It's super vibrant. There's so much going on right now. So many chefs doing different things. Great pastries, steak houses, a little peek into Chinatown. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. This is Chris Gerber. We've known each other a long, long time. Director of operations. And, you know, we're here because of him. And chef, we know that you get a very rare day off. We thought we'd start the day right with a little bit of Dom and Pastries. What do you think? Let's do it. Cheers. Let's go eat the city. With lines that stretch around the block at opening, we decided to take the party back to Chef John and Chris. This is Kasama. By day, one of the hottest bakeries in the country. By night, the world's first Michelin starred Filipino restaurant. I am Jeannie Kwan. I'm Tim Flores, and we're the chef owners of Kasama here in Chicago. During the day, we do an epee and bakery with about 25 to 30 different pastries, French American, some Filipino influence. And then we have our savory menu, our take on modern Filipino dishes. The Filipino food is my mom's cooking. So from the daytime, casual Filipino rice plates to our breakfast sandwich. And then at night, it's all modern takes of her food for a 13 course tasting menu. How many orders do you get? We've got our goods, our patients to go. We're going to go meet Chef John. The famous breakfast sandwich is hash browns, egg and cheese, some pork sausages, their truffle croissant with sugar and truffle on top, the banana tart, an ube tart, some beautiful bites of foie gras, ham and cheese, and smoked salmon. Oh, that's really good. At one point, we had a lease ready to be signed, and the landlord pulled the plug. We were like, maybe this is not going to happen. We were down, you know, 20 plus grand. And our business partner now was like, why don't you go back to Chicago? But one day here, literally, I know it to this day. Walked in, I was like, holy shit, this is it for sure. Get it. This thing's sick. That's good. The sugar on top has such a nice texture, but it's aerated and puffy. Oh, that is decent. Good. Yeah. Wow. I'm trying to get the hype. Oh, yeah. They're QXY dumplings. You kind of keep going straight down. Basically, all old Chinatown. And on the right hand side, this is like new Chinatown, if you will. You can just basically eat your entire life away just walking down the street. They do like this little dried sardine salad with like cucumbers marinated. It's like fantastic. And then you get them steamed, fried or boiled. Can't go wrong. How's this shot? Is this okay? Is this a good shot? Three dumplings. Chris, what are we getting? We're going to do wagyu beef with the truffle. Lamb coriander comes either steamed or fried, so we're going to go fried with that one. And then the pork dumplings, we'll do pork and cabbage and we'll get those boiled. To break it up a little bit, we're going to do the pigger salad with chili oil, seaweed salad and a little We're getting three of those plates. Yeah. That's literally probably one of the most famous burgers in the country, certainly in the city, which is weird. You know, I mean, was it like all you always wanted to make something like that and you just or it just happened? It just happened. You know, well, we had Loyalist and I was trying to figure out what am I going to do with Loyalist. Oshabal was kind of the top of their game and the burger world of And so I told my investors, I'm going to make a burger that rivals Oshabal or beats Oshabal, whatever it will be, which was completely talking in my head. So I was like, I shouldn't have said it. Wasn't right. I think I've made like three burgers my whole life. And they're all like, I mean, like not total, but like types of burger and they're all backyard burgers, you know, on the grill. Like I didn't put any thought into it. And so once it came time to do it, make it happen, it came together pretty quickly. It was only maybe I did some research. I read a lot. I studied and I decided, what do I like? What do I want on a burger? And I went for it. And within about the third or fourth trial, we were right there. Then when Bon Appetit magazine came out, we had knocked Oshabal off of the best top three burgers in America. Right after that, we had a line out the door and it didn't really stop for three years. It really still hasn't. What it is, is the mix. We use chuck and short rib. That's it. Chuck and short rib. In the bacon into it. And then we started getting so busy where the volume, we couldn't get the small amount of bacon because it's really strong bacon, like smoky. Couldn't get it mixed in thoroughly without working the meat too much. So we started using bacon fat instead. That's the secret. So how I do it, I lean them up against here. I make a little blowhole for the steam and I get the steam out. But you don't want to lose all that juices, right? You know what I'm saying? That's how you do it. I don't know if you can beat those. This is a really nice lamb grind with coriander, a bit of mint I think in there, and like a really nice crisp on top. That's a great dumpling. Okay, so this next place is fully booked for the next few months. We managed to get them to open up a bit early for us. They're going to give us a bit of a tour, some few bites in the kitchen. Oh wait, where's Leila? Oh there you are. No, no, no. Make your chicken McNuggets. There we go, that'll be five. We're here at Ashton on Bastion. Doug Saltich is the chef. Doing a really cool concept, sort of combination of grilled meats, the idea of the South American way of grilling meats with Sebastian beans, some iconic dishes from San Sebastian. People think of Chicago as a steakhouse town, and to me this is the best steakhouse in town. You're here? Oh my gosh. We wanted to make sure we had a collection of beef that was the best in the world. Compliment that our seafood program, we wanted to make sure that even if you're not looking for a steak, you can have some of the best of the range. So today we have some caponeros, spider crab, blue lobsters, spiny lobster, some gautmas royale, some carpet clams. Fortunate to have some of these great French oysters in today. So a real treat for us, rarely seeing this day. Chef, you want to open some Before we ever had Smith or Loyalist, I knew the name Doug Saltich, and he was just known throughout the country, and the fact that he's here in Chicago, it's like, it's the real deal here. It's a little bit maybe smart, a little bit crazy, but you know like, fuck, let's just do it. Cut that out, oh yeah, bang, oh my gosh. All that roe going into that. You mix it back in? Yeah, so that's like, you know, and you go to get like that kind of imitation crab, it's kind of like that. Yeah, so it sits like this, yeah, you rock the head out, and this is what, the heads are like gold for us. Yeah, yeah, and you stuff it with all that meat, and all the roe, and all the brains back inside. I only eat mesi food. How are you doing, Doug? What kind? Crab, brains, roe. I haven't seen you back in about two weeks. Habanero is real, the real jewels of the sea, humongous. All that juice you can see in the head here, all the dark juice here, they kind of squeeze it up, share that with some sherry and stuff like that. I've seen some guys in Madrid kind of cut a little hole in the head here. We had somebody as talented as Chris Gerber in the movie go in there and just kind of make your own emulsion right there. You make an aioli in front of the guests, you know, which is like a I can do a sauce, I can do a few classic applications to it. You're doing your dance, you're doing your dance. Camera's rolling on this guy here. Keep it going. You know, one of our specialties is about the VA head, so we'll do B. So this is a seven-year-old cow that we're going to cook real quick, and this is from a ten-year-old cow. As soon as most of the stuff we get is five, seven years old. That one's more of the flavor on the hook, so we season them with just sea salt. What's the secret to a perfect cook? You know, we just think of good, consistent heat. Like we like to, our charcoal adds a lot of flavor. It's not for ripping temperature, but 10 inches of a great charcoal, about 10, 12 minutes per pound, I think it allows us to really pick up that flavor, and then we'll have a nice rest of beer. So we're back in our neighborhood here. We're at Elf. David Posey, open a place named after love. They're doing some of the most innovative food, I think, in the city. Absolutely delicious. Best pastry chef in the city, no doubt. Yeah, I can eat. I'm David Posey, chef and owner of Elf's Restaurant here in Chicago, Illinois in West Loop. We're a Michelin-starred fine dining, kind of Scandinavian-inspired restaurant. Menu changes constantly. We're really reliant on the seasons and our wood heart that we cook everything over live fire. This is our take on a Danish hot dog. There's a knocked-brown rye cracker topped with a smooth-cooked lamb tartare. And then we have our salt-cured anchovies with Meyer lemon fennel. It's a Danish deli. Cucumber, sesame, chicken nuggets, a little side of red sesame. This is the signature chicken liver parfait, buckwheat crust, a little bit of ramp jelly. It's awesome. Always a winner. Oh, I got a piece of advice for young chefs. Don't do it. No, no. Being patient, I think it's the biggest thing. I think putting in time and really allowing the process to work itself out and not always worrying about what the outcome's going to be and kind of being present in the moment. When you put your expectations out of the way and you just kind of dream, something great will happen eventually if you're willing to wait. This business is a blue-collar business, and I think it's always been that. And I think it's been elevated. We want to glorify it, but at the end of the day, it's a pretty tough, tough place to be in, so be patient. That's it. Hello. Cured tuna, a little smoked tomato, natto underneath, some sunflower seeds, and marigold. The yeasted pea pancake, a little smoked shred in there, cranberry beans, and topped with a kind of salad. It's subtle, light, beautiful flavors. Love this. I'm kind of a throw caution to the wind kind of person and let's see what happens and be brave and just go for it. We've gotten better at making the creativity delicious. I mean, I don't want to leave anything on the table. You know what I mean? It goes by fast. Let's just fucking keep going now. Like, if anything, I feel more confident to change and be creative than I did before. Aniladi that's stuffed with delice, pine nut, dried zucchini, fried sage, and a lot of lemon. I think it's pretty good. It's for Alfredo heads. It's rigatoni that we make like ramen. Creamed corn, a little egg yolk, pickled lovage, and it's like classic, yet totally new. Funky cheese, pine nuts. It's delicious. It's like if Alfredo had a baby with like that, you know, aniladi that's in brown butter and sage. It's just, and then you get that pine nut, a little bit of lemon. It's really good. Boudin blanc in the style of a Danish frigadilla, so a Danish meatball. It's a lamb saddle that's been stuffed with concrete belly, pickled mustard, and anchovy, and rosemary butter. Anna, my wife, is the pastry chef and co-owner. She does like very beautiful, simple, few ingredient desserts that we're super proud of. Her signature dessert is a sunflower seed parfait with licorice and beet palm. Meringue shell filled with vanilla skewer and raspberry sorbet and a cotton soap sponge cake with cevapcorn sherbet and gate toast. Our tasting dessert, a kombu panna cotta with blueberries, blueberry boba, and lavender vernita. Plum sorbet with lemon verbena and a bit of marigold. Our chocolate dessert, milk chocolate custard with salted blueberry and black garlic caramel. Pretty excited about this one, which is seabuckthorn, a little bit of coffee, and Danish brown cheese. We started the day with pastries. We ended the day with pastries. Perfection. The day's not over. That's true. A couple burgers, you know. Let's go have like a last drink, a little toast off for a crazy day. You know, a lot of Chicago sports cars and whatnot like to hang pictures of sports figures that come into the restaurant or politicians, actors. We had Thomas Keller and Daniel Ballew come in. I cooked them an omelet. That was like my test to see if I'd get a job working for them one day. They said it was perfect. I got the job and now we have their hanging here in the restaurant. Last stop of the evening. Thank you so much for spending the day with us. What an absolute honor and pleasure for showing us your city. Thank you. Really, truly an honor. The pleasure was ours. It really was. We had a blast. Thank you so much. Cheers, guys.